-I've really been a bringing- home-the-bacon councilmember.
-You know, it's about getting the nuts and bolts
of government done.
-Andrew Lewis is seeking a second term
on the Seattle City Council.
-Hello, hi.
-He's facing challenger Bob Kettle,
a retired Naval officer who's impatient for results.
-It's just gotten worse? -Yeah.
-Seattle's District 7 includes downtown,
Interbay, East Magnolia,
and Queen Anne,
neighborhoods with some unique problems.
Will voters grant Andrew Lewis four more years,
or favor political-newcomer Bob Kettle?
-There's no bigger public health crisis
that's facing the city of Seattle than fentanyl.
-The candidates face off.
-We cannot succeed in public safety
if we don't also succeed in public health.
-The battle to represent downtown
and the rest of District 7 on the Seattle City Council,
next on "City Inside/Out."
♪♪
Welcome to this edition of "City Inside/Out."
I'm your host, Brian Callanan.
The race for Seattle City Council District 7
pits incumbent Andrew Lewis
against retired Naval officer Bob Kettle.
Lewis won the primary in August,
but was the only incumbent of the three running
who earned less than 50% of the vote.
Kettle says D7 needs a new leader
with stronger policies on public safety,
but Lewis says he's delivered in his first term
on several top priorities,
including a new 911 alternative response program.
And that's just part of the debate
in the battle for District 7.
-Good morning, everybody.
-Incumbent Andrew Lewis...
-Thank you for your support.
-...and former Naval officer Bob Kettle
are facing off in the race
for Seattle City Council District 7,
from downtown to Interbay
and Queen Anne to Southeast Magnolia.
-We have a lot of work that we've started in the first term
that I want to see to completion.
-I really think that we need new leadership.
-Lewis earned 43% of the vote
to win the six-candidate August primary,
and is endorsed by "The Stranger."
He says responding to every emergency is his top priority.
-Whether that be a Seattle police officer,
whether that be a mental health clinician
through our new 911 alternative response pilot
that's launching in October,
we need to make sure that that is first and foremost
the work in front of the city.
-Kettle won 32% of the primary vote
and is endorsed by "The Seattle Times."
His top issue -- hiring more police to take on crime.
-Because that really makes the difference
in terms of changing the environment,
undoing that permissive environment
that's been created by the current city council.
-Kettle has also criticized Lewis for his vote
that led to a three-month delay in the passage of a new city law
on drug possession and public drug use.
-We lost 105 days, 105 days
where more people were dying on the streets from fentanyl
because we didn't take action on June 6th.
-Lewis says his vote led to a better ordinance
with broader political support
that will have a bigger impact on Seattle's drug crisis.
-The time that we have spent over the summer
putting those resources in place was time well-spent.
-Lewis touts his work on new funding
for the Queen Anne Community Center,
the reopening of the Cinerama,
and the launch of a 911 alternative response program.
-I have a proven track record
of being able to get investments into District 7.
-Kettle points to his experience as an officer in the Navy
and a community council leader with a better understanding
of the many different people of D7.
-And bringing that neighborhood perspective
to City Hall, to the City Council,
will really change that direction for us.
-For D7 voters, it's either an incumbent
who says he's been an effective progressive leader
or a political newcomer who says the council has failed the test
of the last four years.
-I'm well-positioned to be
in a significant position of leadership
for the people of District 7 in the next term.
-And unfortunately,
the character of the current city council
and -- dare I say it -- the incumbent has been lacking.
-And here they are,
the two candidates running for District 7
on Seattle City Council.
City councilmember Andrew Lewis,
good to have you here.
And Bob Kettle, his challenger.
We had a coin flip before the show.
And Bob, you're going to be speaking first.
Tell us why you're running and please keep it to a minute.
-Well, by way of introduction, yes, Bob Kettle.
I'm a retired Naval officer with a career in Naval intelligence.
And over the past decade,
I've been a grad student at UW Evans School,
a civic volunteer, community leader,
and most importantly, became a dad.
I like to point out to folks, too,
that I'm not born and raised here,
but I did choose Seattle twice while in the Navy
and choosing it for a third time now
because I believe in Seattle.
And the question, why am I running?
I'm running because of my concerns
over the failures of the current city council
to address the issues that we're facing as a city.
You know, public safety, public health, and homelessness.
By contrast, I'm looking to bring leadership
with a North Star,
leadership with accountability and transparency,
and really, a big focus on good governance.
We need to have that listening to all stakeholders.
You know, positive engagement
and really focusing on the nuts and bolts
of local government.
And so looking to bring new leadership,
not followership,
and focusing on compassion and also wisdom.
-Okay. -Thank you.
-Thank you very much for that.
Councilmember Lewis, an opening statement, if you could,
and please keep it to a minute.
-Brian, thank you. It's really good to be here.
I'm Andrew Lewis, Seattle City councilmember
for District 7,
running for reelection.
Really excited by a lot of the things
we've been able to move forward over the past four years,
and really looking forward now
with the new experience of being a recent father
and having a ten-month-old daughter with my wife, Laura,
really building a city
that is for the future of the people coming up,
like making sure that people like my daughter
will be able to aspire to home ownership,
making sure that she lives in a community
that is clean, safe and open,
and that we have public amenities
that speak to what we all value as a Seattleites.
I'm really proud in my first term
of being able to build coalitions
to get big things done.
Biggest renovation since 1950
of the Queen Anne Community Center.
Saving the Cinerama
and getting it into nonprofit ownership
to reopen, hopefully, this fall.
Working with my colleagues
to pass a legacy-building new investment plan
in the metropolitan park district,
and working with Mayor Harrell
to finally create a 911 alternative response
through the care department.
And I want to build on that work in the next four years,
and that's why I'm running for reelection.
-Thank you very much for that.
Bob, I'm going to go to you next
and break apart some of these public safety issues.
You raised some concerns with me when we talked a few weeks ago
about your opponent's recent vote
on Seattle's new drug possession and public drug use ordinance.
I want you to speak to that issue,
and if you could,
what differentiates you from councilmember Lewis
when it comes to public safety?
-Well, it's a focus on the fundamentals, you know,
and it starts before that.
It starts with the defund piece,
you know, the defund vote that was taking, you know --
taking the selfie at the CHOP --
that really created what I call a permissive environment,
and the permissive environment is this piece
that threads along
and what allows the criminal set to take its actions
and cause the public safety challenges
that we're facing today.
And you asked about the public drug use and possession law,
you know, the flip-flop in June on that that bill --
which I would have been a co-sponsor,
not just voted for --
really kind of furthered that idea
that we don't have municipal city code
lined up with state law, and it gives that up,
that furthering of that environment
for the criminal set,
but also for the random acts of violence piece,
you know, that kind of creates this environment
where that can be okay because they feel
that they're not going to be held to account
because we've lost so many officers,
so many police officers over the last few years.
-Mm-hmm. Thank you for that.
I want to make sure, Councilmember Lewis,
you respond to something that Bob has said here.
-Yeah, well, you know,
there's no bigger public health crisis
that's facing the city of Seattle than fentanyl.
And we need to have a serious and mature response
to that crisis,
which is why we don't just need a statute --
we need a plan.
Working closely with Mayor Harrell,
with public health experts,
with people in local law enforcement,
we built a comprehensive plan not just to pass a statute,
but to actually respond with a sense of urgency
to people who are publicly using drugs,
people who are in the throes of addiction
and who need help and services.
Relative to the plan that the council considered in June,
which was very strongly opposed by public health experts,
including a number of physicians
at the University of Washington School of Medicine.
We worked together to pair the adaption
of a public use misdemeanor statute with interventions
like a post-overdose recovery center,
with interventions like having a promulgated guidance
to officers around how to triage people
who are in need of getting diverted treatment,
versus people that we might have to hold accountable
in the criminal legal system,
making sure that we are working on building a broader coalition
that recognizes the legitimacy of that approach,
like the Public Defender Association,
and bringing some of those voices to the table
to craft the policy.
Led to a six-vote supermajority of passage,
support of Mayor Harrell, support of Chief Diaz.
We have a plan that we're going to move forward on
with fentanyl in Seattle.
-Got it. Bob, you raised a hand there.
What do you want to bring up?
-I just wanted to note
that the June 6th bill would have been in state law,
and when the mayor came out with his bill,
the first thing he said was he acknowledged that state law
already had provisions for police officers
to refer for assessment and services.
So the things that we're talking about
were already in that first bill.
And the bill, the mayor's bill,
also noted that the public drug use --
fentanyl, for example -- is a clear public threat
to public safety and public health.
And that's an important piece.
And so, yes, then the council came in the amendments,
and then when we start talking about articulable facts,
that creates some confusion,
and what's really needed is clarity,
and that's my concern.
-A quick rejoinder there, if you could.
-Yeah, I mean, there's plenty of clarity.
The Chief of Police supports this bill.
The Seattle Police Officers Guild even supported this bill.
It was also supported across the aisle
by folks like Councilmember Herbold,
the public safety chair,
and folks like Lisa Daugaard of the Public Defender Association.
It's a workable standard.
Our police officers are professionals,
and they can take the guidance that's being promulgated
by the mayor and the police chief.
I know as a former prosecutor that these rules are --
these rules are clear and provide guidance
that officers will be familiar with
through their training experience,
and working together, we can move forward on this,
and we have a plan
and we're going to get the work done.
-Thank you. Bob, I see your hand.
Quickly, if you could.
-One quick thing is that I'm thankful
that Councilmember Alex Pederson put his amendment in, too,
in terms of having these relook opportunities
to make sure that it's doing what it needs to do.
-Fair. We'll see what happens with this ordinance
as it moves forward.
But Councilmember Lewis,
I want to make sure that I talk with you about 911 alternatives.
Civilian mental health workers responding to person down calls,
for example.
Seattle is starting a pilot program
with this approach this fall.
You've highlighted this in your campaign.
Your opponent has not.
Tell us about 911 alternatives and why they're important.
-Thank you, Brian.
So nationally coming out of Covid,
we've seen significant hiring difficulties
at police departments all across the country.
You know, our department is down,
but departments are down from Fort Worth, Texas,
to Dallas to Saint Louis to San Diego.
Thurston County was in the news a couple of weeks ago for this.
What a lot of jurisdictions are doing
is not only working to focus on hiring
and retention of officers, which we've been doing.
You know, we're up to 200 applications a month,
biggest number in two years for police officers,
but also diversifying that first response,
making sure that for certain calls
that don't require a gun and a badge,
we are sending a mental health clinician
or we are sending an EMT,
or we are sending some other professional
who is trained in public health and de-escalation.
A similar program in Denver, Colorado,
resulted in a 34% decrease of criminal activity
and disorder in the focus area for their pilot.
We're running a similar program here,
where we're going to send behavioral
mental health clinicians to respond to calls for service
for people who are in some kind of behavioral distress,
be it substance abuse or behavioral mental health.
This is going to free up police officers
to respond to things only they can respond to.
It's also going to provide
a more appropriate type of responder
for those kinds of calls for service.
It hits the ground this month. -Yeah, in October.
-In October.
Really looking forward to getting that done,
and in my next term,
I want to scale the service to the entire city.
-Bob, I want to have you talk
about what the councilmember is saying
about 911 alternatives and your thoughts about this.
-I definitely support it.
You know, two things I will say --
we cannot succeed in public safety
if we don't also succeed in public health,
and public health goes to this --
we need to build the capacity.
We need to do it as a city.
We need to partner with the county and the state
because the state is responsible for mental health
and the county's public health,
so we can't do it alone.
But I'm also thinking that I need to note that,
you know, in my eight years
of the Queen Anne Community Council,
where I stood up and chaired the public safety,
you know, I've heard over the last few years,
four years, so many times, like the CAHOOTS program,
but where are we now?
So we've had all this talk, but again, where are we now?
What does the care department have
in terms of alternate responses?
Very little, despite all the talk over the last four years.
And that's a challenge, and that's really cost our city,
this inability to get things done.
And that goes largely to, you know,
the overall council not being able to work together.
So we have an opportunity with this election
to create a new council that will work together
to actually get these programs online quicker,
so then the people on the streets and others are helped.
-Okay, I want to, if I could,
move on to another topic here.
-Actually, Brian,
I want to respond just really briefly to that.
I mean, I think that my opponent
has a fundamental misunderstanding
of what the hindrance has been
in setting up the alternative response.
The council has actually been pretty unanimous
over the course of the last four years
in supporting a response of this kind.
The challenge was there was not significant enthusiasm
from the Durkan administration for this.
A partner came along and Mayor Harrell,
Mayor Harrell has been very dedicated to this work,
worked closely with the council majority
to get this stood up.
It's a complicated endeavor.
We're getting it done, but it has nothing to do
with dynamics on the council.
It had to do with dynamics
between the council and the mayor.
We have a new mayor who's a good partner.
We're getting that work done.
-Quick rejoinder.
-I would say it's about leadership
that's been missing on the council,
and I would say with the incumbent for District 7,
it's the kind of same thing you hear in "The Seattle Times,"
like, "Oh, we're going to have tiny homes."
And then we don't.
"We're going to have alternative responses," then we don't.
So I understand there's complications and complexities,
but still, it's about leadership and getting it done.
-Fair. I want to make sure that I move on to another piece,
and maybe tiny homes will work its way into this.
Let's talk about homelessness.
The city data shows District 7 has more unauthorized campsites
and RVs than just about any other district in the city.
How would you approach this problem differently
than what the council is doing now, Bob?
-We need to incorporate the lessons learned.
I remember again back on the Queen Anne Community Council
when Mayor Murray came to --
his team came to the Queen Anne Council
and gave a briefing on it.
And I was astounded because the planning was poor.
I was like, "This is not going to work."
The span of control, there was issues with it from there.
And we've kind of seen the same thing
with the King County side with the KCRA.
And so we have to have this ability to learn
from what's happened in the past number of years
and then build it forward.
And one of the things I like --
and I use this as an example -- is the LIHI project
in regarding bringing in RVs and tiny homes together.
-Low Income Housing Institute. Keep going.
-Yes, and it's about that --
it's about coming in and having structure.
It has a perimeter fencing, it has a gate guard.
It has on-site counseling,
rules regarding the common areas.
And what it does is it allows this chance
for those folks in RVs to then move forward
and then go into a tiny home,
and this progression is going to make them more successful
as they look to integrate with society
and to that next housing option,
so these are the kind of things that we need to do,
is build on the lessons learned of the failures
of the last number of years,
essentially since '15.
-Councilmember Lewis, your response
to what Bob's saying about homelessness
and your approach here?
-I mean, I'm just really glad
that Bob supports the RV-safe tiny house village
that I helped fund
and get site security for,
for Low Income Housing Institute.
I mean, what I would say to that is, you know,
I actually don't know, Brian,
if those statistics are up to date
on encampments in District 7,
being the district that has the most,
because we've been doing a lot of work over the past year
with the Unified Care Team,
a new team that the City Council and Mayor Harrell have built
to be a one-stop, no-excuses shop
to go and do outreach and remediate encampment locations.
43% reduction in encampments citywide,
35% reduction in RV encampments.
And it's visible. I mean, you can see it,
but you can also see that we still have
the majority of those RV encampments.
We still have the majority of those homeless encampments.
But it starts by centering,
gathering that data to map where all the encampments are,
and then having a team that has all the resources
integrated in one place,
instead of having lots of redundant teams.
It's made it more efficient.
It's made it easier for me as a district councilmember
to work with our assigned Unified Care Team liaison
to identify priority areas.
And we've worked with Mayor Harrell
to expand things like tiny house villages
so that we can make meaningful offers of shelter
to folks in those encampments,
clear the encampment, remediate the location.
That is the proven way
that we make progress on the encampments,
and that is what I'm going to continue to advocate for
and work on as a city councilmember.
-Briefly, Bob.
-Briefly, I'd just like to add, too,
because it's important to have a good relationship
with the neighborhoods,
and I would look to have good neighbor agreements
because they can come in and support
and also highlight things like, you know,
with the one we were just talking about --
there's a preschool right around the corner,
so we need to work with them so they have contingency plans.
There's bus stops.
We need to be mindful of those things.
So I definitely support the concept,
and it's just each location,
you have to take into account what's happening around it,
and that's where having a good neighbor agreement,
where the local community council,
whatever the organization may be, is a step forward.
-Thank you for that.
I want to move on, if I could,
and ask you, Councilmember Lewis,
a question about housing.
So the council recently approved an upzone on 3rd Avenue.
The idea is to encourage more development in this neighborhood
and add a lot more residential units.
I want to talk about this and maybe the overall plan
to revitalize downtown.
If you could sneak in a little bit
about the need for more housing, too,
that'd be great.
-Yeah, Brian, thank you so much.
So downtown is going to have to evolve.
We're not going to be restoring the pre-COVID status quo
for downtown.
That is not something that's in the cards.
Downtowns internationally have shown us that that is the case.
What is before us is looking at how downtowns --
as a center of culture, of innovation,
and of commerce in a metropolitan region --
what they are going to look like in a world
where return to work is not quite what it was pre-COVID,
so return to office was not quite what it was.
That means you need to figure out a way
to replace a lot of folks who are daily commuters
to the downtown core.
We had nearly 400,000 daily people
from other parts of the state
that were coming into downtown pre-COVID,
and they were patronizing businesses
and retail and restaurants.
We're not going to have that again downtown.
No downtown is going to have that again from commuters,
but we could from residents.
And that's what comes to this --
where it comes to the subzone is on the core of 3rd Avenue.
We made a planning decision a long time ago
that that was only going to be,
for the most part, retail and restaurants.
What we are doing as a city is making a conscious choice,
saying we're going to have more housing density
in the center of our downtown
so that we have more residents who are providing foot traffic.
You know, people on the street in criminology
are the informal guardians of our public spaces.
The more people that we have in the downtown core,
the safer downtown is going to be,
the more activated it's going to be,
the more demand for reopening our storefronts.
This is how we're going to bring downtown back.
By conferring that new value and that new potential
on those parcels on 3rd Avenue,
we can enter into development agreements
to change the streetscape on 3rd Avenue.
3rd Avenue is going to physically change.
It's also going to demographically change
by having a lot more residents who live there.
-Thank you.
Bob, I want to talk to you about some ideas
about downtown revitalization.
Councilmember Lewis mentioned
the numbers of workers not coming back to the job en masse
as they did before the pandemic.
Talk to us about revitalizing downtown.
If you could touch on some housing, too, that'd be great.
-Yes, and obviously, with the pandemic,
the pendulum swung so far over.
It's coming back,
and I'd argue it's probably come back a little bit more,
and so it's still settling out.
But clearly we have to have more residents downtown.
We're going to have transitions from office buildings
to residential buildings.
And I support that,
and really, downtown also needs to have a voice.
As you know, I mentioned the Queen Anne Community Council --
these neighborhoods have voices, but so does downtown.
They need a voice,
and along with the rest of District 7.
Interesting, too, on this as I've been downtown
is that we need to be smart as a city.
Again, good governance is about taking care of the nuts
and bolts of local government.
So as we move forward,
we have to think, for example, logistics.
One of the things I've been hearing on the street
is the inability for the businesses, the restaurants,
the retail, whatever it is, in order to do logistics,
have their trucks be able to come in and out properly.
And so we need to be mindful as we build these new buildings
to have -- like in the Newmark building where Target is --
you know, proper loading docks.
Two words -- loading docks,
very important for logistics because we need to think it now
because what we can't have is in a quick rush,
build up buildings, and the next thing you know,
you know, ten, 20 years from now, we're, like, lamenting
all the logistic challenges that we have.
We need to think about these things ahead of time.
-Thank you.
I'd like to move on, if I could,
to how the city pays for all of its different programs
when it comes to redevelopment, et cetera.
There's a debate right now underway
within the City Council about budgeting,
and I want to make sure I bring this up.
Due to declining revenues,
the city faces about a $250 million deficit in 2025,
almost $500 million in 2026.
Is the answer increasing Seattle's JumpStart payroll tax
on bigger companies like Amazon?
Bob, I want to throw it out there.
What do you think?
-First, I kind of reject the premise.
The city has the money.
I spoke -- I got endorsed by Councilmember Alex Pedersen,
and part of the piece with that was fiscal responsibility.
And I spoke with him and he highlighted
that the issue is not a deficit so much
as the structure of the budget and where the money is
and the restrictions on those monies
and how that plays out in terms of each year as it goes forward.
So the question really is, do we have a deficit problem --
which I would say no -- but more of a budget problem.
Two -- for two reasons.
One is A, are the programs that we're paying now
really accomplishing their mission?
And should we be spending money on those programs?
Two is, is the structure of the budget, the silos that --
there's these walls that exist in the budget process.
A, do they need to be there?
And if they don't, then, hey,
then we can transfer this money to the general budget,
and then all of a sudden, there's no deficit.
-Okay.
Your thoughts about this, Councilmember Lewis?
-Yeah, there's definitely a big challenge
we need to solve for the next biennium
in making sure that the city can pay its bills,
keep the lights on, keep our workers paid.
What we really need to be looking at first and foremost
before there's any conversation of new taxes
is what are we doing to restructure
and reform the way city government fundamentally works?
There are lots of departments that have overlapping mission
and respond to similar requests for proposals or grantmaking.
Like a lot of departments, you know,
they don't necessarily do direct services,
but they do grantmaking.
But all those departments have their own directors,
their own human resources, their own support sector.
Looking at ways that we can consolidate departments,
I think is a really important part
of how we can do a restructure.
We also need to look at how we can realize attritional savings
through the closing and consolidations
of certain pockets
within these departments of work that these departments do.
Strategies like this are how the City Council saved $60 million
in the last biennium.
We can build on that work. We can do more of that.
We also do need to look at making
some of the support from the JumpStart tax,
in particular, for the general fund.
Those have been temporary transfers
in the last couple of budgets.
We do need to make a portion of that permanent
to support this work,
but only after exhausting all of these measures
should we have a discussion about any kind of new revenue.
-Bob, briefly.
Just building on that, you know, outdoor billing.
I'm talking to a developer, a non-profit developer,
and she's talking about a project that's been stalled.
It's over 200 units.
And she's like, "The stalling has created" --
changing this from affordable housing
to a market essentially.
And what she's talking about was the working of SDCI
and City Light and so forth together.
So it's almost like we need a JustCAREs project
to help these projects move along.
If we brought JustCAREs to this area of government,
we can actually make affordable housing affordable
as opposed to having delays, which then make it unaffordable.
-Thank you. We need to start getting towards the end here,
but I did want to see --
is there an issue that you could cover in 30 seconds, I hope,
that might be one that's not in the headlines
we've talked about here?
Bob, might I start with you?
-I'm always hearing, again,
back on canvasing and door-knocking
is public safety and homelessness first.
But I do hear about transportation, for example.
There's a lot of transportation issues.
District 7, we have six bridges just in Interbay
that we have to be mindful of,
never mind Ballard and Aurora Bridge.
But I like to say as well that it's important
that part of the campaign
is this idea of building community,
and tenants of this include, like, the libraries.
We need to support the libraries
because they're community centers, too.
And the arts, as we talked about at the Inspire Washington event.
-Yeah. Very important.
Thank you for that. Briefly, if you could.
-Yeah, I think one thing that's not really talked a lot about
of the accomplishments of the current council
and working with Mayor Harrell
is the work that we did generally
on the metropolitan park district.
The investments that are in the six-year cycle
are going to be significant
and make a really big difference in the community,
and I think it partly hasn't gotten a lot of coverage
because nothing went by the wayside
in putting that together.
You know, we navigated it to an eight-one vote,
broad support from business and from the community,
but it's going to open up all of the bathrooms
in our parks to be year-round.
We're going to weatherize a lot of those bathrooms.
We're going to increase our park rangers from two to 28
to make sure that rules are enforced in our parks,
and it's going to make a big difference
to make sure our parks are clean, safe and open,
and it's something that we can all be proud of as Seattleites.
-Thank you. We need to wrap up.
I want to talk about a few things here with you,
Bob, as we do.
Your campaign has raised $179,000 as of early October.
I want you to talk about who's supporting you --
maybe the top three endorsers, if you could --
and just a last message you want voters to know about.
-We're capped out, so we're at the cap, right?
-Got it.
-So that's the first -- number one,
and in terms of endorsements,
obviously, "Seattle Times" -- huge.
Also on the labor side, Local 27, the firefighters,
and we just had IBEW 77 electrical workers endorse us.
And then going with that is the triple play of endorsements
coming from Councilmember Sara Nelson first,
then Council President Deborah Juarez,
and then Councilmember Alex Pedersen.
Those three really make a statement.
-Okay. Thank you very much for that.
And just to finish up here, you get the last word.
If you could talk about your endorsements as well.
Your campaign has raised just over $164,000.
Talk to us about that and who's supporting you,
your top three.
-Brian, thank you.
It's been really good to be here today.
I'm really, really honored to have the endorsement
of my friend, Attorney General Bob Ferguson,
who's been a great public safety leader
and a great leader here in Washington.
Really, really proud to be endorsed
by the Martin Luther King Labor Council
as someone with a long history of being in labor unions
and fighting for working people.
And it's really great to be endorsed
by my home legislative district
and in the 36th district Democrats,
and be the only candidate endorsed
by Democratic Party organizations in this race.
And I'm going to continue to bring that coalition together
with unlikely allies, like not an endorsement,
but being rated as strongly aligned
by the Downtown Seattle Association.
That's the kind of coalition you bring together
to get big things done,
and I'm going to continue to get big things done
for the people of District 7.
-Thank you both for joining me here,
and we will be right back.
What are people saying online about the two candidates
for Seattle City Council District 7?
One person writes --
Another person comments --
We'd like to know what you think.
Send us an email at contact@seattlechannel.org,
or find us on social media.
Coming up next week,
the race to replace Alex Pederson
in Seattle City Council District 4.
Two attorneys -- tech consultant Ron Davis
and city hall veteran Maritza Rivera
face off on the next "City Inside/Out."
I hope you join us.
♪♪