♪♪
-Hello, I'm your host, Brian Callanan.
With the governor's race and three statewide initiatives,
plus Seattle's choices on a billion-dollar levy,
citywide councilmember, and a new police chief,
it's a busy summer ahead.
-I'm running for governor. -For the state's top job,
Democrat Bob Ferguson could face Republican Dave Reichert,
a candidate whose own party did not endorse him.
And that's just one of many complex storylines
on your ballot this fall.
-This thing has destroyed the private market.
-Let's Go Washington is pushing a slate
of statewide initiatives
that could repeal the Climate Commitment Act,
end the capital gains tax,
and let people opt out of the state's long-term care plan.
-It will bankrupt the program. -Thank you.
-And Seattle has some big decisions ahead,
with Police Chief Adrian Diaz no longer in charge.
Plus, there's a race for citywide council position 8,
and a $1.5 billion transportation levy,
the largest in city history.
-Officers responded to a shooting.
-Seattle schools are under scrutiny too,
after the shooting death of a 17-year-old student,
and a plan to close about 20 elementary schools.
-We don't have the resources to continue on the same path
we're going down right now. -What issues are top of mind
for some of Seattle's top journalists?
-There's been a lot of, I think dissent within the ranks.
-I think Tanya Wu is in that moderate space.
-Our panel weighs in.
-The most recent iterations of the legislature
have really been kind of playing chicken
with the initiative process.
-A Reporter Roundtable on the summer's biggest stories,
next on "City Inside Out."
♪♪
Welcome once again to "City Inside Out."
I'm Brian Callanan, and I have with me some journalists
to talk about a number of different headlines
going on this summer,
including Mike Carter, Staff Reporter for The Seattle Times.
Mike, great to have you here.
-Thank you. Nice to be here. -Great to have you.
Also we have with us Ruth Bayang.
She is the editor of The Northwest Asian Weekly.
Ruth, good to see you again.
-Thank you. Pleasure to be here.
-We also have with us Paul Queary,
editor and publisher of The Washington State Observer.
Paul, good to see you too.
-Nice to be with you.
-All right, here we go.
Ruth, maybe I can start with you.
I wanted to talk about some of the big news
at your publication.
Northwest Asian Weekly has new ownership.
Founder Assunta Ng has handed over control
after 41 years of leadership.
And two things strike me about this.
One, we have a local paper surviving and thriving.
Unfortunately, we're not seeing that too commonly these days.
And two, it's a local ownership group taking over.
I just want to talk about this.
Are we going to see a lot of changes
in the paper going forward?
Or what does the future hold for Northwest Asian Weekly?
-I think definitely The Northwest Asian Weekly
is going to continue to amplify the local voices
that have been underrepresented in the past,
and just really staying the course of our mission.
I don't see a lot of changes coming.
Perhaps in the next 6 to 12 months
we might see more of a shift towards digital platforms,
but for now it is the status quo
and we will keep delivering the news.
-All right keep on keeping on.
Thank you very much for that, Ruth.
Mike, maybe I can talk to you about another big change
I wanted to ask you about,
and that is Seattle looking for a new police chief.
So Bruce Harrell removed Adrian Diaz from his post,
Diaz now working on special assignments for the SPD.
Diaz has been surrounded by allegations
that he was unwelcoming and in some cases
discriminatory towards women and people of color.
This, as the SPD continues to struggle hiring officers.
So this investigation into what Diaz did
is nowhere near complete.
But was this a decision
that Mayor Harrell had to make in this moment?
How do you look at this?
-I think he had to. I think that the appearance --
the SPDs have been, appeared to be stagnant.
They've been struggling.
There have been controversies
that have been huge distractions for Diaz.
And he's had a hard time getting his feet underneath him.
There's been a lot of I think dissent within the ranks.
Certainly these allegations involving
an assistant chief and threats and tort claims and lawsuits...
-Yeah. Right. -...have become a distraction.
And, you know, the city needs a police chief and it's been --
it's clear that with the consent decree
that Judge Robart isn't going to remove those conditions
until they have a permanent steady chief,
and that hasn't happened yet. -Yeah.
Well, he's not good enough to be chief,
why keep him at the SPD?
Have you asked yourself that question?
-I have.
I don't think -- well, you know,
the thing about chiefs is they serve at the mayor's discretion.
And all of the chiefs at the police department
actually hold the rank of captain.
-Right, okay.
-And I assume he could be fired without cause as chief,
but I don't think that there's any other reason
to terminate him, pending the outcome of these investigations.
-Okay.
-And, you know, give him the benefit of the doubt.
They just need leadership and that's something
that they've been lacking at this point.
-Thank you and Paul,
maybe I can jump to you
because we have an interim chief in Sue Rahr,
the former King County Sheriff and former head
of the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission,
our state's police academy.
She's not a candidate for the permanent SPD chief job.
But Seattle Police,
like so many other police departments around the country,
are having a lot of challenges bringing in new officers.
Is Sue Rahr going to be able to right the ship for the SPD
when it comes to police hiring?
What do you think?
-You know, I think that's a really thorny question.
I mean, there's -- the council shifted a little bit,
but there's just generally been kind of a political hostility
in the city toward the police.
And you've seen a lot of officers
moving to other jurisdictions and I think that it's, you know,
it's a tough hire, you know, to get people to come in.
And the department has always struggled to hire people
who wanted to, like, actually live in the city.
Most of the SPD officers live outside the city.
-That's a good point. -So, I think --
-Less of a tough hire with a 23% raise this year.
-Yeah, they're the highest paid officers in the state now.
-And from surrounding states as well.
And there's, you know, that's a pretty big carrot.
There are a lot of people
who still want to be police officers.
And, you know,
I think they just have to find the combination
to bring them here.
They're not going to do it
if the department appears to be in crisis
and turmoil all the time.
-Yeah, Paul,
I was just seeing Sue Rahr
as kind of that calming interim chief, I guess,
that the Seattle Police need.
I don't know how you --
I know you've talked with her in the past.
I was just trying to think about what role
she's going to serve there.
-You know, I think that it's a tough thing
to come into for exactly what Mike's talking about.
-Yeah.
-I mean, the department's been in turmoil
for really a long time and, you know,
not showing a lot of sign of emerging from it any time soon.
-Yeah.
-You know, if I'm an officer looking for work,
I might look someplace else with a more stable climate.
-Fair.
Ruth, I wanted to make sure I asked you this question,
because a lot of the rumblings
I'm hearing around City Hall
are saying the SPD should look outside of its own ranks,
get someone outside the city of Seattle to be the next chief.
Do you think that's the kind of person needed
at this point for the SPD?
Some thoughts on that.
-It might be.
I recall that when we hired Gil Kerlikowske,
we hired him from outside the city.
-Yeah, yeah.
Kathleen O'Toole, another example.
-Exactly, yeah, So it would be a good thing
to have someone with a fresh perspective come in.
-Yeah, it's interesting. Mike, what do you think?
Inside, outside?
-Well, I think that we've seen kind of a pattern
with internal chiefs, starting with Jim Pugel
and then Carmen was... -Carmen Best.
-...for a while,
and then Adrian Diaz was the interim for quite a while.
You're not going to change the dynamic of the department,
I don't think, if you've got the same people running it,
just rotating them through and through.
Now, you know, there's awfully talented people
in that department, and --
but there's some awfully talented people outside, too.
I mean Kathleen O'Toole came in at the worst, you know,
when the department was at its nadir
and made tremendous changes.
-And she's helping with the hiring process?
-She's helping with this hiring process.
-Yeah, interested to see where that goes.
Ruth, let me jump back to you for another policing question,
if I could.
So Mayor Harrell is rolling out
a new crime prevention technology program,
pilot program here.
It's not going to include this controversial
shot spotter surveillance technology
that the Mayor's been talking about for many years,
but the plan does include closed-circuit TV,
some new software that helps with information sharing,
and some more automated license plate readers.
Now, cameras are set to go up, as I understand it,
in three areas, Aurora Avenue North,
the 3rd Avenue Corridor downtown, and Chinatown ID.
I just wanted to ask, do you support this move by the mayor
and what impact is this tech going to have potentially
in the CID neighborhood?
-Well, for the CID,
I know that in the past we have covered stories
and there has been an appetite for closed-circuit TV,
especially from business owners.
It's commonplace to hear from business owners,
Oh, my window was smashed again.
This is a daily occurrence.
So I think to have that CCTV,
there is support for it in Chinatown,
but there are also dissenters, as with anything.
So -- -Privacy concerns?
-Yes, yes, privacy concerns mostly.
So it'll be interesting to see how it all shakes out.
-Yeah, I didn't know, have you been tracking this, Mike,
with these cameras, etc.? -I'm aware of it.
I'm concerned that -- people are concerned
that the government will be -- I mean, it just seems
like more government surveillance potentially.
You know, Seattle has a surveillance ordinance
that limits this sort of behavior by the government,
and that's going to be I think sort of
a sticky wicket for the city.
The other thing is, you know, security cameras,
most businesses have them now. -Right.
-And having government-sponsored security cameras I think
raises a lot of issues that, when I hear about it,
those are the issues I hear about.
-Yeah. -The privacy issues.
-Right.
-The concerns that, you know, people are watching.
-Yeah, city council is wrestling with that right now.
But maybe, Mike, I can stick with you
to talk about this larger issue here,
because it's clear that the city is working on some new avenues
to try to fight crime.
They're talking about cameras,
they're talking about license plate readers, etc.
But still we've had some pretty high visibility cases
in the last couple of weeks.
Three shootings over two days
just this past weekend at the start of June,
then the shooting death of a student
on the Garfield High School campus not long before that.
I guess I'm trying to figure out what you think
of what the Mayor is trying to do
when it's getting to this whole idea
of preventing shootings like these, preventing crimes.
-Well, you know,
the police department has been struggling with this
and the Mayor's office has been struggling with this
for years and decades.
It's gotten worse and worse.
And it's all about guns and gun violence.
And you know, otherwise, for the most part crime is kind of down.
But, you know, the availability of weapons
and the inability to stop the transfer of weapons
into the hands of young people.
-Right.
-You know,
we're just unfortunately going to keep seeing more of it.
-Yeah.
Paul, I know that you covered this at The Observer.
The state legislature really was trying
to put some more gun control bills through
to the Governor's desk this year.
I think they were successful in some ways,
but then we keep hearing about cases like this, yeah.
-There's actually been kind of a lot of movement on gun control
at the state level in the last two or three years.
I mean, the current Democratic majority
is very pro-gun control,
and some of the rural Democrats
who were sort of obstacles to that
have gone away in recent years, so you see that.
But it doesn't really change the fact
that most of that stuff is focused on the purchase
of new guns and, you know, limiting things
like high-capacity magazines and things like that.
It doesn't really stop the fact
that our society is in general kind of awash in firearms.
-350 million guns.
-More than one per person in the US.
-Getting them all, you know, back and out of circulation,
you know, would be an enormous endeavor.
-Yeah.
-And, you know, it's just kind of way out in left field
in terms of gun control policy,
in terms of, like, you know, sort of eliminating that.
-The situation at Garfield
was such a difficult one for the city.
But Paul,
if I could, I wanted to transition from school safety
and the shootings there to school closures if I could.
Because Seattle is in the middle of a process
right now to shut down possibly 20 schools,
20 elementary schools, as part of a consolidation process,
as we've heard it.
Seattle Public Schools have had a series
of public meetings about this,
and one message I have heard repeatedly is,
We need more support from the state legislature.
Do you see that happening in next year's session in Olympia?
Seattle's I know not the only district
that's talking about this.
-Well, I think there's always pressure
to provide more money for schools at the state level.
You know, whether, I mean,
the problem that Seattle's experiencing is
declining enrollment.
The way that the state education funding system is set up
in the money tends to follow the student
and if the students go away for one reason,
if there's a decline in student population...
-Which is the situation right now.
-...the money goes away.
And the interesting thing about this
is that this is sort of déjà vu all over again for Seattle,
because they went through a long round of school closures.
-2008, I remember. -Yeah.
My own kids were in the Seattle Public Schools
during that period and, you know,
one of them got moved from a school that was closing,
and then that whole situation reversed itself
almost immediately. -Right.
-And the school population was growing for a long time, and...
-Yeah. -...so it's --
-Seattle's the fastest growing city in the country.
-Yeah, right after the --
-And, you know,
the politics of that are extremely difficult
at the local level.
People have, you know,
very strong attachments to their schools...
-Of course.
-...and their communities around them.
So, you know, that's going to be
a very fractious argument going forward.
You know, whether there will be any appetite in Olympia
to sort of bail out the districts,
you know, I would be surprised to see that.
-Fair enough.
Paul, maybe I can stick with you.
I want to talk about the governor's race, if I could.
So we've got Bob Ferguson, the state attorney general,
Democratic frontrunner.
Who is he going to be facing in November?
Dave Reichert, of course,
the former King County sheriff and US congressman.
Has plenty of name recognition,
but then the state Republican party endorsed Semi Bird,
who has been more clear in his support
for Donald Trump for President. What's going on with this race?
Seems pretty messy.
-It is pretty messy, and I think it's reflective of the,
you know, what I think of as sort of the Trump conundrum
for Republicans in Washington state.
Which is that if you, you know,
if you repudiate Donald Trump,
then you alienate the base,
and even if you sort of hold him at arm's length,
as Dave Reichert has been trying to do, your --
the Trump supporters are going to typically gravitate
to somebody who's more fulsome in his support
in the way that this Semi Bird is.
And then at the same thing,
you know, the flip side of that is
if you embrace Trump in some way or embrace his supporters,
then you risk alienating the moderates
that Reichert absolutely needs to win this race.
-Right. -I mean,
Democrats have a substantial structural advantage here,
and, you know, Reichert is actually going to have to go
and take some voters away from Ferguson in order to win.
-Right.
-And that's very difficult with Trump looming
at the top of the ticket. -Fair.
Ruth, maybe I could jump in with you here.
Has Northwest Asian Weekly made any endorsements yet?
Maybe it's too early for that.
-It's too early. -Yeah.
Any thoughts about some of these statewide races?
Because we've got the governor, we've got public lands,
we've got a lot of stuff cooking this fall.
-Right. Yeah, well, the only names I'm really familiar with
are Bob Ferguson and Dave Reichert, of course,
because he was sheriff.
-Right.
-Semi Burr is kind of a newcomer
and is really interesting in his support for Trump.
So it's, you know, being a Republican,
it's difficult when you're running for office,
especially with Trump looming over your head.
So -- -Yeah.
-Well, the guardrails are really close together.
-How do you mean?
-In that the path is fairly narrow to follow.
I mean, you know,
Dave Reichert back in 2016 made some comments
that got him in trouble saying,
I think he would at one point
say he would have arrested Trump for the Access Hollywood tape.
-Right, right.
-You know, I don't think that that sort of language
would be accepted this time around.
So it'll be interesting.
-Yeah, I think so too, and when we talk about this,
Washington has the longest streak in the nation
with the Democrat governor John Spellman, the last one in 1985.
And there's a lot of different shoes
that fall with this and Paul,
maybe I can just ask you about some of the other races
for the AG's office
if Bob Ferguson leaves that as it were and lands.
Any of the other big statewide races
that you're keeping tabs on?
-You know I think actually the race
for the Commissioner of Public Lands
is probably the most interesting,
just because it's the most wide open.
You have King County Councilman Dave Upthegrove,
who has the support of the environmental community,
which has typically been key
in winning that race in the last few.
You have former Congressman Jamie Herrera-Butler,
who was ousted from her district
because of her vote to impeach Donald Trump over January 6th.
And then you have State Senator Kevin Van De Wege,
who's very much a kind of moderate,
timber-friendly Democrat from the Olympic Peninsula,
where they care a lot about those races.
You know, it's pretty --
it's kind of a really interesting race to follow,
and there's a lot of debate in that race
how to manage the state's forest lands...
-Sure. Sure.
-...and how to manage the state's other resources
because traditionally the role of that office
has been to exploit those resources to provide money
for the common schools.
-Right.
-And that has sort of fallen out of favor as, you know,
as a policy there.
And so it's going to be interesting
to see how that plays out.
-Yeah, the wildfires this summer
are going to play a front and center.
-Yeah, and it's also the state's
main wildfire fighting agency,
and, you know, people care about that.
And the firefighters are largely behind Van De Wege,
and you know -- -Interesting.
-Because he's a firefighter,
and so there's an interesting dynamic there.
-Okay, well, thank you for that.
Ruth, maybe I can jump to you,
because I wanted to talk about another election,
the special city council election
that's going to take place this fall.
Tanya Wu was selected by the council back in January
to fill this citywide position 8 role
that Teresa Mosqueda vacated.
She's now on the King County Council, of course.
So there's a primary in August to try to keep the job,
and then Councilmember Wu would potentially be up
against three arguably more progressive candidates,
Tariq Yusuf, Alexis Mercedes Rink, and Sonatina Sanchez.
And I just -- I know that Tanya Wu hasn't been on the job
that long so there's not a lot to go on here.
Has she done enough to get the votes she needs?
What do you think about this race?
-Well, Tanya Wu is a really interesting thing.
You know, as you know, she lost District 2 by only 403 votes.
And for a relatively newcomer in the political scene,
that is quite impressive.
As far as her tenure in the Seattle City Council,
as you said, it's too early to see kind of a track record.
But she does have a lot of support.
And I don't know too much
about the other progressive candidates,
but in the last election,
it seemed like Seattle was moving away
from the more progressive candidates
and moving toward more of the moderate.
I think Tanya Wu is in that moderate space.
I would agree with you there. Paul?
-So I think that there's a,
you know, there's real kind of political money angle
to this race because District 2 is a district race
and that's one of the more progressive of the districts.
But the race that we're actually talking about is --
-Citywide. -A citywide race.
It's Teresa Mosqueda's seat
because she went to the King County Council.
-Right.
-And that really allows,
it takes a lot of money to run citywide
and what we've seen in recent elections is the kind of,
you know, what we can think of as sort of the city's
moneyed class throwing in big on independent campaigns
in support of its chosen candidates,
and Wu was definitely one of those the last time around.
-Right.
-And I think you should,
you know, we'd expect to see that before.
-More that business support coming out.
-Yeah, the question of whether there would be
commensurate support for a progressive opponent.
-Yeah.
-You saw that with Mosqueda in general
because she has deep ties to organized labor
and so she got support from that realm.
-Right.
-So I think it'll be interesting
to watch the money flow in that race.
-Yeah, no, that's an excellent point there.
Mike, maybe I can jump to you
because we've got the citywide race for council.
We also have an upcoming transportation levy
and I just looked at this in terms of the history
you have with The Seattle Times over the past 25 years.
We're now at what looks like the largest levy in city history,
$1.55 billion currently as the council's working on this.
Would cost the median Seattle homeowner about $500 a year
if voters approve it.
That's about $30 higher
than what the mayor was asking for initially.
So the two camps,
and this is probably some common thinking here,
they're saying this.
Raise the price even more,
Seattle needs even more transportation investments.
Or, you've got others saying this might be getting
a little too expensive.
I know that Seattle voters really like
to say yes to levies.
They certainly have over the past several years.
Do you see this measure cruising to a win in November?
Any thoughts on this?
-Well, you've got me a little bit outside my wheelhouse
here as far as coverage goes,
but I do think that the public in general
in Seattle want more public transportation.
And if that's what it's going to take,
then I think that's going to be a big consideration.
You know, on the other hand,
people are taxed a lot in this city,
and it's painful for people who --
I mean, I think my colleague Danny Westneat
was just writing about the number of millionaires
we have here,
how difficult it is for the rest of us to get along.
And so, I mean, it's going to be a balancing act,
and it could be that people are sick of paying out,
or can't afford to pay out anymore and that'll be that.
-Yeah, it's going not be a --
there's so many different things on the ballot here and Paul,
I wanted to make sure I got to this,
if we could touch on the three statewide initiatives
that are cooking here. From Let's Go Washington,
you've got 2117 to potentially repeal
the Climate Commitment Act,
2109, if approved,
would end our state's capital gains tax,
and then 2124 would let people opt out of the state's
long-term care insurance plan.
Do all these pass or where do you see these races going?
-So we haven't -- you know, the numbers that we've seen show
kind of soft support for those initiatives,
and in general, a ballot initiative,
if you're trying to get something passed,
you need to start sort of north of 60% approval...
-Yes, right.
-...to survive a concerted no campaign.
I haven't seen any numbers that indicate any of those
have that kind of support.
But the sort of outlier of that --
to that rule has been historically some of Tim Eyman's
anti-tax initiatives.
And so you have some, you know, degree of,
you know, will people vote to lower their taxes.
One new wrinkle this year is that
the ballot is going to carry a brief description
of the fiscal impact... -Yes, right.
-...the budgetary impact of the initiatives,
which in all three cases is pretty substantial and,
you know, the spending goes to things that people value.
And there's some research,
mostly from the opposition to the initiatives...
-Yes, yes.
-...that indicates that that language might move the needle.
But, you know, it has to be said, you know,
looking ahead to Olympia next year,
we could have a really interesting situation because --
-It's a budget writing year.
You know, if things go to form, there'll be Governor Ferguson...
-Yeah.
-...one of the more progressive candidates
ever to be elected governor if he wins.
-Yeah.
-And increase probably a larger Democratic majority
in the legislature
and their three signature achievements
of the last five years
or so will have been rolled back along with,
you know, more than a billion dollars in annual spending.
So that, you know, that will be a real tangle if we get to that.
-Such a strange way to govern, through initiative.
It's just, I've always been stunned by how that works.
-And I think that it is, you know,
it's a real restraint and it was clearly intended as restraint,
on the actions of the legislature.
And I do think that the current
or the most recent iterations of the legislature
have really been kind of playing chicken
with the initiative process.
And part of that was that during COVID,
it was very difficult to gather signatures
and the initiatives were kind of shut down for a couple of years.
And so now they're sort of back with a vengeance.
-Yeah, I know it didn't have any last year.
Now we're talking about three. -And there might be four.
There's that same group. -Oh, the natural gas deal?
-Yeah, to repeal, it would basically repeal
and prevent a variety of sort of attempts to rein in
the use of natural gas...
-I see. -...for climate purposes.
And, you know, there's like a million dollars on the street...
-Right.
-...to try and get that thing qualified
by this time next year, next month.
So we'll see how it goes.
-They got some work to do.
We only have -- I can do the 20-second version,
but Ruth, I wanted to ask,
Is there a headline we haven't talked about
you're going to be looking at this summer?
-Whew.
Put me on the spot. -No?
-I can't think of anything right now.
-Okay, well I know you're dealing with some new ownership
and a lot of stuff, so I'll let it go for now.
-Okay. -Maybe Paul,
I can ask you some thoughts here about what you're looking at.
-So, hottest race in the primary for my money
is the 6th Congressional District,
which is the Kitsap and Olympic peninsulas.
That's commissioner of, in the primary,
Commissioner of Public Lands
Hillary Franz versus State Senator Emily Randall.
Also Republican Jim McEwen.
That's a, you know, that's a Democratic seat,
so, you know,
the person who finishes first among the Democrats
is likely to carry it in the fall, and it's a hot race.
And Senator Randall,
who's, you know, the younger of the two candidates,
has won a lot of very prominent endorsements.
So I think that's the one to watch.
-All right, we'll see what happens there.
Mike, a 20-second version,
if you could, a story we haven't talked about.
-My focus right now is in Kent
and the murder trial of Auburn Officer Jeff Nelson.
It will be for the time being.
I think that trial's scheduled to probably go into July.
-Wow, there's some interesting reporting you've done there
and I'm looking forward to seeing more of that.
-Thank you. -Thank you all for this.
And we will be right back.
What are people saying on social media
about the top local issues of this summer?
One person writes...
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We'd like to know what you think.
Send us an email at contact@seattlechannel.org
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and great to have your input as well.
Thank you very much. I'm Brian Callanan.
We'll see you next time on "City Inside Out."
♪♪