And unfortunately for single-family preservationists, they’re not making more land nor more detached single-family homes, as much as Seattle Times columnist Brier Dudley can pine for them–at least not at the rate we’re adding apartments and condominiums. This presents a problem for the Milquetoast Moderates (or “Pragmatic Progressives” if you prefer) going forward. Apartments keep going up, meaning more voters who generally lean progressive and are not attached to the project of freezing single-family neighborhoods in amber–the pet project of the Seattle Times Editorial Board, which had the exact opposite endorsements for Seattle City Council as we did.

Alex Pedersen is their lone voice on the Seattle City Council. And he won by less than 1,400 votes, with at least that many apartments likely to open in District 4 within a year–take a look around the U District, Roosevelt, or Wallingford if you doubt that. The math isn’t favorable to the moderates and conservatives.

In more ways than one, zoning is destiny. And even though our zoning still reserves the majority of Seattle for single-family homes only, the inclusionary multifamily zoning we do have is enough to tip the scales–even in a off-year election where turnout trails Presidential years and Midterms, especially in apartment-heavy areas. Turnout maps reveal that wealthy single-family areas had the highest turnout. However, given how decisively they went for progressives, tenants still carried the day even with lower turnout. A side by side of a zoning map and win margins show that urban villages and progressive strongholds were one and the same.

Moving City Elections to Even Years to Boost Turnout

And speaking of off-year elections, Sen. Joe Nguyen (D-West Seattle) announced legislation to address the problem–likely switching city council races to even years–which he says will be introduced this coming session. The move is intended to encourage high turnout elections. Hopefully, that bill will find support in the Democratic-controlled state legislature.

Redlining’s Impact Still Felt

Add in historic redlining maps–commissioned by the federal government and enforced by banks and real estate agents–and you will see that time is a flat circle. The wealthy areas marked green and blue for “desirable” still largely vote against sharing the neighborhoods they live in with more people, particularly of different socioeconomic backgrounds. We are still living that legacy. The formerly redlined areas marked in red and yellow for “hazardous” and “declining” were the base of support of progressive candidates. Progressive candidates and voters tend to support opening up more of Seattle to apartments and missing middle housing.

Councilmember Kshama Sawant’s results–in which she dramatically came from behind propelled by formerly redlined neighborhoods such as Capitol Hill, First Hill, the Central District, Judkins Park, and the International District–highlighted the lingering pull of redlining maps most starkly. The richest areas of Seattle benefited from federal policy that funneled federally-insured loans to them while denying them to people of color. That White privilege and generational wealth is still at play today.

Socialism Gaining Traction

The other thing we learned is that socialism is far less scary and fringe as it used to be. Mayor Jenny Durkan attempted to brand Tammy Morales as a socialist in a fundraising email, but the shameless redbaiting backfired. Morales ended up snagging more than 60% of the vote, trouncing Mark Solomon, who was backed by Durkan and the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce.

Though a member of the Democratic Socialist of America, Morales identifies as a Democrat rather than a socialist. That appears to allow her to straddle both camps and dominate. Scott, meanwhile, fully embraced the socialist label, but he came up just short. His close loss upended a lot of conventional wisdom that Sawant was an aberration and nobody else stood a chance of winning as a socialist. That (and Sawant winning again) could mean that the socialist floodgates are open now, particularly in high-turnout even-year elections.

Without further ado, here are the precinct maps by district.

D1 – Herbold (blue) Takes 56%

D2 – Morales (orange) Takes 60%

D3 – Sawant (orange) Boomerangs to 52%

D4 – Pedersen (blue) Clings to 52%

D5 – Juarez (orange) Blows Past 60%

D6 – Strauss (blue) Takes the Inland Route to 56%

D7 – Lewis Rides High on the Lowlands with 53%

The post Precinct Results Show Tenant Power, But Single-Family Zones Remain Conservative Bastions first appeared on The Urbanist.

Tim Eyman’s passing of Initiative 976 will greatly impact transportation and low-income and transit dependent individuals, but let’s just focus on the environmental impact it will have for this thought. Barring judicial intervention, transportation projects all over the state will now have to be delayed, find funding from other sources, or get cut all together with a projected $4 billion hole into funding. If projects such as light rail get delayed or cut all together, then people will be forced to continue using their personal vehicles for transportation, which has been proven to be a negative effect on the environment. We need more light rail so we can start getting more people out of their vehicles, especially in busy Seattle where the population keeps ballooning and doesn’t look to slow down any time soon. 

Cities all over the state will likely see bus service hours cut, and Seattle alone might see as much as 175,000 annual bus service hours cut. Again, this effects low-income individuals who might not have other transportation options, and it will likely force others to go back into their cars instead of taking the bus. We need more bus service to battle climate change, especially with plans of getting more electric buses into service in Washington State. 

Bringing car tabs down to $30 likely seemed like a benefit to most drivers, especially those who have financial struggles. And I can also see the perspective of smaller, rural parts of the state that might not see as many of the benefits of state transportation projects as other parts of the state due to density. However, I could argue at length about how it will actually end up costing these individuals more money in the long run from delayed or cut projects to personal vehicle depreciation. Potholes and vehicle longevity don’t mix well.

These reduced car tab prices encourage drivers to drive their personal vehicles more when we should be trying to encourage more people to get out of their personal vehicles for environmental reasons. If more people have to use their personal vehicles, then that means the roads will be more congested, which causes more traffic. And when those people are sitting in traffic with their engines idling, that’s worse for the environment. Yes, transit doesn’t reach everyone and easily yet, but it’s getting better. Seattle residents who have a 10 minute walk to a frequent transit route grew from just 25% in 2015 to 70% in 2019.

Progressive candidates like Shaun Scott and Abigail Doerr not winning their respective election races will have a negative impact on the environment. Scott had the most ambitious climate change-fighting plan out of all Seattle City Council candidates with his Seattle Green New Deal, which drew similarities to the proposed national Green New Deal co-authored by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. So did King County Council candidate Doerr with her proposed climate plan that called for all county-owned vehicles to be zero-emission by 2028 among other things.

I’m not saying that Initiative 976 passing will be the final nail in the coffin for all of humanity in terms of climate change, but people would be hard-pressed to argue that its passing will be better for the environment. And I’m not saying that the opponents of Scott and Doerr will be the sole reasons for climate change getting worse. In fact, Doerr’s opponent Councilmember Jeanne Kohl-Welles has done wonderful things on the King County Council, including for the environment. But her future plans were not as aggressive as Doerr’s. If climate change was the top concern for Seattle and Washington State residents, then they would have voted for Scott and Doerr and against I-976. 

I’ve been to a lot of community forums and I heard a lot of opinions this past election season. The homeless crisis usually topped the list as the primary concern with most residents. And yes, of course it’s a crisis. But so is climate change, and it’s a much larger problem. I also agree that much needs done to combat homelessness in King County. But homelessness isn’t an existential threat to humankind; climate change is. There is a lot of information out there to read but my personal opinion is that a big portion of humanity doesn’t have another 500 to 1,000 more years left on this planet at the rate we are going. And depending on the study, some would say 30 years or less. From following the history of this planet, Earth will eventually become uninhabitable for humanity, like it already has a few times before. How soon that happens is the question, though, and most scientists believe that we can drastically slow down that process. If we take action right away.

I’m baffled how this isn’t the top priority of all humans at this point in time. I dread the day in the future when my toddler niece and nephew are older and they ask me “Why didn’t you guys do more to prevent this?” Which will be a valid question. I would imagine my answer will be similar to how we currently ask our elders how they allowed people of color to use separate water fountains or how we didn’t allow women to vote years ago. Or even how we allowed teenagers to get drafted into war: “They wouldn’t listen” will probably be the best answer I can come up with, which won’t be good enough. I can’t sit and pretend that I don’t contribute to global warming either because I do own a car and I do drive it more than I should. I try to make conscious decisions but there is absolutely room for improvement. 

Seattle and King County have many pressing issues. But above all they have climate change issues, and it would be hard for anyone to argue that voting for I-976 just made the environment better in King County. Climate change is simply not being treated like the emergency that it is.

The post The Real Election Loser Was the Environment first appeared on The Urbanist.

The Urbanist Elections Board made endorsements in several Seattle and King County races last month as well as Initiative 976. Most of our endorsed candidates cruised to victory, but Shaun Scott and Abigail Doerr fell short. We had some thoughts on why the Scott campaign came up short, closing within 4.3 points but ultimately failing to close the deal unlike the rest of the progressive slate.

Tim Eyman’s initiative to cut transportation funding passed by a margin of almost six points across the state, despite failing in King County and the Sound Transit taxing district. In all, six counties rejected I-976. Thurston County and Island County flipped on the second day of tabulation, while King, Whatcom, San Juan, and Jefferson opposed it all along. Kitsap County, meanwhile, was an almost flip, coming up just 0.3% short. The lopsided results–with conservative parts of the states seeking to veto the right of progressive jurisdictions to tax themselves despite strong local support–is one reason we argued the state legislature has a mandate and an imperative to fix this.

SeaTac had two races to watch that didn’t disappoint, as Fight for 15 organizer Takele Gobena and Senayet Negusse overcome early deficits to win and break up a conservative voting block on city council.

King County Elections reports 218 ballots remaining to be tabulated so results might move ever so slightly, but not much ahead of certification on November 26th. Pierce and Snohomish counties are each estimating a similar amount of ballots remaining as well. Newly elected Seattle City Councilmembers will take over January 1st, except for Alex Pedersen who by virtue of winning a seat held by an interim councilmember will take over as soon as results are certified–so cue The Imperial March for that moment.

Below is a roundup of the late results that ended up flipping the leading candidate from election night, including non-endorsed races, across King County. None of the measures nor candidates from Pierce and Snohomish Counties that we covered on election night flipped.

Key: Bold Text = leading, I = Incumbent, * = Endorsed Candidate/Measure

City of Seattle

• Council District No. 3: Kshama Sawant* (I) 52%, Egan Orion 48%
• Council District No. 7: Andrew Lewis* 53%, Jim Pugel 47%

City of Redmond

• Council Position 1: Hank Myers (I) 49.7%, Varisha M. Khan 50.1%

City of Shoreline

• Council Position 4: David Chen 49%, Doris McConnell 51%

City of SeaTac

• Council Position 1: Senayet Negusse 51%, Tony Anderson 48%
• Council Position 5: Stanley Tombs (I) 47%, Takele Gobena 52%

The post 2019 November General Election Results: Late Returns first appeared on The Urbanist.

November 13th Update: Sawant now leads by 4 points.

Councilmember Kshama Sawant was the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce’s number one target this election, and her reelection prospects looks dicey in the first batch of returns on Election night–she trailed by eight points. By Thursday’s ballot drop, she had trimmed the margin to just 2.5% and only 739 votes separated her from District 3 (D3) challenger Egan Orion. Sawant will pass him today if she maintains her momentum from yesterday’s drop.

King County Elections announced it will make two ballot count updates today: one at 4pm and another at 8:30pm to deal with the glut of late ballots, which it estimated at 73,000 for Seattle and 13,000 in D3 alone. In all, King County has about 182,000 outstanding ballots to count, the agency said.

Late returns are a standard part of elections in Washington state, where we vote by mail–though sometimes not fully understood by outside observers. The Post Office becomes a bottleneck in the last few days of an election as ballots flood in, as are ballot return boxes. Washingtonians have three weeks to vote, but many still wait until Election Day, either to gather more information on the candidates or out of good old fashioned procrastination. Last minute voters’ ballots can’t be tallied by Election night, but by 8:30 tonight the vast majority of ballots should be counted.

A last minute surge in voting like we saw this election is what propelled Sawant to victory over incumbent Richard Conlin in 2013, shocking the political establishment and guaranteeing the fight for a $15 minimum wage wasn’t going to get sucked into a Seattle Process vortex and disappear.

Fight for 15’s Success

Seattle passed a $15 minimum wage in 2014, and, since being phased in, it’s widely heralded as a success. Even its biggest local critic in libertarian-leaning University of Washington economist Jacob Vigdor has since come around despite the minimum wage study he led initially being highly critical. “If you offer the minimum wage and you can’t hire anyone, the minimum wage is not really your problem, your problem is a labor shortage,” Vigdor said in an article by Seattle PI’s Becca Savranksy.

Vigdor had initially argued that the minimum wage had cost jobs and hurt low-wage workers, ignoring the boom effect to which he more recently alluded: employers struggling to fill jobs in a booming (and thus tight) labor market compounded by an acute housing crunch. The UW Minimum Wage Study team has since revised their initial 2016 finding, lowering their claim of harm. By the way, Sawant is an economist too, and it could be she’s the more perceptive one.

With a higher minimum wage in place, critics had suggested Sawant had outlasted her usefulness and no longer had a rallying cause. But Jacob Vigdor perhaps inadvertently offered support for Sawant’s housing focus this election. Sawant has run on lowering housing costs and reducing displacement through rent control, more public housing, tiny house villages, and reforms to single-family zoning. I wrote that progressives are winning the housing debate, and if Sawant pulls off the comeback, it will be yet more proof.

Andrew Lewis Blasts Pass Jim Pugel in D7

Meanwhile, Andrew Lewis passed Jim Pugel in D7, securing another victory for the progressive slate of candidates. Lewis trailed by a point on election night but now leads by 1.5%. Lewis has also championed social housing and reforms to single-family zoning.

Shaun Scott Closing on Pedersen But Still 10 Points Back

The only race where the more conservative candidate appears headed to victory is D4, where Alex Pedersen is up 10 points after yesterday’s count, a 2,371 vote margin. That’s significantly less than his 16-point advantage election night, but still a tough gap to close. About 10,000 ballots remain to be counted, King County Elections said. Scott will have to take more than 60% of outstanding ballots to win.

And it should be noted that if any race ends with a margin less than 150 votes, it will go into an automatic recount.

Why did Shaun Scott struggle and Kshama Sawant have a nailbiter while other progressives surged to victory? Them embracing the socialist label has been one explanation, but clearly race also plays a huge factor. The Shaun Scott campaign saw one of their yard signs defaced with the N-word in the last weeks of the election, underscoring that some D4 residents were still resistant to the idea of Black leadership.

Shaun Scott bravely went into the eye of the storm, identifying himself as a Black Lives Matter activist who supports abolishing our existing racist policing system. He spoke this truth to power at a Seattle Police Officers Guild forum that his opponent, meanwhile, skipped. It’s the jolt we likely need to break from our racist past and present, but in D4 it likely came across as a lot of rocking the boat for folks used to being very comfortable and undisturbed by such matters–particularly coming from a young Black man who already elicits our unconscious (and conscious) biases.

Even Alex Pedersen’s strategy of skipping forums with his opponent could be seen as an extension of modern “colorblind” style racism. Pedersen didn’t say anything overtly racist, he just largely refused to acknowledge or see his opponent at all. Pedersen ran on accountability, but when it came to being accountable for his own White privilege, he took a pass. That’s how when your opponent talks about the racist roots of single-family zoning, you can just change the subject and quietly use that issue to shake out more homeowner votes.

Roundup of Other Races

Meanwhile in races that progressives lead on election night, those leads have only grown larger. Tammy Morales has surpassed 58% of the vote in D2, Lisa Herbold has 53.5% in D1, and Dan Strauss has 53.8% in D6 despite a record-setting $831,000 in independent expenditures for his opponent Heidi Wills–most of it by the Seattle Chamber of Commerce’s Civic Alliance for a Sound Economy (CASE) political action committee (PAC).

The one race where the Chamber of Commerce diverged from the Seattle Times Editorial Board was in D5. Debora Juarez earned their ire for initially voting for the head tax–she later voted to repeal it–but challenger Ann Davison Sattler proved too fringe-y for them, putting ‘crack down on the homeless’ a little too front and center for their tastes–though the Times loved her. Juarez has more than 59% of the vote.

Initiative 976 is down to 53.9% of the vote, but still running strong enough to pass, which is why King County and the City of Seattle are announcing lawsuits to block it and restore 175,000 hours of bus service. Meanwhile, state legislators have been all over the place scrambling to come up with a plan or a narrative–they should really backfill the cuts and pass progressive tax reform.

Referendum Measure No. 88, which re-legalizes affirmative action policies at the government level in Washington, is going to be very close. The reject vote is still leading, but the margin has been trimmed. The strength of the King County vote could still flip it in remaining returns. It’s at 51.2% reject to 48.8% approve right now. Passage would help make the Seattle Green New Deal vision a reality by allowing for a mechanism of directing jobs toward impacted communities.

Outside of Scott and Abigail Doerr, who is trailing far behind incument King County Councilmember Jeanne Kohl-Welles, candidates and causes The Urbanist endorsed are in strong positions to win. Seattle Port Commission candidates Sam Cho and Fred Felleman are cruising to victory. Girmay Zahilay is well ahead of incumbent Larry Gossett in King County Council District 2. Urbanist-endorsed incumbents Claudia Balducci and Joe McDermott are coasting to reelection.

Hopefully these electoral successes mean we see progress. With Sawant likely sticking around Seattle City Hall, issues like rent control and boosting funding for social housing are not going away.

The post Sawant Narrows Gap to 739 Votes and Appears Headed to Victory first appeared on The Urbanist.

The Chair of the Senate Transportation Committee, Democrat Steve Hobbs of Snohomish County, predicted doom on Wednesday telling Crosscut’s Melissa Santos “Basically, I kind of view this as a sinking ship, and I have to do what I can to try to save most of the people on the ship—but the ship’s going down…This definitely will set us back 10 years, I think, with transportation.”

Democratic State Senator Marko Liias of Snohomish County put it bluntly when he tweeted “If voters ask us to reduce spending & it’s found to be constitutional, we should respect it & cut projects that don’t pass a climate lens.”

In the middle of a climate crisis, these attitudes are irresponsible. Seattle is experiencing some of the fastest growth of transit ridership of any city in the country while also seeing rates of car ownership decline. Our state’s leaders should be working to protect and accelerate those trends, rather than stop them yet again.

The truth is that voters didn’t ask for transportation projects to be slashed. The passage of I-976 is yet another lashing out by voters angry at a regressive tax system. Eyman is a typical car activist who thinks driving should be effectively subsidized by government and has a decades-long hostility to mass transit, and who leverages voter anger at a broken tax code for his own anti-transit ideology. There’s no reason at all why the governor and legislators should give into those desires. No transit agency, city government, or state office should have to suffer any service cut at all. Olympia can simply backfill the funds lost with the cut to the motor vehicle excise tax (MVET) with new, progressive revenue.

But they don’t. Instead, political leaders immediately assume they have to cut spending. And this forces us to confront the dirty little secret of the state legislature: they’ve been enabling Tim Eyman all along.

For those new to Washington State, it may be either surprising or depressing to learn that all of this has happened before. Twenty years ago, Tim Eyman made his name with Initiative 695, which slashed car tabs down to $30. Despite warnings by advocates and politicians that passage would devastate transportation spending, I-695 was approved by a 56-44 margin, roughly the same margin by which I-976 is passing.

In early 2000, a King County Superior Court judge overturned I-695 for violating the single-subject rule governing ballot initiatives, and the Washington State Supreme Court upheld the ruling. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of the story. Later that year, the state legislature—with a 49-49 Democratic-Republican tie in the House, a Democratic State Senate majority, and a Democratic governor—actually voted I-695 into law themselves, gutting transportation funding and transit services across the state.

Shockingly, this wouldn’t be the first time the legislature did Eyman’s work for him. In 2001, Eyman returned with Initiative 747, which imposed a 1% annual limit on property tax growth. It passed with 58% of the vote. Again, the courts overturned it. And again, a Democratic legislature—this time one with a two-thirds supermajority—enacted it into law in 2007. The results have been devastating for local governments, especially schools.

The legislature’s enabling of Eyman goes beyond their appalling willingness to save his ballot initiatives from the courts. Eyman typically puts his initiatives on a statewide ballot in odd numbered years, knowing that these elections see smaller and more conservative voter turnout. Unlike California and Oregon, however, Washington’s legislature continues to allow statewide ballot initiatives to be voted on in odd numbered years, greasing the skids for Eyman’s proposals to be approved by a narrow slice of the electorate.

More importantly, the legislature has failed to fix the underlying problem of a regressive tax code that largely shields large corporations and wealthy individuals from taxation and instead balancing the budget on the backs of everybody else.

In the aftermath of I-695’s passage, there was a brief moment of recognition by the legislature that the state’s broken tax system needed fixing. The 2001 legislature convened a blue ribbon commission, chaired by Bill Gates, Sr., to study the problem and make recommendations. You can still read their report online, and one of its central recommendations was an income tax. The legislature accepted the report, put it on a shelf, and moved on to other business.

Despite knowing for the last 20 years that the state’s tax system is broken and unable to fund the necessities of a 21st century civilization, especially in the midst of a climate crisis, the legislature has done nothing about it. That 20-year span matches up with the tenure of Frank Chopp as Speaker of the House—which is no accident.

Chopp was co-Speaker of the House in 2000 when legislators decided to enact I-695 themselves. He was sole Speaker then the legislature shelved the Gates commission’s tax proposals. He was Speaker in charge of a commanding 2/3 majority, on the eve of a presidential election everyone knew would be a Democratic wave, when he and Governor Christine Gregoire saved Eyman’s 1% property tax limit from the courts by writing it into state law themselves. Chopp even blocked a bill in the 2019 legislative session that would have finally removed the obnoxious advisory votes—another Eyman innovation—from voters’ ballots.

Chopp’s theory has always been that Eyman was to be appeased, not defeated, no matter the cost to public services and communities across the state. He would tell Democratic legislators that failing to enact Eyman’s proposals would cost them seats at the election, despite there being no evidence for this. Elections in Washington State follow national trends relatively closely. Democrats have only lost seats in the State House in the 2010 and 2014 elections, which were notably bad elections for Democrats across the country.

There is also no evidence at all to suggest voters make their legislative choices based on car tabs. There were widespread concerns that the big increase in MVET approved by voters in 2016 for the ST3 projects would prevent Democrats from flipping red seats in 2017 and 2018, and yet those suburban seats all went to the Democrats anyway.

With Chopp retiring as speaker this year, there is finally an opportunity to move beyond the belief that we have to give Eyman what he wants in order to govern the state. Unfortunately, as shown by the statements from Governor Inslee and Democratic State Senators Liias and Hobbs, the belief that Eyman must be appeased and public spending slashed remains dominant in Olympia.

As we confront the climate crisis, as well as the basic need for mass transit and safer streets for people who walk, bike, and roll, it is clear that cutting transportation funding is simply not a serious option. Neither should be raiding other public services, such as education and health care, to backfill the funding lost by the passage of I-976.

Instead, it is time for the state to finally begin fixing its broken tax code and pass new progressive revenue. A capital gains tax is an obvious starting point. So too is an income tax, or a carbon tax, or other sensible progressive revenue sources. Legislators could even do the bare minimum of providing two years of funding to backfill I-976 until 2022, when they would be able to overturn I-976 with a simple majority vote.

Given that I-976 is failing in Seattle and King County, it would be totally unacceptable for legislators—especially those representing those districts—to allow service cuts to take place in those jurisdictions.

If our state’s political leaders want us to believe they take the climate crisis seriously, then they need to show that they are leaders. Stop reacting to the passage of an Eyman initiative by giving him everything he wants. Transportation funding should be protected, not a dime should be cut, not a single bus route slashed or eliminated, not a single project delayed or canceled. Use the passage of I-976 to fix our broken tax code and protect and expand transit service.

The post Dear State Democrats, It’s on You to Repair the Damage I-976 Has Wrought first appeared on The Urbanist.

The Urbanist Elections Board made endorsements in several Seattle and King County races last month as well as Initiative 976. Some of our endorsed candidates are cruising to victory. Among them, Seattle City Council candidates Tammy Morales, Debora Juarez, and Dan Strauss all appear headed to election. Girmay Zahilay also appears to pulled off the upset of long-time incumbent Larry Gossett. However, sitting Councilmember Kshama Sawant is a bit under water in the early returns, a testament to the impact of corporate money from Amazon. The Tim Eyman initiative to cut transportation funding also appeared to be leading statewide in the initial returns, despite losing 56-44 in King County.

Below is a roundup of the early results, including non-endorsed races, across King County, Pierce County, and Snohomish County as well as key statewide issues.

Key: Bold Text = leading, I = Incumbent, * = Endorsed Candidate/Measure

Washington State

• Initiative 976 – Transportation Revenue: Yes 54.5%, No* 45.5%
• Referendum 88 – Affirmative Action: Approved 49.5%, Rejected 50.5%

King County

• Council District No. 2: Girmay Zahilay* 57%, Larry Gossett (I) 43%
• Council District No. 4: Abigail Doerr* 26%, Jean Kohl-Welles (I) 73%
• Council District No. 6: Claudia Balducci* (I) 77%, Bill Hurt 23%
• Council District No. 8: Joe McDermott* (I) 82%, Michael Neher 17%
• Director of Elections: Julie Wise (I) 79%, Mark Greene 21%

City of Seattle

• Council District No. 1: Lisa Herbold* (I) 51%, Phil Tavel 48%
• Council District No. 2: Tammy Morales* 56%, Mark Solomon 43%
• Council District No. 3: Kshama Sawant* (I) 46%, Egan Orion 54%
• Council District No. 4: Shaun Scott* 42%, Alex Pedersen 58%
• Council District No. 5: Debora Juarez* (I) 57%, Ann Davison Sattler 42%
• Council District No. 6: Dan Strauss* 52%, Heidi Wills 47%
• Council District No. 7: Andrew Lewis* 49%, Jim Pugel 50%

Port of Seattle

• Commissioner Position No. 2: Sam Cho* 57%, Grant Degginger 43%
• Commissioner Position No. 5: Fred Felleman* (I) 69%, Garth Jacobson 30%

Seattle Public Schools

• Director District 1: Liza Rankin (I) 51%, Eric Blumhagen 48%
• Director District 3: Chandra Hampson 66%, Rebeca Muniz 34%
• Director District 6: Leslie S. Harris (I) 66%, Molly E. Mitchell 34%

City of Bellevue

• Council Position 1: John Stokes (I) 69%, Holly Zhang 31%
• Council Position 3: Jeremy Barksdale 62%, Stephanie Walter 38%
• Council Position 5: Janice Zahn (I) 67%, JD Yu 32%
• Council Position 7: Jennifer Robertson (I) 63%, James Bible 36%

City of Tukwila

• Council Position 2: Kathy Hougardy (I) 64%, Nancy J. Mano 35%
• Council Position 4: Dennis Martinez 46%, Cynthia Delostrinos Johnson 53%
• Council Position 6: Tosh Sharp 44%, Kate Kruller (I) 55%

City of Redmond

• Mayor: Angela Birney 59%, Steve Field 40%
• Council Position 1: Hank Myers (I) 55%, Varisha M. Khan 44%
• Council Position 3: Jessica Forsythe 52%, Dayle ‘Hank’ Margeson (I) 48%
• Council Position 5: Vanessa Kritzer 71%, Eugene Zakhareyev 29%
• Council Position 7: David Carson (I) 57%, Carlos Jimenez 42%

City of Shoreline

• Council Position 2: Keith Patrick Scully 67%, Vivian Collica 33%
• Council Position 4: David Chen 50%, Doris McConnell 49%
• Council Position 6: Betsy Robertson 75%, Luis Berbesi 25%

City of Everett

• Council Position 4: Liz Vogeli (I) 62%, Marian LaFountaine 37%
• Council Position 5: Joseph Erikson 36%, Scott Bader (I) 63%

City of Tacoma

• Council District 1: John Hines 55%, Nathe Lawver 45%
• Council District 2: David Combs 36%, Keith Blocker (I) 63%
• Council Position 7: Conor McCarthy (I) 72%, Courtney Love 27%
• Council Position 8: Kristina Walker 56%, John O’Loughlin 43%

City of SeaTac

• Council Position 1: Senayet Negusse 49%, Tony Anderson 50%
• Council Position 3: Peter Kwon (I) 57%, Damiana Merryweather 42%
• Council Position 5: Stanley Tombs (I) 50%, Takele Gobena 49%
• Council Position 7: Mohamed Ali Egal 41%, Erin Sitterley (I) 59%

City of Renton

• Mayor: Marcie Maxwell 45%, Armondo Pavone 54%
• Council Position 3: Valerie O’Halloran 51%, James Alberson 49%
• Council Position 4: Ryan McIrvin (I) 70%, Maria Spasikova 30%
• Council Position 7: Kim-Khanh Van 62%, Thomas Trautmann 38%

Snohomish County

• Council District 2: Anna Rohrbough 48%, Megan Dunn 52%
• Council District 3: Stephanie Wright (I) 79%, Willie Russell 20%

Other Local Measures

• Federal Way Initiative No. 19-001 – Renter Rights: Yes 55%, No 45%
• Federal Way Advisory Proposition No. 1 – Banning Retail Marijuana: Yes 45%, No 55%
• Shoreline Proposition No. 1 – Parks Bonding: Yes 52%, No 48%
• King County Proposition No. 1 – Medic One Reauthorization: Yes 79%, No 21%
• Snohomish County Nonbinding Advisory Proposition No. 1 – Urban Fireworks Restrictions: Yes 61%, No 39%

The post 2019 November General Election Results: Early Returns first appeared on The Urbanist.

It’s my home district and it also happens to represent the sharpest contrast of any Seattle council race. Alex Pedersen is a conservative blast-from-the-past law-and-order single-family zoning protectionist. Shaun Scott is an urbanist-endorsed socialist leading a rainbow coalition of struggling renters, queer folks, criminal justice reformers, and climate hawks under the umbrella of public housing, zoning reform, and a Seattle Green New Deal. Inspiring! The catch is few prognosticators think he can win. But should we be so sure? And should we treat this like any other race?

Is 2019 Seattle the same Seattle we knew four or eight years ago? The massive deluge of corporate spending led by Amazon is a headwind for progressives in this election, but one overlooked dynamic is the huge influx of renters in Seattle, especially in booming districts like D4, D6, and D7. The State’s April 2015 population estimate for Seattle was 662,400. Today we’ve almost certainly blasted past 750,000. In other words, Seattle has gained about 100,000 residents in four years and change.

I’ve written about how 2,000 apartments have been added in the Stone Way corridor in the last decade, and how the University District is also booming. I predict renters will turn out, stand up for the progressive vision for Seattle, and swing this election for candidates like Shaun Scott, Kshama Sawant, Dan Strauss, and Andrew Lewis who have a pro-renter, pro-housing-diversity vision for the city. If Scott is down seven points or less on Election night, he will pull out the victory with a progressive finishing kick-in late returns. That’s my punditry right there.

A Big Gap to Overcome

Of course, I get why the cast The Stranger assembled for their predictions didn’t want to bet on Shaun Scott–outside of Prism Washington’s Riall Johnson who did call a narrow Scott win. Alex Pedersen amassed a large lead in the August primary, securing 10,447 votes, which was 40%. In a crowded progressive field, Shaun Scott hauled in 23%–6,020 votes. Assuming primary voters stay where they’re at, Pedersen starts with a 4,427 vote lead over Scott. If you’re placing bets, it’s risky to call a comeback that dramatic. You can’t blame the skepticism when it comes to Scott’s chances. Nonetheless, it’s happened before (Kshama Sawant over Richard Conlin is the classic example in recent history) and there’s reason to think it’ll happen now.

This is going to be a high turnout election, relatively speaking. The 2019 Primary’s 25,886 ballots cast in D4 already exceeded the 2015 General’s 23,019. Rob Johnson won the 2015 general election with 11,808 votes, narrowly edging Michael Maddux. Pedersen cracking 10,000 in the primary is impressive, but we’re likely looking at a 30,000 vote election in D4, meaning lots of votes are still on the table. And that gets us to ground game.

Progressive Ground Game

The Scott campaign has the strongest ground game of the election season. Yesterday, he got 60 people (including your faithful author) to show up on a beautiful sunny Sunday to canvass Wallingford. Scott volunteers have been out every day in double digits getting just about every door in the district, often multiple times. I had to apologize to folks who had been canvassed three or four times.

The Scott campaign has also been the most active on social media–as far as I can tell–connecting them to young voters. The Pedersen campaign doesn’t even have a Twitter account. Scott also hit the forum circuit hard, while Pedersen skipped most of them–perhaps confident to a fault.

The Elite Try to Buy An Election

Pedersen has been buoyed by political action committee (PAC) spending: $250,000 to Scott’s $2,000. His former boss Tim Burgess made a big assist to Pedersen with his generically named People for Seattle PAC which has raised most of its money from corporate executives, Republican donors, and landlords. The Seattle Chamber’s Civic Alliance for a Sound Economy (CASE) PAC has dominated outside spending this election and endorsed Pedersen. However, both campaigns used and maxed out their democracy vouchers, which evens the field somewhat.

Pedersen’s strong showing in the primary was attributed to PAC spending: “Former Burgess legislative aide Alex Pedersen had nearly $70,000 spent on his behalf from three PACs — CASE, People for Seattle and Moms for Seattle — and now enjoys a comfortable lead in the primary count.”

Pedersen will continue to benefit from unlimited outside money, but the Scott’s massive field operation could cancel that out, as well as backlash against Amazon’s attempt to buy the election, which encouraged many progressives to endorse Scott in the race, including presidential hopefuls Senator Elizabeth Warren and Senator Bernie Sanders. UAW 4121 academic workers organizer Emily Myers who placed third in D4 with 3,326 votes also endorsed Scott. This late progressive coalescing around Scott paired with a prodigious ground game could tip the scales.

50,000 New Apartments Mean a Renter-Heavy Electorate

Finally, I want to circle back to the demographic shift in Seattle I alluded to at the beginning. Seattle has added something on the magnitude of 50,000 apartments in the last five years or so. These new homes represent a lot of new voters and most of them skew young and more diverse than the historically White-dominated district, and they’re inherently renters so that means Pedersen’s “get off my lawn” campaign focused on single-family homeowners and business owners will not speak to them. It’s a matter of time before those campaigns fall by the wayside in the face of a renter-dominated Seattle. It could be this election.

The interesting wrinkle here is that traditionally political campaigns largely overlook apartment buildings. It’s harder to canvass apartments because property managers may bar the door, or the campaign may lack a contact to get them inside or not have a very good idea of who lives there due to high turnover. Single-family homes are traditionally the bread and butter of door knocking since they’re the most readily available, and typically the residents stay in one place the longest, making it easier for campaigns to find their people.

Another catch is that many of the apartments in D4 are occupied by students, given the proximity to the University of Washington. These students may still be registered at their parents’ address. Even if they’re registered on or near campus, students are not known for turning out with anywhere near the regularity of a baby boomer homeowner. If the Scott campaign turns out students with their focus on issues like climate urgency, a Seattle Green New Deal, municipal broadband, and expanding housing supply, then this is a whole different race. I’ve seen it happening when I knock doors. I’m wagering it’s enough to overcome the business-homevoter alliance but clearly it would be a huge upset and likely by the skin of our teeth.

So it’s anybody’s guess what will happen. But when I look into my crystal ball, I see plenty of reason to be optimistic. Keep fighting for the soul of the city.

The post Spike In Renters Will Swing the 2019 Election… If They Turn Out first appeared on The Urbanist.

Halloween might be over, but the most frightening day of 2019 has yet to come. On November 6th, Washingtonians could theoretically wake up and confront the nightmarish reality that office-chair-thieving Tim Eyman’s Initiative 976 (I-976) has passed and our State’s transportation budget has been gutted to its core. Just think $60 billion in funding that pays for the basics like road maintenance and local transit service in 62 different Washington cities, gone. $1.5 billion in ferry vessel improvements, wiped out. $20 billion for light rail expansion, bus rapid transit, and commuter rail, annihilated. 

And while all that might sound like a lot of money, it pales in comparison with I-976’s total price tag. According to its Fiscal Impact Statement, if I-976 passes, almost $2 billion ($1,921,901,238 to be exact) will be stripped from the state’s transportation budget in just the first six years. 

Extend those figures out further, and the future of transportation in Washington gets more and more bleak.

The pain will be real, and not just in Seattle. Counties and cities across the state will suffer as municipalities discover they have lost funding for programs that serve their most vulnerable constituents like Safe Routes to Schools and special needs transit for people with disabilities. 

Don’t let Eyman’s nightmarish fantasy become a reality. Vote no on I-976. And once you’ve mailed your ballot, get out the word about the threat the initiative poses to people across Washington state. Yes, only a few days remain until election day, but that doesn’t mean it is too late. The No on I-976 campaign needs volunteers to phone and canvass against I-976. Including today there are still four whole days in which you can fight for Washington’s transportation future.

To sign up for volunteer opportunities, go to No on I-976’s website and register for a volunteer shift. You can even sign up to phone bank remotely in the comfort of your own pajamas at home.

It’s not too late. Voters in Arizona banded together to defeat a Koch brother’s funded initiative that would have sabotaged light rail expansion in Phoenix. Similarly, Washingtonians can reject the twisted logic of I-976 and preserve billions of dollars in voter approved investments in a multimodal transportation future for Washington State. Vote No on I-976.

The post Call to Action: Vote No on I-976 first appeared on The Urbanist.

In 2017, the City contracted with a private consulting firm to do a human services needs assessment. Through this project, residents identified safe and affordable housing as the number one priority for the city. The current council, however, rejected the consultants’ findings and has done nothing to preserve and develop affordable housing. 

The retired worker I spoke with was just one example of a disturbing trend. We know that young families, seniors, immigrants, and the working class–communities that have already been pushed out of many other cities in King County–are increasingly finding it difficult to afford to live in SeaTac. We need to stop the displacement of working families and seniors by implementing robust renters’ protections in SeaTac. We also know, however, that affordable housing is a regional issue that goes beyond any one city. That is why it is inexcusable that the current city council passed up the opportunity to join South King Housing and Homelessness Partners, a new coalition of cities in South King County that are working together and sharing resources to preserve affordable housing and prevent homelessness. As a council member, I would push for SeaTac to join SKHHP. 

Beyond safe and affordable housing, there are a range of other issues where the current council has failed the city’s residents. Picture these scenes: A mother is worried about letting her kids walk to school because there are not enough sidewalks in their neighborhood. Seniors fear walking to visit their neighbors because of cars speeding down the road. A family has trouble sleeping because of the increase in aircraft noise over their home. A small business owner wonders how she will continue to do business after being displaced.

These are all stories that I have heard while walking the campaign trail in SeaTac this year. And they are representative of issues that we can fix if we choose to focus on the needs of our residents, rather than the needs of large businesses.

We need to invest in things like sidewalk construction, which will make the city more livable while also making it safer and more attractive to families. The current council has planned sidewalk improvements on only four city blocks per year. As a council member, I would double that investment to eight blocks per year.

There is also a need to address growing safety concerns in our community. Slowing traffic down on our neighborhood streets will be one of my biggest priorities. We also need to build a bridge between our diverse community and first responders to foster positive relationships and build trust. I believe that by investing in community crime prevention programs we can greatly improve the safety of our neighborhoods.

I have heard from our neighbors that a couple of other resources in our community need more attention from the council as well. We have several beautiful, well-maintained parks and open spaces. We need to build on these by improving parks that have been overlooked for too long. We can also improve our relationships with the public schools in SeaTac. I have a daughter who just began kindergarten at Bow Lake Elementary School. As a council member, I commit to engaging in conversations with school district leadership and board members about how the city can be more supportive of all our schools.

Finally, despite the resources that the airport brings to our city, we also recognize the challenges that come with the airport’s significant growth in recent years. In my conversations with voters living under the SeaTac flight paths, I have heard repeatedly that people feel the need for strong advocacy on this issue. And while it is true that the city council has limited jurisdiction when it comes to many airport issues, the council can be a powerful advocate and ally, using its influence to work with the Port of Seattle and the Federal Aviation Administration on new noise reduction strategies for the airport. As a council member, I would do just that.

The City of SeaTac is a beautiful place. Home to almost 30,000 people, we have a wealth of resources in the diversity of our residents, including long-time renters, homeowners, and immigrants who came here seeking opportunity and wanting to contribute. We have the beginnings of a good public transportation system, with three light-rail stations. And we benefit from the energy and dynamism of the international airport that is our namesake.

And yet, if current trends continue, we risk leaving behind so many residents who contribute to our city’s richness. SeaTac is at a crossroads: with new leadership we can make sure that SeaTac leads the way in creating an equitable and inclusive city for all residents. 

Takele Gobena is a candidate for SeaTac City Council (Position 5). Visit Takele Gobena’s website here.

The post Takele Gobena: I’m the SeaTac Council Candidate to Take on Affordable Housing and Transportation Woes first appeared on The Urbanist.

That massive donation prompted disgruntled Amazon workers, progressive candidates, and activists to rally today at the Amazon Spheres, the signature three-orb landmark of Amazon’s massive South Lake Union corporate headquarters. That campus houses most of Amazon’s 45,000 workers in Seattle–and is projected to continue to grow even more after all the HQ 2 hoopla.

On hand was Councilmember Kshama Sawant, who is up for reelection in District 3 and is Amazon’s number one target–as well as District 2 candidate Tammy Morales and District 4’s Shaun Scott. Both have also earned Amazon’s scorn for pushing progressive taxation and the city taking a firmer hand with the corporate behemoth–now valued at a trillion dollars.

The first councilmember on the docket, though, was Teresa Mosqueda. She and Sawant were the only two councilmembers to vote against repealing the employee hours tax that Amazon opposed and strong-armed the City into canceling by raising a stink and donating to a repeal effort, funding paid signature gatherers. Councilmember Mosqueda stressed that progressives on the city council still had work to do–work Amazon was trying to stop dead in its tracks.

“We’re here to send a message that here in Seattle we are fearless and we refuse to be intimidated,” Councilmember Mosqueda said. “We’re the city that stood up and passed $15 an hour in the face of intimidation and fear. And when businesses said they would have to shut down and the sky would fall, we proved that $15 an hour would work.”

“They’re afraid that we’re going to keep fighting for more union work,” Mosqueda said. “They’re afraid we’re going to keep fighting for a domestic workers bill of rights, which we just passed last year. They’re afraid of the hotel worker legislation we just passed again this year. They’re afraid of what we’re going to do next year, which is fight for all gig economy workers and all app-based workers to have the same rights as everyone deserves.”

“We won’t let our City Council be bought,” Councilmember Mosqueda said. “Seattle is not for sale.”

Councilmember M. Lorena González also spoke and previewed legislation she’s working on to limit corporation donations in local elections. Big businesses and wealthy individuals have donated more than $3 million to pro-business political action committees (PACs) this year.

“This is a massively important moment for our city,” Councilmember González said. “What we’re talking about here is fundamentally prohibiting corporate interests from seeping into and buying our local elections. This bill will do that, and I want to thank the folks at Fix Democracy First who are in the audience here.”

In her speech, Councilmember Kshama Sawant disputed the “corporate media narrative” that the city council isn’t working well together. Instead, she said there’s a progressive consensus on the city council and they’re getting things done, and that’s what scares Amazon and the Chamber of Commerce.

“They want to keep Seattle a corporate tax haven,” Councilmember Sawant said. “We want a massive expansion of high-quality publicly-owned social housing and a Seattle Green New Deal.”

“There’s no balance in corporations dumping millions of dollars into these races to undermine our democracy,” Tammy Morales said. “This is about who we are as a city. It’s about whether or not we’re going to save space in Seattle for blue collar workers, or if we’re going hand our city over to wealthy special interests in the city.”

District 4 candidate Shaun Scott, meanwhile pointed out that chamber-backed candidates have paid lip service to progressive causes, but they stand by Amazon and other big businesses when it counts.

“My opponent, who is one of the chosen chamber candidates, released a statement saying he shares a lot of the concerns and frustrations of all the activists here today,” Scott said. “What I have to say about that is the time to share your frustrations was when you were filling out chamber of commerce questionnaire.”

Scott also highlighted the need for progressive zoning policy. Despite the Chamber stressing that upzoning could alleviate the housing and take away the need for the head tax, Amazon and the chamber have anointed candidates who oppose upzones and rolling back apartment bans. Candidates like Alex Pedersen, Phil Tavel, Heidi Wills, and Jim Pugel have been very conservative on single-family zoning, preferring to stoke fears rather than stake bold positions helping renters find more places to call home in Seattle.

Why Facebook is Getting Into Housing

Meanwhile, Facebook is facing its own backlash. Facebook made news with a billion-dollar pledge yesterday to help build 20,000 affordable homes in the San Francisco Bay Area, where the $500 billion company is based. While the terms of the pledge are not yet clear, Facebook clearly wants some good headlines since Congress is grilling Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg this week over unethical business practices, such as discrimination in advertising and running campaign ads containing falsehoods.

Don’t take your eye off the ball: we really do need to regulate Facebook and perhaps break it up. But, nonetheless, pledging $1 billion to housing creation should be commended.

Google–also based in the Bay Area–recently made its own $1 billion housing pledge.

These corporate pledges from Facebook, Google and Microsoft are a mixed bag and will have a mixed impact. A portion is donating land or money to build housing directly, which will have a big impact. But they’re also counting money that is investing into housing hoping to earn a return. This isn’t charity. This is seeking a profit, even if it could be helpful and boost housing production.

The other big issue is apartment bans that are stifling housing growth and locking renters out of much of the Bay Area and of the Seattle metropolitan area. These companies have signaled they want more permissive zoning, but they haven’t lobbied hard on that front like they do for issues closer to their bottom line, like taxation and regulation.

Finally, there’s the issue of is it enough? A billion dollars sounds like a lot, but really we should be investing even more in social housing. Moreover, it’s a one-time gift. It has the downside of giving temporary relief while the long-term structural problem remains unsolved. We need progressive taxation, including a capital gains tax and state income tax, to ease some of the luxury housing demand swallowing up the market. The on-going revenue can then be a perpetual source for building more social housing and maintaining the public housing stock we have.

Housing is a huge issue, a huge part of our economy, and a huge piece of our gaping wealth inequality puzzle. It won’t be solved with half measures and voluntary corporate largess.

Amazon Sees Buying Council as Bargain Versus Billion-Dollar Housing Pledge

Like I said earlier, Amazon has never given to housing on anything approaching that scale of its internet giant competitors Facebook, Google, and Microsoft–its charitable donations are usually counted in the single-digit millions. Instead, the company has focused its efforts on buying local elections. Amazon made a big impact on the 2017 mayoral election, giving $350,000 down the stretch and almost $1.5 million all told counting donations from top executives. Now this year instead of ramping up housing donations, Amazon is ramping up efforts to dominate Seattle elections.

Last week, Amazon donated $1 million to Civic Alliance for Sound Economy (CASE) PAC, which is the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber’s political arm. That brings Amazon total corporate contributions to $1.5 million for this election cycle, a new record in Seattle elections–and all to CASE PAC. Seven of nine Seattle City Council seats are up for reelection, and Amazon and other prominent business leaders are saying they plan to take back the city council. They want thoroughgoing progressives out, and they want to replace them with compliant “pragmatic progressives”–Milquetoast Moderates if you will.

Amazon’s brazen move to flood the 2019 Seattle election with corporate spending also earned it considerable backlash from progressive leaders nationwide. U.S. Senators and presidential candidates Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders both condemned Amazon’s move. Former labor secretary Robert Reich joined the chorus, suggesting voters should snub Amazon-endorsed city council candidates Phil Tavel, Mark Solomon, Egan Orion, Alex Pedersen, Heidi Wills, and Jim Pugel (Milquetoast Moderate the bunch).

Instead, people should vote for Lisa Herbold, Tammy Morales, Kshama Sawant, Shaun Scott, Debora Juarez, Dan Strauss, and Andres Lewis, Reich said. Reich’s endorsements mirror The Urbanist’s endorsements, by the way. This election really matters for urbanists since Amazon has allied with the Seattle Times Editorial Board, which is the biggest defender of single-family zoning and car culture in the city. That means Amazon candidates can’t be trusted on urbanist issues and would likely take us backwards or hit the pause button on progressive transportation and land use changes.

Amazon’s Goal: Veto Taxes Aimed at Them

What is Amazon seeking to achieve with this megadonation? Both Amazon and CASE use vague buzzwords like accountability in describing what traits they want in a councilmember, but clearly taxation is the big motivator for them, as speakers at the rally stressed. The Seattle City Council raised Amazon’s ire when it passed the Employee Hours Tax (also known as the “head tax”) last year. Aimed at large employers, the head tax would have raised about $47 million per year–about $20 million of that from Amazon.

Mayor Jenny Durkan, who was a major beneficiary of Amazon’s 2017 campaign donations, had said that she had worked out a deal with Amazon to get them to tolerate the tax after she threatened a veto and convinced the city council to cut the tax nearly in half and add a five-year sunset clause that would have ended the tax after five years without city council action.

Despite the deal, Amazon still opposed the head tax and funded repeal efforts. Facing an expensive campaign to defend the tax and some tight polling, the Seattle City Council–with the exception of Councilmembers Sawant and Mosqueda–backed down and voted to repeal the tax.

That brief few weeks Seattle had a head tax on the books to fund affordable housing can either be the high watermark for progressives in Seattle or it can be Amazon’s Waterloo, in which Seattle’s largest employer overstepped its bounds, turned off voters, and underscored the need for a Seattle government willing to stand up to them. I for one am hoping for the latter.

The alternative is sobering: letting Amazon dictate who is on the Seattle City Council via a tsunami of money would be the beginning of corporate rule in Seattle. That’s not the Seattle I want to call home.

The post Amazon Tries to Buy Seattle Election with $1.5 Million Donation, Facebook and Google Each Pledge $1 Billion for Housing first appeared on The Urbanist.