Week in Review: May 23, 2025 - with David Kroman

Jamie Fackler Outlines Vision for Seattle's District 2 Council Seat from Hacks & Wonks

“Ferguson signs $9 billion in new taxes to fund state budget” by Shauna Sowersby and Jim Brunner from The Seattle Times

“Gov. Ferguson signs new WA budget into law, leaving bulk of tax increases intact” by Jeanie Lindsay from KUOW

“Law amending WA ‘parents bill of rights’ goes into effect immediately” by Jacquelyn Jimenez Romero from Washington State Standard

“IRS participates in immigration raid at Kent beverage company” by Nina Shapiro and Kai Uyehara from The Seattle Times

“ICE arrests at WA immigration court spark fear of fast-track removal” by Nina Shapiro from The Seattle Times

“ICE agents at Seattle courthouse arrest people whose deportation hearings are dismissed” by Gustavo Sagrero Álvarez from KUOW

“Seattle mayor scores big labor endorsement in reelection bid” by David Kroman from The Seattle Times

“Races for Seattle, King County elective offices heat up as candidate deadline passes” by David Kroman and David Gutman from The Seattle Times

“Katie Wilson 36%, Bruce Harrell 33%: NPI's May 2025 Civic Heartbeat poll finds statistical tie in Seattle mayoral race” by Andrew Villeneuve from The Cascadia Advocate

“Seattle homeless camp makes rainy, rushed move to new Lake City site” by David Kroman from The Seattle Times

Find stories that Crystal is reading here

Listen on your favorite podcast app to all our episodes here

[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm your host, Crystal Fincher. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it.

If you missed our Tuesday topical show, I chatted with Jamie Fackler, a candidate for Seattle City Council District 2, about his stance on affordable housing, public safety, transportation, and more - as well as his opposition to corporate influence in local politics.

Today, we're continuing our Friday week-in-review shows, where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: Seattle Times City Hall reporter, David Kroman. Welcome back!

[00:01:00] David Kroman: Hi, thanks for having me.

[00:01:02] Crystal Fincher: Excited to have you on today. We do have a number of things to discuss - starting with Governor Bob Ferguson signing the state budget, essentially a number of new taxes that are going to be implemented and hopefully leading us out of the budget deficit that the state has been facing. What happened with the budget? What did he end up signing?

[00:01:27] David Kroman: Yeah. So, you know, as you said, it includes a lot of new taxes. Notably, it does not include some of the Democratic priorities from the beginning of the session - and former Governor Jan Inslee's priorities - of a wealth tax and a kind of Seattle-style payroll tax on large businesses. Neither of those things made it through to the end. But there are, I think it was what, $9 billion in new taxes. So I think this final budget is sort of reflective of people's grappling with what kind of governor Bob Ferguson would be. I think it's still not maybe entirely clear to some people. Early on, it seemed like he was leaning toward kind of more Republican points of view by basically nixing any talk of a wealth tax and then eventually the payroll tax. Now, of course, Republicans are kind of turned back against him because it does include a lot more taxes, it doesn't maybe include as much spending cuts as they wanted. And so I think it's still a little bit of a tale of two Bob Fergusons here. It might take us a few sessions to fully understand exactly what kind of governor he's trying to be. I'll point out one of the big tax increases - the gas tax for the transportation budget - that was a bipartisan proposal. Senator Curtis King signed off on that as well, in addition to Senator Marko Liias. So not all of these tax increases are purely Democratic priorities, but still, I don't think you could look at this as an austerity budget by any stretch.

[00:02:49] Crystal Fincher: I think that's right on. So besides that, what other taxes were in this budget?

[00:02:56] David Kroman: Some of the big ones are increasing the business and occupation tax, which the state - particularly local jurisdictions - depend pretty heavily on. this. There is also a surcharge for corporations making more than $250 million in state taxable income, so not quite the kind of JumpStart payroll tax that some had hoped for, but still a focus a bit on large corporations. There was an increase in capital gains tax, too. And then also some changes to sales tax. Mentioned the gas tax. They increased the price of a Discover Pass - that seems to be kind of narrowly focused on parks. So, not any sort of one major piece like the wealth tax that some had proposing, but kind of across the board bumps.

[00:03:40] Crystal Fincher: A smattering there. Now, you mentioned that several Republicans weren't happy with the overall budget, weren't happy with Governor Ferguson after this was signed. Have they signaled any action that they may take in response to this?

[00:03:57] David Kroman: Well, short of a referendum or an initiative, there's not a lot that they can do. They'd been pushing for some vetoes in the budget before the governor signed it. He vetoed - I think it was $25 million out of a $78 billion budget - so it's not exactly making a big difference there. There's still some more details that we're waiting on as far as whether he could tweak some of these tax increases - we still don't have the full picture on that. But short of going to the voters and asking them to repeal the capital gains tax, which they already did last time, then I don't think at this point there's a lot that they can do.

[00:04:32] Crystal Fincher: Sounds like it. And last time when they did try, as you just alluded to, kind of failed by a pretty wide margin. Essentially, two thirds of the state said - We actually like that tax, please keep it. And so that probably doesn't look likely this time.

Now, also this past week, we saw Governor Ferguson signing the amended Washington parents bill of rights, which will go into effect immediately. What did the parents bill of rights do? What was amended? And what are the reactions to this?

[00:05:06] David Kroman: In a broad stroke, it basically gives parents more access to information about their kids within the context of school, so that includes the sorts of materials they're reading, if they're involved in a crime, absenteeism. The big controversial point, though, was around medical records - particularly related to mental health. This has actually been in Washington law for a long time - that parents don't get full access to mental health records. The Republican argument is that law has been expanded to include things like gender affirming care, and so the parents bill of rights would have given more access to that information. The change here kind of pulls that back a little bit. It does still leave open a lot of access to information. Parents can still learn about whether or not their kids are showing up to school or some of their behavioral stuff. But this big question around medical records - that is really the sticking point here - and my understanding, the changes that the Democrats made is made it a little bit harder for parents to get access to those medical records. The idea being some kids are going through a process quietly and privately - and it's not always a supportive environment at home is the idea. And the Democrats framed it as just putting it in-line with what state law already says. Again, Republicans say that that definition of mental health is expanded beyond what was originally intended. But what comes next for Republicans? The bill was passed with emergency clauses, which makes a referendum more difficult, or perhaps impossible. I suppose they could run another initiative as they did before - which perhaps they will, because they've got a pretty well-funded political initiative runner now in Brian Heywood. So perhaps there is a next step that Republicans take. But for now, it reflects a little bit more what Democrats wanted from this law.

[00:06:58] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it does appear so. And one that, like you said, Democrats were happy with, a number of school districts were happy with. And really, as you said, the idea being that some kids may be going through a challenging transition and home may not be a safe place. There are some other circumstances where what is told to a school counselor or to a medical professional isn't divulged automatically to parents. And really looking at keeping people safe, particularly because I think the people who were most vocally supportive of this bill were also very vocally in opposition to laws protecting trans people and their rights - and safety, essentially. So certainly, I think Democrats were very happy to see Bob Ferguson signing this. As you said, Let's Go Washington has said that they plan to mount a repeal effort. What the details of that are we are not sure yet, whether it's going to be an initiative to the legislature or initiative to the people - what exactly that would look like. But they have voiced their opposition here. We'll continue to stay tuned to what's happening at the state level.

We did see some action related to federal immigration enforcement really recently, over the past couple of weeks. Just a couple of days ago, the IRS participated in an immigration raid at a Kent beverage company. What happened here?

[00:08:29] David Kroman: 17 workers at this beverage company were arrested. It appears to be - by our tally, it's the second major workplace raid by ICE in Washington. The other one was a Bellingham roofing company. So that alone stands out. It's always good to preface these conversations with noting that the Biden administration carried out a lot of deportation proceedings, and ICE was pretty active during that administration. But the question is how those priorities are shifting. I don't know that we saw as many specific targeting of businesses. As far as we know, these people didn't have extensive criminal histories or anything like that - it was just a workplace raid for working illegally. And then, yeah, this piece about the IRS being involved - that would appear to be a new front, which is basically they're using the IRS to tap into payroll data and tax data to find people who might be working undocumented in the United States. And that would appear to be - I don't know if you want to call it an escalation, but a change from the way things were done in the past. There was a lawsuit to try and block access to that data that does not appear to have succeeded for now. And so I think if the IRS is going to be more intimately involved in these raids, then it would stand to reason we would see a lot more of these large-scale workplace operations. Which is a contrast to some of the outward facing advertising that the administration is doing around the work that they're using ICE for. The emphasis has been on people with extensive criminal history, at least as far as what they're talking about publicly - implying that they're going after the worst of the worst. But this is an example that perhaps they're really just going after folks who are undocumented more broadly, regardless of whether or not those people are seen as criminally dangerous.

[00:10:15] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And we haven't seen workplace raids since the Obama administration, I think. Not something that we've seen in recent years here, certainly. There's also been another new front, new development here - where ICE is arresting people at immigration court. What is happening with these and why do they have people so alarmed?

[00:10:40] David Kroman: I think the reasoning here is that the normal procedures of immigration proceedings are very slow. And we've known that for a long time. And so what the administration is doing is using a different form of authority to affect faster deportations, basically. And so you get the situation where people who are actually in immigration and possibly deportation proceedings are having their cases dismissed, and then quickly picked up on these different authorities which are a little more contested in the courts, and using that to then quickly affect these deportations. Again, when we're talking about new fronts in immigration proceedings - using, tapping into the court system to make these arrests was always pretty sensitive territory. Because you want people to show up to court, generally speaking. And if there is a sense that they might get arrested by coming to court, the fear is you decrease odds that people actually come and show up to their court proceedings and go through the normal process. I think in the first Trump administration, there was some reins put on those raids in court proceedings, as well as churches and schools and things like that - that appear to be disappearing in this second administration. They seem to be much more willing to go directly to court, use these different bureaucratic methods to get people out of the country more quickly. That is going to set up a lot of really emotional and contested deportations, likely. I was reading a story yesterday about a guy from Denmark who was arrested in his naturalization hearing - so he was going to become an American citizen and was arrested. And the rationale was he had forgotten to submit some paperwork 10 years before that had never been a problem. And so we can talk a lot about bureaucratic process and how slow it moves - and that's fine. And certainly, it's worth examining that. We also see the flip side of when administration officials or federal agents go around that process - it sets up a whole new set of issues, which is that people that we have been fine with living in the country before often get swept up in these kinds of operations.

[00:12:45] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I think that concern that you brought up about just people being afraid of turning up to court is a major one. And not just for immigration proceedings. Overall, court is our recourse for everything - whether it's keeping people safe, whether it's protecting yourself as a consumer, whether it's getting justice for some wrong that has happened to you. And so this can affect not only immigration proceedings, but people who have been victimized, who've had a crime against them, may question whether they should call and report it to the police. If there are files charged and they need to come to court to testify, they may not show up. And this is something that has, as you said, much broader implications to our greater society - really different. And also dismissing the charges in our traditional - how we see the immigration proceedings happening for the expedited removal. Expedited removal does not involve judges, according to Matt Adams, the legal director of the Northwest Immigrants Rights Project - someone, an expedited removal can be put on a plane leaving the country in a matter of hours. And we've seen that happen - Here I'm reading reporting by Nina Shapiro at The Times. And it just has a lot of people alarmed, especially as we see what feels like a very arbitrary to some, malicious to others, nature of where people are sent. Just because someone is removed out of the country with this expedited removal does not mean that they are going back to their country of origin. And we're seeing people who have gone to various countries with troubling human rights records, and sometimes into detention of an undetermined length where they have not seen a judge at all. So this is something that's pretty alarming, where they aren't even updating people on people's whereabouts - it's hard to track down people within this system. By the time that happens, they may have been removed from the country, and they're hard to locate there. So it's alarmed a lot of people in the community, and I think a lot of people are just trying to get their arms around what this means - for them, friends and family, folks in their community - and really what these long-term implications are going to be.

[00:15:06] David Kroman: Yeah, I do think if you could pinpoint the difference between the first Trump administration and the second one, it's that there was some semblance of considering broader implications in the first Trump administration, and that is largely gone. There is now a stated goal that they have, which is to deport as many people as they can, and they are going after that goal. And the implications around what that means for people's likelihood of showing up to court, or people who should not be getting deported being deported, people being sent to places like South Sudan or El Salvador - those are not part of the calculation anymore. There is a goal that they have and they are doing what they can or want to achieve that goal, and the larger implications of it are apparently no longer part of the factor.

[00:15:48] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Well, now we're going to turn to Seattle elections. And a couple things making news recently. One, Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell scored a really big endorsement in his re-election bid. What happened and why is it significant?

[00:16:06] David Kroman: Yeah, so Harrell was endorsed by the MLK Labor Council - that is basically a union of unions - it contains 150 or so unions in King County. A lot of those are quite small unions. There are, of course, then large ones too - namely the construction trades, hospitality unions, service unions, grocery stores, things like that. The fact that he got this endorsement, I think, is significant for a few reasons. One, he did not have the broad backing of labor in his first run. He had some unions - the construction and trades unions tend to be a little bit more moderate or conservative, whatever adjective you want to use. But for the most part, former Councilmember Lorena González won most of the labor support, including from MLK Labor. And, in fact, a few unions spent close to half a million dollars opposing Harrell. Some of that may come still because there is not a monolith in the union labor world, but the fact that he can now put the endorsement of the labor council - which is perhaps an imperfect representation of unions in the area, but the closest we have to a representative sample of labor - that's a big deal for him. And how this vote went down, it sounds like there's a lot of internal politics around this. Some of the biggest, more progressive unions apparently abstained from the vote. And so I think for folks like Katie Wilson and Ry Armstrong, who are running against Harrell, that was frustrating. That they feel like he got the endorsement in some ways by default, because not all the unions participated.

But that is an issue for those unions - that they didn't participate. And at the end of the day, Harrell legitimately won this endorsement. And so by doing that, he adds to his growing list of endorsements that, I would say, kind of blunt any possible left-wing challenger. Because remember - he got Representative Pramila Jayapal's endorsement earlier - that is a big deal as far as progressive support for Harrell. And I think my general sense - and this is just from talking to a lot of people - is Harrell has done enough. There isn't sort of ringing enthusiasm perhaps from labor, or even business necessarily, But they feel like he has done enough that they are fine with him in the mayor's office. They feel like they have gotten conversations with him. They've gotten a few - they like the housing and transportation levies. He helped negotiate a quite friendly contract for city workers. And so I think that calculation for a lot of folks in the labor world is - he's good enough, we've liked some of the things he's been doing. And by the way, we think he's probably going to win. And so all of those things combined, I think, has put labor, in particular, in a position where they just don't feel like it is worth their time and energy to stick their neck out for somebody else that they don't think can win. And they're basically fine with Harrell. And so I think that's what we're seeing. And I do think that that will be a big boon for his campaign.

[00:19:04] Crystal Fincher: Certainly, candidates tout the backing of labor who have it. Usually that support comes with significant resources that are really helpful in a campaign - with campaign communication, with turning out voters - I think they're looking at that. You talked about some of the internal dissent, the abstentions that were controversial there. Certainly, we've seen a lot of pushback publicly to these saying - Well, wait a minute, there's at least one other candidate in the race who seems like they're much more closely aligned with the labor agenda. How did labor say that they parsed - Hey, maybe someone is saying that they're aligned with our agenda, has led the passage - with Katie Wilson - of several minimum wage initiatives around the state that have raised wages for working people, those usually at the lowest end of the income distribution. And saying - Seems like there's another labor champion who is closer to what we believe, yet there is this incumbent there. Do you think what it came down to was them making a decision on who they thought was most likely to win and prioritizing that relationship?

[00:20:17] David Kroman: I think that's part of it. I would say there's a few things there, which is I think supporters of Katie Wilson, for example - and probably Katie Wilson herself - think that if labor does not back Katie Wilson and then she wins, she is going to continue to work with labor. She is a pro-labor person. That is just - it is not going to affect their relationship in office, because that is fundamentally who she is. And so in that sense, it is a low-risk bet for them to not endorse Katie Wilson because they will not - there's highly unlikely to be any sort of retaliation if she wins and starts working with them. So there's that, for sure. Whereas, on the other hand, perhaps they fear a little bit more that going against Harrell could work against them if he were to win. That's a piece of it, for sure. I will say, though, I think there is a lot of sort of progressive pushback to this MLK Labor endorsement. We're seeing Kshama Sawant come back out of the woodwork and be pretty vocal about this. Of course, some of Katie Wilson's biggest backers are frustrated by this.

I do think it is worth them reckoning with why Harrell is not an unpopular figure in labor. And, to some unions, a popular figure. And it's because at the end of the day, they feel like their members are getting pretty good deals out of the Mayor Harrell administration. Again, we talked about the housing and transportation levies - those are huge levies that are going to bring, particularly for the building and construction trades, that's going to bring a lot of work to those members. So, on a very real level, those members are likely to benefit financially from Mayor Harrell's proposals on housing and transportation. You can make the argument Katie Wilson would have passed exactly the same levies. That's fine. But in real world terms, they are benefiting from that. And again, the city unions - Protec 17 in particular, but a lot of the city unions - Harrell personally got involved with those negotiations at the last minute and gave them a very friendly deal, even as the city was going towards a pretty bad financial situation. They got 5% raises, up to 5% raises - some positions up to 30% raises - even when the city was facing this major budget deficit. So again - sure, yeah, I think there is certainly some political think here when they're considering who to endorse - who is going to retaliate, who's not going to retaliate, that sort of thing. I also think there is a legitimate case to be made that some of the members just feel like they're getting better paychecks because of what Bruce Harrell has done. And I think that is worth acknowledging as well.

[00:22:42] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And especially with that retaliation concern that - who knows, but may have played a role in this endorsement. I also think the composition of the Council is another thing that's different now than was initially coming in, in that you do have a Council where the current majority has signaled at least an openness to retreating on a lot of the progress that has been made, that we have some councilmembers who have talked about wanting to go back on raises to the minimum wage, to pause some of those, to have some what most consider pretty anti-labor actions across the board. And seeing that as much more of a possibility, much more immediately possible.

[00:23:25] David Kroman: Yeah, that's a great point - I should have made it before - which is the changes to particularly app-based delivery driver wage law and the tip credit for small businesses. Those were two things that came up last year that ended up going nowhere. There were a few reasons that ended up going nowhere, but a big one was the mayor's office was signaling that they didn't support them. And so that put the City Council in a position where they would have had to go over the mayor, or get a veto-proof majority for these changes that just did not exist on the City Council, particularly when Tanya Woo was asked to recuse herself from those votes. And so, more than just the financial situation, Harrell took some pretty concrete steps that were quite friendly to labor. And so, can you say that Bruce Harrell is the biggest labor champion that the city's ever seen? Certainly not. There are some issues - his opposition to the new tax on high-earning companies for social housing - that rubbed a lot of people in the labor world the wrong way. His office's rollout of a new payday system in the city has gone horribly wrong. He's mandated that city workers come back to the office - that has not been particularly popular. But again, in contrast to what the City Council is doing, there has not been enough reason for labor to spend time and energy opposing Bruce Harrell and backing somebody else.

What they really want to spend time and energy doing is opposing Sara Nelson, frankly. And they are doing that - they're supporting Dionne Foster largely. And so I think they just don't see an enemy in Bruce Harrell, though he's not perfect. I don't think they see them as a major impediment to doing what they want to do. And that combined with their calculation that he's probably going to win - again, that's their thinking, not necessarily mine. And the cherry on top being - if Katie Wilson wins, they'll still be able to work with her just fine. I just don't think that they have been given enough motivation to back somebody else. And I think it is worth hearing them out on that if you're on the progressive left - that at the end of the day, labor has done pretty well under Bruce Harrell, and I don't think that that should be so easily and quickly dismissed.

[00:25:28] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. I also don't think this is necessarily out of character with what we've seen with labor over the past 10, 15 years.

[00:25:36] David Kroman: No, exactly - yeah. They endorsed Jenny Durkan, MLK Labor endorsed Jenny Durkan. They endorsed against Kshama Sawant. So this is not - MLK Labor is not some far-left organization. Although it is interesting in that in 2020, they voted to kick out the police union, and now are backing the person who says they want to grow the number of police. So there's some whiplash politics in that labor world, but certainly it is not a bastion of far-left politics at all. But at the end of the day, it does consolidate support for Bruce Harrell in a way that tends to be pretty powerful in city politics, which is - he can now credibly boost the backing of both business and labor. And will that win him a lot of progressive votes? Maybe not. Will it blunt some of the groundswell from the left against him? Probably.

[00:26:23] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely.

This is me chiming in after the fact. This is after we've actually concluded our recording for today's show, but I decided to come back because while we were recording, there was news of a poll about the mayor's race that was very relevant to the discussion that we just had. And since we did such a deep dive, I decided it didn't make sense to wait until next week to discuss this. But this was just published in The Cascadia Advocate, a publication of the Northwest Progressive Institute, or NPI. Headline here says - Katie Wilson, 36%, Bruce Harrell, 33%: NPI's May 2025 Civic Heartbeat poll finds statistical tie in Seattle mayoral race. So that's the headline.

Let me go through this a little bit because that does not tell the whole story. So what this starts off discussing - it's a poll about the mayor's race. Starts off asking whether people approve or disapprove of Bruce Harrell's job performance - 37% approve, 45% disapprove, 18% aren't sure. So a net performance rating of negative 8%. Instead of polling all of the people in the primary, they said they thought that Katie Wilson and Bruce Harrell seemed to be the likely frontrunners and likely to advance - according to their estimation - to the general election. So they just decided to poll test the two of them head-to-head. So it asks - If the 2025 general election for Mayor of Seattle were being held today, and the candidates were the following, who would you vote for? 25% said Bruce Harrell, 18% said Katie Wilson, 56% said they weren't sure. So here you have in this poll, Bruce Harrell leading by seven percentage points, with 56% being unsure of who they would vote for. Huge undecided. This is not the oddest thing to see for an undecided percentage going into a local election. But it is notable that only 25% of the people said that they would vote for Bruce Harrell - that's unusual for an incumbent.

So where the headline of the poll comes from is the follow-up question asked of undecided voters only. Said - Here are two statements from these mayoral candidates about their priorities and vision for Seattle. Please read each carefully. Then, if you had to choose, who would you vote for? The first statement says, "We've delivered public safety solutions, kept parks and sidewalks open and accessible while moving people into shelter and housing with services, made historic investments in affordable housing, prioritized a transportation system focused on safety, and passed nation-leading climate legislation," Bruce Harrell's website says. "But there is more work to do - this is the time for proven leadership to stand up for our values and to keep Seattle moving forward as a city that is welcoming, affordable, and safe." The second statement says, "The incumbent mayor has been a fixture in city hall since 2008. More people are sleeping unsheltered on our streets than ever before. Working families are struggling to stay afloat. We can do so much better. And as we face unprecedented national threats, we must do better," Katie Wilson's website says. "When I step into the mayor's office, I'll be working for you. I love this city, and I know that we can solve our most pressing problems and accomplish great things together." Then asks - If you had to choose, who would you vote for? Those responses had Katie Wilson at 34%, Bruce Harrell at 15%, and Not sure 51%. So the combined answer is the aggregate of both of those - have Katie Wilson landing at 36%, Bruce Harrell landing at 36%, and those who still aren't sure at 30%. So this was a survey that was in the field from May 10th to May 14th - Saturday through Wednesday - of 522 likely November 2025 Seattle general election voters. Poll was conducted for the Northwest Progressive Institute by Change Research and has a modeled margin of error of 4.4%. So just wanted to throw that into our conversation. We were talking about how perceptions of the electability of one or both may have played a role in some of the endorsements in the mayoral race. And now we have one data point that says this may be a really competitive race.

Well, there's another recent entrant into this race that we haven't talked about yet. And I don't know that we have a great idea of where he stands on all of these issues, but Joe Mallahan, former Seattle mayoral candidate back in 2009, who lost a very, very close race to former Mayor Mike McGinn, is into this race. He does, going in, seemingly pull from Bruce Harrell's more corporate base, some would think. But I don't know that he's necessarily said - I'm Mr. Corporate - or that he's articulated that himself. So how is he positioned and do we have an idea on where he stands on issues important to labor?

[00:31:53] David Kroman: Yeah, we haven't heard a ton from him. In his announcement, he seemed to be focusing on some of the workplace issues that have been reported on, both in the Seattle Police Department and the mayor's office - thinking specifically of Monisha Harrell and some of what she has said about working in that office. So that was part of his announcement, which I thought was interesting. It was neither a progressive nor more conservative flank of Bruce Harrell, it was more about the way in which he was running the city. Joe Mallahan is interesting because we have not heard from him since he ran for mayor in 2009. My colleague Jim Brunner had pulled up some of his statements when he lost that race, talking about how this is not the end you will see of Joe Mallahan, I'll be around, I'll be involved. As far as I can tell, that hasn't been true at all. I haven't heard from him once since 2009. So I don't know what the Joe Mallahan constituency is. That said, I think the only kind of real challengers we've seen to Bruce Harrell - probably from the left in Katie Wilson and perhaps Ry Armstrong - I suppose it makes sense that you would see somebody who's a little more moderate also challenging him. But again, what the lane is there - it feels narrow to me. Look forward to hearing more from Joe Mallahan.

[00:33:02] Crystal Fincher: I actually do look forward to hearing more from Joe Mallahan. Curious to see where he's at and what his plans are.

Now, we did recently pass the filing deadline, where candidates have to officially declare their intent to run for office by early mid-May. So we know now who is definitely on races, who will definitely be appearing on ballots. Are there any races that you feel are particularly interesting or exciting?

[00:33:32] David Kroman: Yeah, well, I should say all of them - that is not entirely true across the board. I would say the race - Alexis Mercedes Rinck's seat is not going to be particularly interesting, so we can kind of set that one aside. But for my money, the most interesting one is Sara Nelson's seat. I think it's going to be tight. I think it's going to be competitive. I think Dionne Foster will have a lot of establishment support and is being represented by - I believe she's being represented by - Christian Sinderman's firm. So she has - this has the trappings of a very legitimate Seattle campaign. I think Sara Nelson is really the face of the current City Council. And I think people on both sides will tell you that this race is a bellwether in a lot of ways - if the population is happy with what the City Council more generally is doing, they will probably reward Sara Nelson with another term. If they are frustrated with any pieces of it, they will probably take it out on Sara Nelson. And so I just think we're going to learn the most about how the city is feeling based on the results of that particular race. And if Sara Nelson wins, it is really affirming to her style of leadership, which is not everybody's cup of tea by any stretch - but it is of a particular persuasion, and it is very committed to that persuasion. If she loses, it will really fundamentally reshape that City Council because she is the most prominent member at this point. And represents this wave of more moderate City Council people that came in - she is the figurehead of that. She's the President. If she goes down, the numbers are still in the favor of the moderates, but it would really undercut what I think a lot of them view as a mandate.

[00:35:10] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Now, there are some other races that I think are interesting - at the top of that list is the King County Executive race. After Dow Constantine resigned to go run Sound Transit, we now have County Executive Shannon Braddock through the end of this term. But what is now an open seat in this election, with current King County Councilmembers Claudia Balducci, Girmay Zahilay both running. John Wilson in the race, along with a few other candidates. That - I don't know that we can call it. Certainly, it looks like among the LDs, Girmay Zahilay is getting some of those Democratic Party endorsements, but that doesn't always tell the whole story. How do you see that shaping up?

[00:35:56] David Kroman: Yeah, it's interesting. I think it's certainly notable that this is the first time in 16 years that Dow Constantine has not been on the ballot. That opens things up quite a bit. My intuition for King County races is not probably as refined as it is for Seattle races, because King County includes a lot of - it's not just Seattle, of course. You can't just appeal to Seattle voters. You have to appeal to, in some cases, straight up kind of rural voters - there are fairly rural parts of King County. And so I think if this was a Seattle race, my sense would be that Girmay Zahilay holds the advantage because of what you said - some of the local Democratic groups and things like that seem to be backing him. He's got endorsements that would suggest he's in a strong position. But when you include other parts of King County, I don't know. I think Claudia Balducci - she was the mayor of Bellevue and is pretty well liked on the Eastside. And so I think that's certainly going to factor in. My gut tells me this is a race between Zahilay and Balducci, and that John Wilson will likely not make it through the primary. And then once we get to the general election, I don't know - I do think the Eastside's vote is going to be important here in determining who actually takes that seat.

[00:37:06] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely - that's going to be one to watch. Some other ones that are just on my radar that I think are really interesting, where potentially a lot is at stake. One, the Seattle School Board elections. I think three out of the four seats up will have competitive primaries that will be on the primary ballot. A couple of those seats have several candidates in there. And we just saw a lot of rancor and real consternation in a lot of what's on deck for the school board. Talk of school closures, a rescinding of a school closure plan, really big deficit that they're facing, a Seattle superintendent who is departing, there's going to be a new one on deck, a lot of programs are up in the air and there's a lot of uncertainty with ongoing budget concerns - there's a lot on the table for School Board. There's a few different directions that could go that are going to be real consequential for perhaps decades. So we'll see how that turns out.

Then King County Council District 5 seat - that was Councilmember Dave Upthegrove's seat. He was elected to be our state Superintendent of Public Lands, so now we have that open seat. With a number of candidates there - one, Steffanie Fain, wife of former legislator Joe Fain, Republican legislator Joe Fain there, who has gotten some early moderate endorsements, business endorsements there, has a lot of money. But some are questioning if she is too conservative for the district and potentially going to be weighed down by some of the baggage of her husband. We'll see there.

Then in the 33rd Legislative District competition between Edwin Obras and Kevin Schilling. Edwin had received the appointment following Karen Kaiser's retirement, Tina Orwall's movement into the Senate seat, which left a Representative seat open. He was appointed to that and is being challenged by Burien Mayor Kevin Schilling, who has made lots of news for how he and that council have decided to principally approach taking a really, really hard - some would say draconian, some would say unconstitutional - approach to homelessness and some of the outlaws and bans that they have there. So that's going to be one that is definitely going to impact the direction of legislating for that seat. So we'll see how that turns out.

Final thing I wanted to talk about was Tent City 4, which you covered this week - rushed to move to a new site. What happened here? This has been such a chronic problem in Seattle - that we've seen lots and lots of sweeps, or record number of sweeps, moving people from one place to another - and this seems to fall square within that category. What happened here?

[00:40:02] David Kroman: Yeah, I would say, actually, this is slightly different than the general sweeps because Tent City 4 is in the realm of sanctioned homeless encampments. So this is an organization that has been around for 20 years or something like that - these various different tent cities. And so their whole thing is - and this is intentional, to try and cut down on too much neighborhood opposition is - they move into a place and they don't stay there for more than a year. And so they've been in Lake City, at the Mennonite Church there, for the last year. That year was coming up. They thought they had a place that they were going to move - to the old Lake City Community Center, which had closed because of a fire. And so that was the plan - was they were going to move there. At the last minute, there was kind of intense opposition to this happening. And then that was channeled by Councilmember Cathy Moore, who on the City Council, but also on the King County Regional Homelessness Authority Board. She really brought forward a lot of these concerns she was hearing from neighbors. Basically, the argument she was making is that Lake City is being asked to host this encampment too much, and so that meant that this deal fell through at the last minute. They revived the deal - sort of - to avoid basically all these people scattering to the winds. And agreed that the tent city could stay at the Lake City Community Center for up to six months while they look for somewhere else. But I do think it gets at the larger challenges when you're talking about siting places for homeless people to live, which is - it is really difficult to navigate the neighborhood dynamics. And this City Council - and I would say in particular, Cathy Moore - is very sensitive to those things. She is very responsive to "neighborhood concerns" and that manifests itself in various ways. And Tent City 4 moving just a few blocks from where they were before really struck a nerve with her and apparently some of her constituents. And so that has made the situation more complicated for everybody. Right now, they have a place where they can be. After six months - or earlier than that - becomes a little less certain.

[00:42:00] Crystal Fincher: Is there a chance they may have to go earlier than that?

[00:42:04] David Kroman: The deal was between one to six months that they can stay there. If I had to guess, I would say that they probably are there for six months while they look for another place. I think the detente was that it not be longer than six months, which is a shorter stay than they usually have. If they find somewhere else before then, they would probably move again. But I think the general belief is that this Lake City Community Center is not their permanent home right now.

[00:42:30] Crystal Fincher: Got it. Well, we will continue to follow that.

And with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, May 23rd, 2025. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today was Seattle Times City Hall reporter, David Kroman - always insightful. You can find David on Bluesky at @KromanDavid. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. And you can find me there too - at @finchfrii, with two I's at the end. You can catch us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the podcast full versions on Friday and Tuesday delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, please leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full text transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at OfficialHacksAndWonks.com.

Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.