“I looked around and felt like Washington really could be the best place in the nation to build a good life if people can actually afford to do that,” Sabio-Howell told The Urbanist. “I think that we could be a state where housing is abundant and childcare is affordable, our education and healthcare systems are world class quality, and we tax the record-breakingly rich corporations that build their wealth here in Washington to make that happen.” 

Sabio-Howell has spent the last three years as the communications director for Working Washington, a statewide labor advocacy nonprofit that fights to raise wages and improve labor standards. Working Washington was involved in the defense of gig workers’ minimum wage policy and flexibility protections when former Seattle Council President Sara Nelson tried to roll them back in 2024, a fight that Sabio-Howell said seemed impossible to win at the time due to lobbying from multi-million dollar companies. 

“We won anyway,” Sabio-Howell said about that fight, “because we saw that working people and the vast majority of Seattle, and I would also say Washington, believes in fair pay and good workplaces and an economy that works for working people. […] I have gotten used to taking on big fights against big money, particularly fueled by big corporations, and winning alongside grassroots people power.”

Sabio-Howell’s mother’s side of the family are immigrants from the Phillipines, and her father’s side of the family has lived in eastern Washington for generations. Both of her parents were educators. As a Millennial/Gen Z edge case, Sabio-Howell would be the youngest senator serving in the Washington State Legislature, if elected, bringing a fresh perspective to a body that tends to skew older. 

Sabio-Howell also has experience at the state legislature, having served as a legislative aide for Rep. Larry Springer (D-45th, Kirkland) and later as a communications specialist for the State Senate, working for five different state senators and the Senate Members of Color Caucus. 

“I could hit the ground running and would be eager to, because I think we need fighters and we need effectiveness, and we need a commitment to our community’s values,” Sabio-Howell said.

(Disclosure: Sabio-Howell has also served on The Urbanist’s election committee from 2022 to 2025, along with our Publisher Doug Trumm and Contributing Editor Ryan Packer. She served as co-chair for her last two years. The reporter of this piece has never served on that body.)   

A tough race

The incumbent, Pedersen, who is also the Senate Majority Leader, has served in the state legislature for almost 20 years. After a stint in the state House, he ran for the Senate seat in 2014. A gay man himself, Pedersen is known for championing LGBTQ+ rights, supporting the legalization of the sale of marijuana, and instituting more gun control measures at the state level. 

Pedersen is also a Yale-educated lawyer who practiced corporate law at Preston Gates & Ellis (now K&L Gates) for 17 years. Since 2012, he has worked as general counsel and executive vice president at McKinstry, a Seattle-based construction and engineering firm.

Pedersen raised about $240,000 in donations during the last election cycle in 2022. Sabio-Howell contends that in this last legislative session, he has shown a willingness to cut deals with the largest corporations, citing the $550 million tax break buried in the “millionaires” income tax of which Pedersen is the lead sponsor. (This tax break has since been removed by the House.) 

Pedersen has also expressed support of rolling back the estate tax increase passed last session. He told The Stranger he does not support his seatmate Rep. Shaun Scott’s new tax proposal, the Well Washington Fund, which would institute a payroll expense tax similar to Seattle’s JumpStart, because it is not politically feasible. 

“I think that Senator Pedersen’s alliance with corporations is fundamentally out of step with our district,” Sabio-Howell said.

Sabio-Howell referenced the historical outcomes of elections and ballot initiatives in the 43rd district. 

“We have affirmed over and over again that we believe in taxing the rich, in a fair and safe community for all of us,” Sabio-Howell said. “That makes me really excited about what kind of visionary leadership could be coming out of the 43rd, and I want to offer that this is our first chance in 20 years to choose our fighter.”

An affordability platform

Rather than cutting, Sabio-Howell wants to expand state investments in child care, education, housing, transit, and health care, and she wants to pay for this by taxing the ultra-wealthy corporations in Washington.

“It doesn’t feel like enough to me to defend a system that isn’t working for us, or to just hold the line on already inadequately funded programs,” Sabio-Howell said. “We need to be reinvesting in those programs and building them out to make sure they actually can work for people, particularly working people.”

While Sabio-Howell supports Pedersen’s millionaires tax, she doesn’t think it is adequate, particularly because any funding from the new tax wouldn’t be available until 2029. Unlike Pedersen, she doesn’t support rolling back taxes on the wealthy, such as the aforementioned estate tax reduction, and she would like to see the legislature pass a wealth tax and Scott’s Well Washington Fund. 

She doesn’t support the sales tax rollback in the millionaires tax that would have downstream revenue hit to Sound Transit. 

Among Sabio-Howell’s priorities are making universal childcare a reality and better funding K-12 education. 

“The paramount duty of the state legislature is to fund basic education, and that needs to be a critical priority, just based on everything we know about how that then sets young people and families up for success in Washington, and saves the state money in the long run,” Sabio-Howell said. 

While Sabio-Howell supports a wide variety of means to make housing more affordable, she is particularly enthusiastic about the idea of a statewide social housing program, citing her district’s strong support for Seattle’s social housing initiatives. She said she was disappointed that last year’s rent stabilization bill was so watered down.

“I think for so many of us, having our rent go up by anything close to 10% is also totally unaffordable,” Sabio-Howell said.

In addition to her desire to see further rent stabilization, Sabio-Howell said she would support efforts to do more to incentivize upzoning and strengthen tenant protections. She’s a proponent of the failed neighborhood cafe and corner store bill, talking about the importance of community building and place making.

Sabio-Howell said she expects to be a renter herself for the foreseeable future.

“The dark joke of people who are young is that it’s almost a laughable idea that we would ever be able to buy a house here in Washington generally, but particularly in the 43rd, a place where it’s actually a big, exciting step to move out of a studio apartment into a one bedroom,” Sabio-Howell said.

When considering legislation to make housing more abundant and affordable, Sabio-Howell emphasized the importance of such laws having teeth and dedicated resources for enforcement to hold communities accountable. 

Sabio-Howell said it’s the state’s responsibility to provide resources for a robust transit system in the state. She’s interested not only in building out Sound Transit’s connections but also providing more frequent service, better pay for operators, and possibly even lowering fares. She mentioned the dearth of both renters and regular transit users in office at the state level and how that impacts policymaking. 

Health care is another area that Sabio-Howell is interested in making more affordable, citing the increasing number of people who are losing coverage or having to forego it because of rising premiums. 

“When it comes to protecting and reinvesting in health care, that’s a place where the state legislature is on the front line, is maybe both our first and our last defense against devastating federal cuts,” Sabio-Howell said. 

In addition to using funds from the Well Washington fund to cover some of these gaps, should that legislation pass, Sabio-Howell said she thinks the state could eventually accomplish universal healthcare. During her time as a communications specialist at the senate, she worked with Senator Emily Randall on passing the Universal Health Care Commission, a first step towards that goal, and she spoke about taking additional serious steps in that direction. 

Sabio-Howell expressed support for even-year elections for local offices and converting Washington’s very part-time legislature to a full-time year-round body, which she said would allow more working class people to serve in elected office. 

On public safety and immigration

Sabio-Howell would like the state legislature to revisit some of the accountability issues related to policing that the public organized around in 2020, citing the legislature’s rollback of police use of force standards and high-speed pursuit standards in subsequent legislative sessions. She also spoke about the ineffectiveness of the $100 million police hiring incentive that Governor Bob Ferguson insisted on including in the budget last year, under threat of veto. Recent reporting from The Washington Standard revealed that no new police officers have yet been hired as a result of that program.

With U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) both expanding its surveillance apparatus and tapping into local surveillance data, Sabio-Howell says it’s important to protect immigrants from surveillance, along with the entire community. She also noted the need to protect consumers from surveillance surge pricing, referencing a bill that died earlier this session. 

“In general, government, and I mean this broadly, at the federal level, the state level, has really been so many years behind the ball when it comes to regulating big tech,” Sabio-Howell said.

Sabio-Howell comes from a mixed-status family, meaning a family with different immigration statuses. In the past, she has volunteered outside of the Northwest ICE Processing Center, helping people who had just been released without any money or means of communication, who often don’t speak English. 

“It’s extremely cruel,” Sabio-Howell said. “It’s a blight on our state, and it’s the state’s responsibility to do something about that.”

In addition to adding more parameters to protect data from ICE, Sabio-Howell outlined several steps she’d like to see the state take in response to ICE’s ramp-up of immigration enforcement. She supports the ban on law enforcement covering their faces, which has now passed out of both chambers. She’d like to either ban or severely limit ICE’s ability to operate in sensitive locations like hospitals, child care centers, and courthouses. She is interested in looking into stripping incentives from companies that work with ICE, making it more expensive to do so. And she wants more pathways for people to be able to sue ICE for violating their constitutional rights.

A way forward

Rather than trying to maintain the status quo in our state, Sabio-Howell believes in dreaming bigger and revitalizing and expanding the services that could make living in Washington and the 43rd LD even better. And she’s looking forward to presenting that bold vision to voters who might be ready for a different approach in leadership after 20 years. 

“It makes me really excited to think that we could opt into leadership that is moving in lockstep and shoulder to shoulder with our visionary values,” Sabio-Howell said. “Policy is something we build, not something that happens to us, and nowhere is that more possible or more true in our history.”

The post Labor Leader Sabio-Howell Launches Bid Challenging State Senator Jamie Pedersen first appeared on The Urbanist.

Pollet has earned a reputation of siding with the existing homeowners in his district over the new residents trying to move there, and became infamous for watering down housing reforms during his time as chair of the House’s Local Government Committee. In 2022, a striking amendment Pollet put forward significantly weakened a bill legalizing middle housing across Washington’s major cities, blunting its momentum and demoralizing housing advocates from Bellingham to Spokane.

In 2023, Pollet railed against HB 1110, that bill’s successor that was ultimately able to make it across the finish line. He did ultimately vote for it after securing an amendment allowing cities to hold off on zoning changes in specific areas, but has often been a “no” on the idea of reducing red tape for housing construction more broadly.

“Those years were low interest-rate years. We could have tens of thousands, maybe 50,000 or 100,000 more modestly-priced homes in the region right now, and they would be bidding over us, instead of us bidding over what’s left. And that’s a really huge and ugly, frustrating dynamic,” Davis told The Urbanist in an interview near his Roosevelt home.

A tech entrepreneur who has worked in enterprise sales after getting a doctorate degree from Harvard Law, Davis diverted his career after losing his city council race three years ago. He started a newsletter, which he dubbed Rondezvous, and got involved in some of the city’s biggest civic fights.

In 2025, Davis had a very busy year. He stepped up against a wave of cash that rolled in to promote the corporate-backed alternative to Prop 1A, the dedicated fund for Seattle’s Social Housing Developer. At a press conference in front of the Amazon spheres last February, he called out the city’s biggest corporations for trying to railroad a new source of progressive revenue.

As a consultant, he spent weeks bartering with legislators in Olympia in support of statewide parking reform, a bill that many seasoned housing advocates saw as a quixotic attempt. A slog that likely would have made Davis tear his hair out — if he had any — that work ultimately helped to get SB 5184 across the finish line, reducing housing costs and making redevelopment projects more feasible in every corner of the state. Then Davis turned his attention back to Seattle, setting up a progressive political action committee (PAC) to counter big-business spending in support of Katie Wilson’s successful mayoral bid.

Now Olympia is calling to Davis once again in a bigger way.

“I don’t think we can really move the needle on our core issues unless we take a regional and statewide and broader approach,” Davis said. “There’s so much more opportunity there.”

Davis has already lined up the endorsements of a number of prominent urbanists and housing advocates, including Transit Riders Union, Tech4Housing, Bothell Mayor Mason Thompson, former Seattle mayoral candidate Cary Moon, Patience Malaba, former Seattle City Councilmember Mike O’Brien, Seattle Social Housing Developer executive director Tiffani McCoy, House Our Neighbors executive director Naishin Fu, 43rd District Democrats Chair Ryan Driscoll, and safe streets leaders Gordon Padelford and Kelli Refer.

The affordability agenda

When Davis lists his priorities, the idea of making life more affordable for Washingtonians of all stripes comes through most clearly — though a sales tax holiday doesn’t make it onto the list. Davis wants to finally get the legislature to fully fund education, its paramount duty under the state constitution. And to make a major investment in child care, touting the goal of capping child care costs at 7% a household’s income that was a central plan in Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign. He celebrated expected increased investments in summer camp programs in Seattle under Mayor Wilson, but was clear that the legislature is going to need to step up to provide more funding.

“The year-round problem is something that we need really serious taxing power to address,” Davis said, pivoting the discussion to tax reform. As Davis announces his campaign, the Senate-advanced tax on incomes over $1 million has stalled out in the House. While some holdout Democrats undoubtedly would be happy to see no changes to the state’s tax code move forward, others are frustrated with the way the millionaires tax has advanced without explicit commitments to fund education or reduce the tax burden in other areas.

“I’m a big fan of the millionaires tax, per se. I’m all in for a 10% tax on incomes over a million bucks,” Davis said. “At the same time, it feels a little bit like a head fake. Cool, let’s do that. But in the meantime, we have an existing budget gap. We’re talking about cutting funding for toddlers with disabilities and 14,000 families who are supposed to get childcare, and sweeping hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars of climate investments out of the Climate Commitment Act.”

Davis wants to see broader tax reforms put on the table.

“If we if our tax rate was about like Minnesota, we would literally have enough money to fully fund education, have universal childcare, cover the deficit, end homelessness, and probably put another $500 million a year into transportation — sustainable transportation — with some leftover funds,” Davis said. “It’s stupid. We are choosing this scarcity and we’ve got a set of leaders that appear just completely beholden to a class of folks who have a big stake in keeping that scarcity in place.”

And then there’s housing. Davis wants to see the legislature fully fund housing choice vouchers to subsidize rents for existing tenants, keeping them from falling into homelessness. But housing supply will be a clear priority for him as well. He supports the elevator reform bill advancing through the House right now, and would focus on additional issues where the legislature could get out of the way of the construction of badly needed units.

“There’s just such a thick package of things that need to be done to really get us to a standard where stuff moves quickly. I don’t think we need to compromise on core safety or climate constraints around housing, just a lot of the stupid rules. There’s still so many stupid rules to fix,” Davis said.

Bus lanes over new highways

When it comes to transportation, Davis wants to help steer the ship away from the highway megaprojects that the legislature continues to be focused on, as the state’s existing infrastructure continues to fall into disrepair. He also wants the state to get off the sidelines when it comes to public transit.

“I don’t think we should be expanding highways,” Davis said. “We should paint one thousand miles of bus lanes in the busiest corridors in the region, and we should add 50% frequency to the top 100 bus routes. And then you take hundreds of thousands of people a day, and you make their lives easier and more convenient, and they get places fast, and you also end up attracting a lot more people to those routes, and you’re solving a transportation cost and convenience problem for hundreds of thousands of people.”

The state only directly controls a limited number of transit corridors around the state, but he would pair bus lanes on those streets with incentives to create dedicated space for transit. That would mirror the Free Youth Fare program, where the state offered operational grants to transit agencies that made travel fare-free for kids, and every agency in the state took the deal.

“The busiest corridors often do end up converging on the state roads,” Davis said. “If it’s a city’s arterial [road], you’d have to pair it with some sort of funding mechanism for the busses. It would just be a matching fund: if it’s a top 100 route, you get an extra four busses per hour in each direction, or something.”

Standing up to Trump

Davis also wants to see the state legislature significantly ramp up its work countering a rogue federal administration.

“I think the legislature is not doing a great job. So, here we have leaders saying we have an emergency, ‘fascism is coming out of the federal government’ — which it is. I’m like: Okay, what do we have this year, a mask bill where you could maybe sue somebody if they violate,” Davis said.

He wants to see a real mask ban for law enforcement with criminal penalties, and praised Senator Manka Dhingra’s bill that would sequester state funds that had been set to go to the feds if any of Washington’s federal funding is withheld. He also thinks the state should explore standing up a civilian response team focused on logistics and potential interruption of federal activities.

“We want the federal government to look at us and think like, not worth it,” David said. “I believe the rhetoric that we are in real, serious danger, and I do not see my representatives, many of them anyway, acting like it, and it’s pretty damn frustrating.”

Visit Ron Davis’s campaign website for more information.

The post Former Seattle Council Candidate Ron Davis Challenges Longtime Legislator Gerry Pollet first appeared on The Urbanist.

Julie Kang is running for the open seat in Seattle City Council’s District 5 this year, and is the first candidate in the race to qualify for democracy vouchers. She brings a successful career in banking, after co-founding Pacific International Bank, which focused on supporting Korean-American owned small businesses and grew to $200 million in assets before merging with Bank of Hope. 

While Kang emphasized that item when applying for an appointment to the Sara Nelson-led City Council in 2025, a year later in pitching herself to D5 voters, she is emphasizing her experiences in immigrant rights, education, and nonprofit work.

An immigrant from Korea and lifelong educator, Kang has a long list of professional, civic engagement, and volunteer experience, from serving as co-chair on the King County Immigrant and Refugee Commission to volunteering at her local food bank. She has never held elected office.

A passionate educator, Kang has taught at the University of Washington and Seattle University, training teachers to work with students who are multilingual and have diverse needs. 

“When we think about making decisions, policy decisions, I always say I put on my researcher hat, and I have to think about the whole continuum,” Kang told The Urbanist. “As a city council member, even though I am very active in my 32nd LD [legislative district] and the Democratic Party, we also have to think about all of the spectrum of political views and lived experiences, so I think that is a strength I bring as an individual.”

Kang is also a landlord, owning a single family rental property in District 5 that she told The Urbanist is her mother’s house. Public records show that Kang owns a third property in Lynnwood, in addition to the house in which she lives in District 5. 

Kang vied for the temporary appointment of the District 5 seat last summer following the resignation of then-Councilmember Cathy Moore. Moore served as councilmember for a year and a half before leaving, citing “health and personal reasons”. 

Moore was known for sponsoring the controversial Stay Out of Area Prostitution (SOAP) zone legislation, proposing a city-level capital gains tax, and supporting an update to the City’s Code of Ethics that would have weakened those rules: for example, by allowing councilmembers who are also landlords to vote on legislation that directly impacts landlords. 

In an unusual move, after her resignation, PubliCola reported that Moore sent in several questions to former colleague Councilmember Maritza Rivera to ask the potential successors to her seat. Moore also continued editing legislation after her resignation, with a special interest in expanding tree retention rules in the City’s growth plan.

The council ultimately chose to appoint Debora Juarez to the seat. Juarez had previously served as the District 5 councilmember from 2016 to 2023 and is now serving on an interim basis until the election this November. Whoever wins this race will serve out the remainder of Moore’s four-year term and will have to run again in 2027. 

Kang is facing off with climate advocate Nilu Jenks, who is running in the progressive lane.

The outcome of the race this year could shift the current power balance on the council. Right now the council is divided into three groups of three: Bob Kettle, Rivera, and Rob Saka constitute the centrist flank – along with the recently ousted Council President Sara Nelson – that ran hard on public safety; Alexis Mercedes Rinck, Dionne Foster, and Eddie Lin compose the solidly progressive wing; and Joy Hollingsworth, Dan Strauss, and Juarez sit somewhere in the middle. 

Community building through council

Recently, Kang had been running a program that brought teachers from all over the country to the Wing Luke Museum in the Chinatown-International District to learn Asian Pacific Islander (API) history. But when Kang learned the program, formerly funded by a National Endowment for the Humanities grant, had been defunded by the Trump administration, she realized she needed to do more. 

“I know as councilmembers, as elected officials, there’s so many squeaky wheels and so many things that the constituents are asking for, and we can’t get back to every single one of them, but we need to at least try, and we need to use our privilege and resources to get them to our constituents and our neighbors,” Kang said. “So for me, that’s why I want to run, because I am very fortunate to be in the space to have the knowledge, and I think I can be a bridge builder.”

Kang has been busy putting together whistle kits with ‘Know Your Rights’ information and distributing them to neighbors. Community members are disseminating whistle kits across the country in order for neighbors to alert those at risk of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) enforcement actions and allow for rapid community response. 

“What I have realized is that when you’re at the table where these discussions are being made at the higher level, we have more opportunities to represent our neighbors,” Kang said.

Kang pointed to her experience in banking and managing budgets as an educator as being illustrative of her financial literacy, a skill much needed by councilmembers who must deal with Seattle’s structural budget deficit. The City faces an estimated budget deficit of at least $127 million in 2027, with no long-term fix in sight. 

When The Urbanist asked about the ongoing budget hole, Kang first brought up Seattle’s sweetened beverage tax, questioning whether the proceeds of the tax are really going to provide healthy meals for Seattle’s students. The debate over the sweetened beverage tax has typically been between the harms of levying another regressive tax on Seattleites versus the health benefits of selling significantly fewer sweetened beverages in the city. 

When pressed further about Seattle’s budget woes, Kang suggested a combination of cuts with the option of new taxes. 

“We can’t just continue to tax, even though these are some opportunities to tax,” Kang said. “We have to look at what we are currently using, and are we making priorities based on the most needs of, for example, North Seattle? I think North Seattle has not always received our share of resources. Yet, I feel we’re getting more [than our] share of our challenges.”

Regarding the food desert in Lake City and food access more generally, Kang said at the food bank where she volunteers, they’re seeing people they haven’t historically seen before. She also mentioned the recent loss of the Amazon Fresh on Aurora Avenue N. Kang said she’d want to work in coalition with state electeds on bills and efforts to encourage grocery stores to stay. She didn’t have specific examples of what the council could do directly to address these food access issues.

Meanwhile, District 5 is getting a new Pinehurst light rail station at NE 130th Street, which Kang said is exciting. However, she emphasized needing more infrastructure to make density work. 

“Yes, we need the funding, but again, we cannot continue to fund to drive people out,” Kang said. “We need a city that works for working people. And we also have to prioritize how we’re going to think about all of our neighbors, starting with the young children who really need to get to school feeling safe to our elderly who want to stay in the neighborhood where they built a home for the last 30, 50 years.” 

Kang spoke about the difficulty of traveling from east to west in District 5 and wants to see some kind of connector or bus line that would address the issue. Later in 2026 after Sound Transit opens Pinehurst Station, King County Metro will launch Route 77, a crosstown bus connecting Bitter Lake, Lake City, and the light rail station. It’s unclear if Kang was referring to Route 77, or an additional improvement to the network.

She said she’s aware of accessibility issues like difficulty using strollers in areas of D5 or uneven sidewalks making it challenging for some elderly people to walk safely, and she also wants to be mindful of small businesses. 

Like her opponent Jenks, Kang would have supported Rinck’s Comprehensive Plan amendment last fall to add eight new neighborhood growth centers, calling it community building. The proposal was tabled but docketed to come back in “Phase 3” of the growth plan, following supplemental environmental work and community outreach process.

On public safety

With ICE detaining people off the streets throughout the country, Kang said she couldn’t currently support the use of surveillance in Seattle.

“Right now, surveillance cameras cannot work because even though we know, or we’ve heard, that the cameras function differently than the national ones and we are doing it the Seattle way, we should not collect data, because if we have it, if we’re ever subpoenaed, we don’t have control over it,” Kang said. 

Kang said she’d rethink her stance on surveillance if the sociopolitical climate changes, but right now the thought of surveillance causes people to feel anxiety and fear. 

Kang also disagreed with her predecessor on the SOAP and Stay Out of Drug (SODA) zones, saying she doesn’t support these policies. She cited the opposition of newly elected Seattle City Attorney Erika Evans to the SOAP and SODA zones, saying Evans is the expert. 

The SOAP and SODA zones were strongly supported by prior City Attorney Ann Davison.

“I want to make sure my constituents are on the same page, and if not, I worry more about the people who have different perspectives,” Kang said. 

As an alternative to supporting the SOAP legislation, Kang wants more resources to help with sex trafficking.

“I always say no mother wants to see their child go up and down [the street as a sex worker], but again, if their basic needs are not met today, do they know that they have options? Do we have enough resources?” Kang said.

Regarding gun violence, Kang thinks we need to educate and talk more about the consequences ahead of gun violence incidents. She spoke specifically about the danger to bus drivers who currently have to call King County to report incidents, with the county then reaching out to the City of Seattle, causing slower responses. 

“I think it’s important for us to see who owns guns, how are they stored, and then all of those stolen and unmonitored, the guns that we can’t account for,” Kang said.

In her statement of intent to be appointed to the D5 seat last year, Kang expressed interest in exploring “the possibility of a North Precinct location.” When The Urbanist asked about this idea, Kang said she liked the idea of moving the North Precinct to a location that is more visible and accessible and that might speed up response times. However, after speaking to Juarez, who has long been interested in something similar, Kang said that with the city’s current financial challenges, a new North Precinct probably wouldn’t be possible. 

Instead, Kang expressed the hope that between the expanded Community Assisted Response & Engagement (CARE) team and increased police officer hiring, response times to 911 calls will still improve. 

Unfortunately, CARE Chief Amy Barden has said 911 response times won’t improve without dispatch independence, which has been prevented by the recent Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG) contract approved in December.

Kang says she knows she doesn’t have all the answers, but she wants to make sure to put the constituents of District 5 at the center of decision-making. 

“With the current energy in the city, with leadership and the passionate and committed neighbors, I think we can build a district where people can live, work, belong, and thrive,” Kang said. “It just takes a leader who can voice that at the level where decisions are being made.”

The post Educator Julie Kang Enters Fray in D5 Seattle Council Race first appeared on The Urbanist.

Nilu Jenks is running for the open seat in Seattle City Council’s District 5, hoping to advocate for climate action, democracy, affordability, and community safety. 

As a first-generation American whose parents immigrated from Iran, Jenks was inspired to run by the climate emergency and the urgency of uplifting environmental justice in Seattle, which runs the gauntlet of issues from affordability to transit and pedestrian infrastructure to child care. Jenks also spoke of the importance of strengthening democracy in our country and wanting to show that Blue cities can deliver on meeting people’s needs and providing a good quality of life for everyone.

“I want people to have faith in our democratic process and our institutions, and build trust in them,” Jenks told The Urbanist. “I think community is where a lot of our answers lie, but we need a system that supports that, where we get to come together and hang out and talk to each other and have real discussions rather than just labeling each other.”

Jenks ran for the same seat back in 2023, earning The Urbanist’s endorsement, but she came in third place in the primary behind Cathy Moore. Moore cruised to victory in the moderate lane, defeating equity consultant ChrisTiana ObeySumner, who ran in the progressive lane, by nearly 30 points. 

Normally the District 5 seat wouldn’t be up for election until November 2027, but Moore resigned from her seat last summer, narrowly missing the deadline that would have triggered a replacement election later that same year. Moore cited “health and personal reasons” for her decision to resign, although the announcement came close on the heels of her controversial push to weaken the ethics rules that govern the council’s behavior. 

The council chose to appoint Debora Juarez, who had held the District 5 seat from 2016 to 2023, to serve on an interim basis until the election this November. Juarez has indicated she would not seek reelection.

Jenks is a mother of two teenagers and has a long history of community organizing. For the last few years she has worked as the Political and Partnerships Director at FairVote Washington to advance voting reforms that foster a more inclusive and representative democracy. She’s also spent a lot of time advocating within the schools, including serving as a board member of Roosevelt Alumni for Racial Equity (RARE) and a PTA Advocacy Chair at John Rogers Elementary School. 

Jenks is the first person to declare her candidacy for the District 5 seat. The outcome of the race could swing control of a closely divided council to progressives, or keep centrists narrowly clinging to power, if progressives again fail to win the seat. The victor will serve only the remainder of the term (13 months) before facing reelection.

Affordability and climate friendly policies

Jenks voiced support for adding more density to Seattle and said she supports Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck’s Comprehensive Plan amendment from last year to add back eight new neighborhood growth centers. 

“Density where humans live is where we need to be denser to protect, and that’s a climate-makes-sense policy, and it’s important to translate to the public the why,” Jenks said. “We can do this and make it work and have a really fun city.”

Jenks is also interested in making public transit, walking, and biking safer in District 5, especially for children. Safety and reliability are keys to making more people choose public transit over cars, she said. 

Citing the importance of reliable ways to connect to light rail, Jenks wants to focus on safety improvements like protected bike lanes and good pedestrian access for the new Pinehurst light rail station at NE 130th Street and the other two stations in District 5. She also pointed out how difficult it is to travel from east to west in the city, emphasizing the importance of regular and reliable buses to address this issue. 

Jenks framed the new “food desert” in Lake City created by the closure of the neighborhood’s Fred Meyer grocery store as an urgent issue. Jenks lives in Lake City and emphasized how the neighborhood is also a pharmacy desert without any 24-hour pharmacies where people can get their medications filled easily.

Adjusting zoning and permitting to make it easier to open grocery stores is something Jenks would like to pursue, as well as working with UFCW 3000 (the region’s largest union) to see what can be done to bring more grocery stores back to the market. She also supports farmers’ markets and the idea of direct buying from farmers’ stalls to offer an alternative to big corporate grocery stores and provide access to fresh produce. 

Jenks mentioned the importance of supporting smaller stores in Lake City that meet people’s needs, such as Goodies Mediterranean Market. 

If elected, Jenks says she will champion 1,000 new units of affordable housing in the district during her term. She wants to support new Mayor Katie Wilson in her affordable housing goals while also exploring ways to prevent displacement.

“You know, as we build up, the light rail stations opening have a really big impact in community,” Jenks said. “I think we saw that on the south end, and maybe that growth wasn’t managed as well. So how can we protect people that live here out of the upzone and make sure that they have the ability to return back to their communities and neighborhoods as things change, or give them the ability to buy into some of the housing? Because this is a community.”

Jenks is also interested in working with the state legislature to find a way to make a land value tax work for the state. Proponents argue a land value tax would spur urban development and raise revenue in a fairer way compared to conventional property taxes.

The importance of safety

Jenks said she was motivated to announce her run early in this election cycle because of the brutal actions of U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE). 

“I just couldn’t watch my neighbors now being kidnapped or killed by ICE, and feel like maybe I could do something and not let people know that’s my intention,” Jenks said. “Very much so it’s my intention to protect all our neighbors and expand the definition of safety from unsheltered to undocumented, and yes, that includes sex workers too, and their neighbors. It’s all of us.”

Jenks herself has birthright citizenship, and there was a time when her parents became undocumented before obtaining citizenship themselves. 

Jenks wants to see if there’s anything the City can do to notify people when ICE kidnaps a family member. She believes in the importance of a strong relationship with state electeds, mentioning her support of the current bills banning face coverings for law enforcement and regulating license plate readers. She mentioned community policing and the idea of hiring police officers who live in the communities they serve. 

“I do know that there’s a lot of limitation on what we can do over federal government, but what we can do is train each other,” Jenks said. “You know, all these whistle trainings that you’re seeing out of Minneapolis, it’s happening in Seattle on a smaller scale. I’d love to see a bigger community response in that regard, so that we know what to do ahead of time.”

When asked about her thoughts about the surveillance expansion vote last year in council, Jenks was unequivocal in her opposition: “I actually emailed them at the time and said, ‘Please don’t do this.’ This is not the time when we’re falling into authoritarianism. It’s not the time. We don’t have the federal protections in place for us to decide that we can do this the right way.”

She mentioned the disproportionate impact these surveillance tools have on immigrants and people of color. 

After the Parkland High School shooting in 2018, Jenks helped organize the largest gun buy-back program in the nation in San Mateo County, and she plans to bring a gun violence prevention lens to the council. 

Jenks emphasized that over 50% of gun deaths in the U.S. are suicides, making it important to provide adequate mental health supports for folks. She also supports additional gun safety legislation at the state level. 

When asked about the Stay Out of Area Prostitution (SOAP) orders championed by her predecessor Moore, Jenks said she wants to see the data, but thinks it hasn’t been supportive so far. She wants to speak more with the people most impacted, particularly workers in the sex industry.

“I think part of it is, how do we provide more resources to that community? And, you know, build up Aurora to be more of a neighborhood,” Jenks said. “I don’t think it was the right move. I think there were other ways that we could have done that didn’t involve, again, relying on criminalization, and where you can go, where you can just move around, right? So at this point, I’m like, well, show us the data, and let’s work with the community.”

Strengthening democracy

Seattle will be implementing ranked choice voting for the first time in 2027, and Jenks is ready to be a champion on the council around this process. In addition to working on voting reform in her day job, she sits on the King County Ranked Choice Voting Advisory Committee. 

Jenks said it will be important to engage in a lot of voter education next year around ranked choice voting, as well as ensuring Seattle’s Department of Neighborhoods has the appropriate funding to facilitate such education while not leaving anyone out. She also spoke of attacks on democracy at the federal level and how proportional ranked choice voting can act as a remedy for some of the curtailments the U.S. Supreme Court might make on the Voting Rights Act.

“It’s very important for Seattle to get this right,” Jenks said.

The D5 race is only just getting started, and Jenks has already received several progressive endorsements, including from Washington State representatives Darya Farivar, Julia Reed, and Brianna Thomas, House Our Neighbors co-executive director Tiffani McCoy, and Seattle School board members Liza Rankin and Vivian Song.

“The two things I think we need leadership on this council […] is the climate and democracy and understanding how that relates to us on a local level, from local journalism to implementation of RCV (ranked choice voting) and how climate can actually guide us towards justice for people living in the streets who don’t deserve to live in smoke,” Jenks said. “I talk about democracy, but really what I mean is trust that these institutions can serve you and also that you have a right to your voice.”

The post Climate Advocate Nilu Jenks Announces D5 Seattle Council Campaign first appeared on The Urbanist.

In her interview with The Urbanist, Hasegawa brought up the need to accelerate the RapidRide R Line bus project upgrading Route 7, spur transit-oriented development, and incentivize affordable housing. She vowed to champion the project to build a lid over I-5 to repair the “concrete scar” the freeway tore through the core of Seattle, creating housing and park space in the process.

Hasegawa has served on the Seattle Port Commission since 2022. Earlier in her career, she worked as a legislative aide for King County Councilmember Jeanne Kohl-Welles, which she said familiarized her with issues before the council.

Her opening pitch emphasized her family’s long roots in the community and the need to stop the cycle of displacement and anti-immigrant backlash that her family lived first-hand.

“I am a fourth generation Japanese American from the Beacon Hill neighborhood in South Seattle,” Hasegawa said. “My family’s story starts with my great grandfather, who immigrated to the Central District in search of a better future, and everything that he worked for was taken from him from the government. His assets were seized, his bank accounts were frozen, and him and his four children were put into American concentration camps in Minidoka in Idaho, not because of what they had done, but because of who they were.”

Despite that ordeal, the Hasegawas were able to reestablish themselves in Seattle and get back on their feet. Unfortunately, the affordability crisis is making it harder for other immigrants and newcomers to replicate that story and make ends meet in high-cost metro areas.

“My dad was a union leader. He was secretary treasurer the Teamsters Local 174, and he was able to sustain our family of four on the single union salary. Today, my husband and I pay $4,200 a month on childcare,” Hasegawa said. “Child care is just one representation of how affordability is crushing people and making it hard to live in these communities that we love. The American dream is no longer moving away and buying a house with a white picket fence. It’s the ability to be able to remain in place in the community that you helped build. And I believe that answering the issue of affordability is going to be key to getting a lot of the pressing issues up today right.”

Along with her husband, Hasegawa is raising her two young children in the same home her grandparents and parents lived in before her.

King County Council District 2 encompasses the University District, Laurelhurst, Ravenna, Eastlake, Capitol Hill, the Central District, South Seattle, Skyway, and the Allentown neighborhood of Tukwila. It’s a renter-heavy area bearing the brunt of the affordability crisis. If elected, part of Hasegawa’s district would overlap with the district of her dad Bob Hasegawa, who has represented the 11th Legislative District in the state legislature since 2013.

Urban development

Hasegawa trumpeted the benefits of transit-oriented development (TOD) to improve affordability and boost economic activity.

“D2 is the perfect place where we can make sure that we’re modeling what transit-oriented development development looks like. It’s already zoned residential. Many places are zoned for high rise, these are places that could truly benefit from that sort of development. Missing middle housing, I would love to see incentives to developers who can guarantee a certain number of affordable housing units for an X amount of time.”

The County doesn’t directly control the land use across much of District 2, with the exception of the Skyway, a neighborhood that sits on unincorporated land between Renton and Seattle. But the County does invest significant resources in affordable housing, in addition to adopting policies that guide land use across the entire county

One place Hasegawa would like to spur development is near I-5 downtown on space created by lidding the freeway.

“We talk about our communities as being historically impacted by [transportation] systems that have caused noise pollution, air pollution, water pollution, light pollution,” Hasegawa said. “I think about the I-5 corridor, also known as the concrete scar that cuts right through the heart of our district. I would love to be an ardent advocate for the next big project.”

She pitched it as an environmental justice project that would be a big job creator.

“Lidding I-5 would be something that connects D2 to this the urban core. It would give us square footage for over a thousand new affordable housing units, child care centers, green space, and livable areas where we could have that transit-oriented development that could address some of those environmental injustices and give us the density that we’re looking for in order to accommodate the projected growth of our area, in a way that’s close to the urban core.”

With rising construction costs hitting megaprojects across the region, lidding I-5 will also require a huge investment and likely a delicate collaboration across multiple levels of government in partnership with the private sector.

On the topic of the Civic Campus Initiative, a proposal pushed by former County Executive Dow Constantine to redevelop the County’s campus in Downtown Seattle and SoDo, Hasegawa said she supports the idea, but would like an emphasis on affordable housing and uplifting marginalized communities.

“What I would like to see happening is an equitable land banking development program where we’re doing an assessment of, in particular, those county properties that are near transit hubs, and making sure that we are developing that for affordable housing specifically,” Hasegawa said. “That is exactly what we should be doing, as opposed to selling it away to the highest bidder. I would love to champion a policy where 100% of that was set aside for social housing. I would love to see long-term agreements with community land trusts, with communities of color and historically displaced and impacted community members.”

Following in the tradition of her father, Hasegawa said a public bank would be a way to fund affordable housing and make her ambitious plans come to fruition. Bob Hasegawa has long proposed establishing a public bank at the state legislature to no avail, and the legislation (Senate Bill 5754) is back this year for another go at it.

Justice experience and standing up to Trump

Hasegawa’s campaign also made her criminal justice experience a selling point: “As renewed federal actions under Donald Trump threaten civil liberties and immigrant protections, Hasegawa is the only candidate in the race with deep, hands-on criminal justice policy experience at both the county and state levels and a Masters in Criminal Justice from Seattle University.”

Hasegawa said the County must be willing to stand its ground against federal attacks, and sue to block overreach.

“The Trump administration is waging economic warfare targeting investments into our local governments based upon our support for programs that we love, like equity programs, sustainability, environmental justice, diversity in contracting,” Hasegawa said. “Where the federal government is no longer going to be funding, this is exactly where we continue to be innovative and continue to walk the line on our priorities.”

Endorsement battle heats up

The battlelines are already forming in this race. While Saldaña announced with a broad list of endorsements, Hasegawa also touted a wide list of endorsements including:

• King County Councilmembers Rod Dembowski and Teresa Mosqueda
• Seattle City Councilmembers Alexis Mercedes Rinck, Eddie Lin, Joy Hollingsworth, and Dan Strauss
• Seattle City Attorney Erika Evans; and 
• Representatives Sharon Tomiko Santos (D-Seattle, 37th LD), Chipalo Street (D-Seattle, 37th LD), David Hackney (D-Tukwila, 11th LD), Steve Bergquist (D-Renton, 11th LD), Gerry Pollet (D-Seattle, 46th LD), and Darya Farivar (D-Seattle, 46th LD).

Occasionally those endorsements overlapped, as in the case of Mosqueda and Street, who endorsed both candidates.

“Toshiko leads with both courage and care,” Rinck said in a statement. “She understands how policy decisions show up in people’s daily lives, especially for working families and communities that have too often been left out. I’ve seen her in action as a fierce advocate for justice. King County needs her experience, her values, and her steady leadership.”

Her campaign also claimed early endorsements from a number of unions, including Deep Sea Fishermen’s Union of the Pacific AFL-CIO, Inland Boatman’s Union, International Longshore & Warehouse Union Local 19, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 46, Pacific Northwest Ironworkers, Ironworkers Local 86, Masters Mates and Pilots Union, International Association of Firefighters Local 1257.

In a race with two big-name progressives, small differences are likely to get blown up. In her Urbanist interview, Saldaña noted she was the only candidate to endorse Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson before the primary, which Wilson ended up winning by nearly 10 points, shocking the political establishment. Hasegawa endorsed Bruce Harrell in the primary, before switching to a sole endorsement for Wilson.

Hasegawa emceed Wilson’s last big rally before election night, where Saldaña was also a featured speaker.

In her campaign announcement, Hasegawa noted she serves on the transition teams for newly elected Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson and King County Executive Girmay Zahilay. Those two leaders have yet to weigh in on this race.

The post Toshiko Hasegawa Jumps in King County Council District 2 Race first appeared on The Urbanist.