Most Of The IE $ Is To Halt The Council’s Progressive Agenda Most of IE money is being spent with the express intent to stop the perceived leftward drift of the council. In the last 2 council election cycles, not including the 2017 race for just the 2 at large positions, IEs have crashed into our local elections in a big way.
A review of data collected by Seattle’s Ethics and Elections Commission for the council elections of 2013 (4 at large races) , 2015
(7 district & 2 at large races) , and 2019 (7 district races), show that IE contributions went from less than $4,000 in 2013 (to 1 candidate), to $494,000 in 2015’s general election (an additional
$300,000 spent in the primary), and now, as of Oct 21, about $6 million has been collected by all the IEs with over $600,000 of that still not spent. All of those reserve funds are in the anti-council IEs.
Some have argued that both businesses and unions have contributed substantially to IEs to shape the council’s policies. However, a close review of how the money has been spent, or earmarked for use this November, shows that $4.4 million is for the Chamber endorsed candidates, which includes Amazon’s $1.5 million to CASE, the Chamber’s IE.
As of October 21^st, if you look just at the IE money spent for 3 progressive candidates, Herbold, Lewis and Strauss, the amount totals
$488,000 with 76% of that going to just one candidate, Andrew Lewis, from the Unite HERE union. Councilmember Sawant has received just one thousand dollars in IE funds. On the other hand, the Chamber endorsed candidates, Tavel, Orion, Pugel, Pedersen and Wills, have received a total of $1,585,700.
But numbers don’t cover the entire story. For instance, in the Andrew Lewis vs Jim Pugel race, the IEs spent for each candidate, as of October 21, about an equal amount. However, there are hundreds of thousand dollars still available to the pro-Pugel IEs to spend on him and other Chamber candidates, while the IEs supporting the progressive candidates appear to have little if any funds left. For instance, in the Herbold versus Tavel race, IE expenditures for Tavel have been 4 times greater than IE expenditures supporting Herbold, and Will’s IE support has been 11 times greater than Strauss’s IE support.
The chart below shows how the IE funds were dispersed as of October 21^st.
CANDIDATE I.E. MONEY RECEIVED (10/21/19) in 1,000’s
District 1 – Herbold – incumbent 36.4
District 1 – Tavel 151.8
District 2 – Morales 17.2
District 2 -Solomon 71.1
District 3 – Sawant – incumbent 1.0
District 3 – Orion – 280.7
District 4 – Pedersen 173.2
District 4 – Scott 1.8
District 5 – Juarez – incumbent 31.1
District 5 – Davison Sattler 0
District 6 – Wills 533.8
District 6 – Strauss 48.4
District 7 – Lewis 373.4
District 7 – Pugel 375.1
It should also be noted that one of the three union IEs, the FireFighters PAC, has only supported Chamber endorsed candidates. And on the other side of the ledger there are wealthy individuals, like Nick Hanauer, who support progressive candidates.
Two Reasons For The Rise Of IE Money
I believe there are two reasons for the rise of IE money flooding into our elections.
One is that past ordinances have clipped the wings of businesses to conduct their operations by mandating requirements to address the working conditions of their employees, like increasing the minimum wage and requiring paid sick leave. In the case of landlords, they have been required to accommodate their tenants’ safety needs or lessen the burden of increasing rental costs. This last focus has resonated with tenants, who are the fastest growing demographic in the city making up 54% of all households.
The second reason is that the process of running for council seats has been adjusted to allow a greater range of candidates, more women and those with modest means. Let me provide examples of both.
The council over the past two decades has passed a number of ordinances that have resulted in a more responsive and accountable city council to working families. I assume that the two major contributors to CASE, Amazon at $1.5 million and Vulcan at $255,000, are most concerned on how future legislation will impact their ability to develop their downtown property and keep their operational costs minimal.
However, the largest number of businesses affected by the council’s policies are the hoteliers, restaurateurs, apartment owners/developers and smaller property developers concerned about keeping their labor costs as low as possible. Associations representing these groups are the next largest contributors to CASE.
Aside from corporations, owners and employees from both Amazon, Vulcan and smaller businesses have made huge contributions to both CASE and People for Seattle. The resulting combination has produced a formidable political force. However, a counter political force has also come to the fore through citizen initiatives pushing for electoral reforms.
Expanding Tenant Rights
The law that began a series of other tenant improvements was passing the Rental Registration and Inspection Ordinance
(http://clerk.ci.seattle.wa.us/search/ordinances/124011) (RRIO) in 2013. It helped ensure that all rental housing in Seattle is safe by requiring mandatory inspections for 250,000 renter households.
Property owners helped draft it and council passed it unanimously.
In 2016, the council passed unanimously an ordinance that said renters could not be denied a rental application for counting income from pension, Social Security, unemployment, child support or any other governmental or non-profit subsidy. A report to the city from the Washington Community Action Network helped its passage by showing that 48% of individuals who pay for rent with Social Security Disability Insurance or Social Security retirement income said that discrimination prevents them from having successful rental applications.” The following year the Council again unanimously voted to create a Renters Commission
to provide tenants political power within the city government to address topics ranging from housing affordability and neighborhood rezones to transportation and access to open space.
This year, 2019, the council mandated that all landlords were required to register with RRIO before a landlord issues an eviction notice and that they had to provide information on the rights and resources of tenants with notices to terminate a tenancy and an increase in rent.
Expanding Employee Rights
The first significant push for expanding employee rights began in 2011 with an 8 to 1 vote (Conlin – No) approving a Paid Sick and Safe Time Ordinance (http://clerk.seattle.gov/search/results?s6=Fair+Chance+Employment+Ordinance&l=200&Sect1=IMAGE&Sect2=THESON&Sect3=PLURON&Sect4=AND&Sect5=CBORY&Sect6=HITOFF&d=ORDF&p=1&u=%2Fsearch%2Fordinances&r=6&f=G)
requiring employers operating in Seattle to provide all employees with paid leave to care for themselves or a family member with a physical or mental health condition, medical appointment, or a critical safety issue. Over 190,000 Seattle workers gained this coverage with its passage.
In 2015 Seattle’s Fair Chance Employment Ordinance
(https://library.municode.com/wa/seattle/ordinances/municipal_code?nodeId=749643)
went into effect which restricts how employers can use conviction and arrest records during the hiring process and course of employment within City limits.
The biggest employee gain also came in 2015. Seattle’s Wage Theft Ordinance (http://clerk.ci.seattle.wa.us/search/ordinances/124960)
went into effect protecting against wage theft by requiring employers to pay all wages and tips owed to employees, provide written notice to employees, and itemize pay information when employees are paid.
Getting more attention Seattle’s Minimum Wage Ordinance
(https://library.municode.com/wa/seattle/ordinances/municipal_code?nodeId=749643)
which began April 1, 2015 that phased in the higher wage of $15 an hour over three to six years depending on the size of the company.
Not as well known to the public, but in the long run as important as any ordinance passed was the council creating the Office of Labor Standards (http://clerk.ci.seattle.wa.us/search/ordinances/124643)
(OLS) in 2014. Its mission is to advance labor standards through community and business engagement, strategic enforcement and innovative policy development, with a commitment to race and social justice.
The Secure Scheduling Ordinance
(http://clerk.ci.seattle.wa.us/search/ordinances/125135) , which passed in2016, established secure scheduling requirements for covered retail and food services establishments, and prescribed remedies and enforcement procedures. The law applies to retail and food services establishments with 500+ employees worldwide, and full service restaurants with 500+ employees and 40+ full-service restaurant locations worldwide.
The Domestic Workers Ordinance
(https://library.municode.com/wa/seattle/ordinances/municipal_code?nodeId=749643)
of 2018 was one of the last ordinances passed to protect employees. It made Seattle the first U.S. city to have a Domestic Workers Bill of Rights. This law gives minimum wage, rest break, and meal break rights to domestic workers. It is one of the most progressive pieces of legislation that Seattle has adopted, and it was not initiated by city council, but rather it was a result of a direct vote by Seattle residents.
Do These New Laws Appear To Be Too Radical For Seattle Voters?
All but one of the above ordinances were passed while there was, and still is, only one lone socialist on the city council, Kshama Sawant.
The CASE and the pro-Chamber People for Seattle have campaigned against some city council candidates as being under her sway, and consequently are socialist or something leaning that way. But for what reason? For passing the above legislation?
When asked on a recent poll the open ended question, “When you think of Seattle city government, who do you think of?” The term liberal came up at only 2%. Councilmember Sawant came up at 3%. The Mayor came in at 47% and the Council at 43%. These findings do not point to a conservative backlash. Sawant may have the most name recognition, a status I had for a period of time on the Council during my 18 years there. And neither of us, had any sway on the other councilmembers because of that. It takes the hard work of talking to your colleagues and working with constituents to influence them. That’s what gets the vote, not some achieving high marks in name recognition.
There is a certain irony that former Councilmember Tim Burgess, who founded and heads up the pro-Chamber People for Seattle IE, is opposing candidates based on their too liberal legislation, although he voted in favor of all of the above pieces of legislation. In fact, all but one of these ordinances passed unanimously by a council that had a majority of members receiving Chamber support in some fashion.
Citizen Initiatives Are Bringing Out More Candidates And Money I believe there is another reason for the attacks. There is a fear among the business community that future councilmembers will be even more aggressive in pursuing various kinds of government regulation or taxes to achieve public benefits. That fear was fanned with the passage of two public initiatives, which passed about the time as above pieces of legislation were written and adopted. The initiatives reformed the electoral process to allow for greater participation.
In 2013, with an approval vote of 65%, Seattle voters approved Charter Amendment 19 – Council Districts
which converted 7 of the city council seats to District Elections, leaving just 2 at large. The first city council elections based on districts were held in 2015.
That same year, 2015, Seattle voters passed an Initiative – 122 levying a property tax of $3 million per year to fund the Democracy Voucher Program
for the next 10 years . It passed with a 63% yes vote and began distributing vouchers in 2017.
The last major citizen initiative was not a vote on election reform, but it is a good indication that the public appears to be in line with the major thrust of the council’s efforts to meet the needs of residents. In 2016, the voters overwhelmingly, with a 77% yes vote, passed Initiative -124. It mandated increases in workplace safety for hotel staff, including the addition of panic buttons for all workers and improved health insurance.
Electoral Reforms Brought More Candidates And More Money These two electoral reform initiatives resulted in two new historical developments. First more candidates have surfaced than ever before under at-large council elections. The 2015 elections, the first one that used district elections, resulted in 37 candidates running for the 7 district seats. In the 2019 elections when democracy vouchers were available for district candidates, 54 candidates ran for the 7 district seats. This trend will probably ease off, but certainly there is more incentive to run for an office that can be partially publicly funded and with a limited geographical area to campaign in.
Second, there was the unintended response of drawing more money into the campaigns, most of it from outside the district boundaries and most of it from wealthy individuals or businesses, with smaller amounts from unions. The total amount of money collected by IEs for the council races was $5.9 million, the total amount collected by all the candidate’s personal campaigns was $4.7 million.
What Does The Most Recent Poll Tell Us?
This month a new poll was released by Crosscut/Elway with a lead in CrossCut reading that “More than two-thirds of likely voters said they want candidates elected who will take the council in a new direction.”
That statement plays into the narrative that the council has gone too far in making changes. However, a closer look at the survey’s numbers and cross-tabs don’t necessarily support that conclusion. It all depends on how you slice the pie.
For instance, the response to the question “Overall, how would you rate the job the City Council is doing? Would you say…” percentages responding for each response is shown below.
Good 26%
Fair 40%
Poor 29%
CrossCut combined Poor and Fair to get a 69% Negative position toward the council. Why not include Fair with Good to get 66% to get Positive attitude toward the council? Fair is between Good and Poor it could go either way, or just call it neutral.
Later in the survey, when asked to choose if the council direction should continue or change, the response was divided between the Negative and Positive. Since the Negative includes all of the Fair responses the percentage saying that there is a need for change is much larger coming from the Negative than the Positive. However, if the Fair had been added to the Good, it is possible that the response from the Positive folks would have been greater than those from the Negative folks.
So, the assumption that the council needs to change direction could be coming from the Positive folks who want to see more progressive change, just as much as from the Negative folks, who would want to see less such change. I hope I didn’t lose anyone here. But as you can tell, even the simplest use of statistics can result in different conclusions depending on how you cut and slice the data.
Two other findings identify what groups of Seattle residents are responding positively to the council’s agenda. Close to double the percentage of Renters over Home-Owners, believe that the council is doing a good job. Also, a consistent statistically significant higher percentage of those with income under $50,000 viewed the council as doing a good job than any other income bracket. Both data points would indicate that the council’s efforts to raise the livability for Seattle residents who are on the lower end of the income scale is being recognized and appreciated.
Homelessness Is A Lightning Rod For Political Change Seattle’s political struggles will continue as long as homelessness appears as an unsolvable problem. The Elway/Crosscut asked those surveyed, “Which of these issues is most important to you as you decide how to vote in the race for city council?” Addressing homelessness came up on top, registering 3 times higher than housing density and five times higher than reforming the police department.
And disapproving the current direction was twice as high as those approving of it.
I believe it is the unsheltered homeless that cause the most concern, since they are the most visible. According to the 2018 count
there are about 4,500 Seattle residents who are unsheltered homeless, which includes living in campers – about half of one percent of Seattle’s population. And, contrary to some claiming that Seattle’s policies attract many homeless here from out of state to get benefits, only 4% who were out of state residents have lived in King County for less than a year. Rather, economic hardship account for 55 % of those who are currently homeless, which is reported as having lost a job, been evicted or had medical bills.
For a city with the third highest median income in the nation, at $94,000, one would expect that we could figure out how to provide at least shelter for such a small percentage of people. It is that expectation that is being used against the most progressive councilmembers on the city council.
For instance, district one Councilmember Lisa Herbold, who as a legislative assistant to me for 18 years, probably worked on more legislation than any other councilmember promoting housing for the homeless and fighting displacement of renters and homeowners from becoming homeless. However, we still have homelessness, which lead her current opponent to say, “I don’t see any solutions coming from Lisa … it’s about a city that is failing to step up when it should.” But her opponent and the other Chamber backed candidates have not proposed how to fund the additional resources to solve the homeless crises. A Downtown Emergency Services Center social worker put it bluntly in a CrossCut article, “It’s not a question of managing resources, it’s that they don’t exist.”
Council critics argue that city government spending is inefficient in solving this human need crises. But they fail to mention the number of new affordable housing units that have been created with an efficient use of public funding assistance. For example, the 2016 city reported that the 2009 Housing Levy exceeded the goal of providing 1,670 additional units it promised to Seattle voters, by adding 2,527 affordable rental units and reinvesting in 400 existing units to keep them affordable to low income families.
Seattle’s overall population has exploded, growing 20% from 2010 to 2018, and while homelessness has also greatly increased, unsheltered homeless still remains well under 1% due to the council’s efforts.
But it does remain, and additional funds are needed to house these folks. The belief that we can solve the problem of housing the homeless without additional public funds, is not new. It was used to beat down the council’s proposal to tap a new dedicated revenue stream to provide housing for the homeless – the head tax.
Corporations Bludgeoned The Council On The Proposed New Head Tax This was a tax that had previously been in force to pay for transportation needs. It was dropped mostly because its forms were confusing and time consuming for businesses. When it was brought back it was streamlined and projections showed that only the largest 3% of Seattle’s businesses would pay the tax, exempting those with under $20 million in taxable gross receipts. Keep in mind that corporation’s opposition to the new tax was occurring the same time that the Federal Tax Bill passed in December 2017 lowered the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, a tax cut of 40%.
As the Seattle City Council was unanimously passing a “head tax”
ordinance, Amazon became the lead corporation to finance a referendum to repeal the legislation creating the head tax. The financial impact on Amazon was minimal considering its overall budget. The average salary for Amazon employees in Seattle is $158,851 per year. The head tax was set at $275 per employee a year, which would have amounted to a .2% increase in their payroll costs.
Nevertheless, because of its passage, Amazon’s Vice President, said all of its construction had been halted and clearly implied that the company’s future growth in Seattle could be seriously reduced unless the head tax was repealed. Then it plopped down $250,000 to provide the lion’s share of funding the referendum campaign. The tactic of writing a large check to get rid of a pesky political policy emerged again this year as Amazon became the largest contributor, by a factor of six, to create a new city council better aligned with its interests.
Wisely, the referendum campaign, titled No Tax On Jobs, never publicly attacked those who were homeless but instead attacked the council for not solving the homeless crises and for chasing businesses away.
Polling showed that about a year before the council’s vote, 66% of the public supported an increase in taxes to help the homeless. So, the referendum campaign did not deny the need to help them, but instead attacked the council for failing to meet their needs. After the referendum’s well-funded media campaign began, accompanied by paid signature gatherers to put the referendum on the ballot, public opinion flipped to 55% opposing an increase in such a tax.
As a result, the council was told by supporters of the head tax that it would have taken several million to counter the corporate sponsored referendum. Councilmember Lisa Herbold framed the tax as an unwinnable fight saying, “The opposition has unlimited resources and … the margin simply is too great to overcome…” She and other reluctant councilmembers voted to overturn the tax on big businesses, 7-2.
From talking to referendum supporters, it seemed the main problem the council faced was a lack of trust in how the money would be spent, which is the classic conservative argument against any progressive measure. However, the latest Elway poll shows that the public seems to have drifted back to their original feelings, since it revealed that 56% of the public supports a Large Business Tax for developing more affordable housing with only 40% opposed.
This Election Comes Down To Trust
It is difficult to determine what the new council will look like because the Chamber IE and its allied IEs are immensely outspending the candidates they are trying to defeat. It comes down to the voters deciding who to vote for, based on what they know about the candidates. Unfortunately, most of their information is being provided by the side with the largest media budget and now paid canvassers.
For the first time in Seattle’s council elections, paid canvassers are being used to doorbell for a candidate, rather than rely on volunteers who believe in a candidate’s values. As of 2 weeks ago, CASE spent a half a million dollars paying for canvassers to support five of its candidates. That amount could easily be doubled before election day, given the hundreds of thousands of dollars CASE and its allies have in the bank ready to be used.
On a side note, if I was on the council, to allow greater transparency in electioneering, I would introduce legislation that requires all paid canvassers to wear a very visible name tag saying, “I’M A PAID CANVASSER”. Since this approach would not inhibit free speech, I believe it would be upheld in the courts if challenged.
This election is important, not just for who gets elected, but for how the use of wealth, both from individuals and corporations, is distorting our democracy. We can see how it is occurring on the national level, but it has now seeped down to local elections. I encourage voters to become familiar with what the council has done to date, and to determine for themselves if the kind of legislation I listed at the front of this piece is helping Seattle move in the right direction. I think so and you may as well.
Nick Licata, was a 5 term Seattle City Councilmember, named progressive municipal official of the year by The Nation, and is founding board chair of Local Progress, a national network of 1,000 progressive municipal officials.
Author of Becoming a Citizen Activist.
Subscribe to Licata’s newsletter Urban Politics http://www.becomingacitizenactivist.org/
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