Episode Transcript
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0:13
Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host.
0:19
On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight
0:23
into local policy and politics in Washington state through the lens of those
0:27
doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's
0:31
happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Tuesday
0:37
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If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review
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wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always
0:51
available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.
0:55
If you missed our Tuesday topical show, Nick Brown joined me for an in-depth
1:00
interview to discuss his campaign for Attorney General and plans to address
1:05
Washington's most pressing issues.
1:08
Today, we're continuing our Friday week-in-review shows, where we review
1:12
the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: Chair of Sierra
1:19
Club Seattle, long-time communications and political strategist, Robert Cruickshank.
1:24
Hey! Robert Cruickshank: It's great to be back on, Crystal.
1:26
Thanks for having me again. Crystal Fincher: Great to have you back on.
1:29
And we have a number of things to cover today, including some wild
1:34
developments in the governor's race here in our state, with the GOP
1:41
looking like it is officially the party of Trump and moving in a different
1:45
direction than it looks like a lot of people covering the GOP over the past
1:49
several years may have been expecting.
1:52
What's been happening? Robert Cruickshank: This has been coming for a while - the Washington
1:57
state Republican Party is not really fundamentally different from
2:00
Republican parties around the country. Although there are some less extreme members of that party in
2:06
the legislature, who think they represent - tell the media they
2:08
represent - the whole party, they don't. And what we've seen over the weekend at their convention in Spokane was an example
2:14
of this, that - no, the party really is now captured by Trump and his supporters.
2:18
And the governor's race is the most high-profile example of this.
2:21
Polling had shown that Dave Reichert, former member of Congress, was the leading
2:26
Republican in the race for governor - for the open seat, with Inslee retiring.
2:30
But he's got a strong challenge from a guy named Semi Bird, who was on
2:33
the Richland school board in the Tri-Cities area until he was recalled
2:38
last year after having pushed back against state masking mandates.
2:42
And even voters in Richland said - Nah, we're tired of you - and recalled him.
2:45
And you don't see successful recalls in the state very often - certainly not
2:48
in central Washington of a Republican. Well, now Bird is running for governor and he has the support of the MAGA core,
2:55
and he won the endorsement of the state Republican Party pretty easily over the
2:59
weekend, but not after a lot of fighting on the floor in a really messy, ugly way.
3:05
Reichert's supporters tried to have Bird thrown out of being considered
3:09
for endorsement because 30 years ago he had a felony judgment
3:13
against him for financial fraud. But the ruling at the convention got overturned and Bird was eligible.
3:19
Once it became clear Bird was indeed eligible for endorsement, Dave
3:22
Reichert said - Well, I don't want to be any part of this weird, chaotic
3:26
process - which is what you say when you know you're going to lose.
3:30
And rather than compete for the endorsement anyway and lose,
3:34
Reichert just walked away. He was going to lose that endorsement vote anyway.
3:37
What all this shows is that Reichert, who is a very right-wing Republican
3:43
- anti-abortion, anti-gay rights, anti-gay marriages, we learned last week, and
3:48
voted with Trump 95% of the time in Congress - is himself not extreme
3:53
enough for the MAGA base of the party.
3:56
And I think now there's a real question of who will the
3:58
Republicans support for governor. Reichert had been doing well in the polls, but I think that's also
4:02
partly because he had much higher name recognition than Semi Bird did.
4:05
I think the biggest open question is - will Donald
4:08
Trump come in and endorse Bird? Trump - North Carolina being one example - has come in state after state
4:14
and endorsed people like Bird, these hardcore MAGA people who are darlings
4:19
of the grassroots, but not really part of the Republican establishment.
4:23
And they win primary after primary and are becoming the Republican
4:26
candidates in these governor's races and other statewide races.
4:30
Reichert's worst nightmare right now has to be that Trump will endorse
4:33
Bird - and if that happens, I don't see Reichert's campaign recovering.
4:38
Crystal Fincher: Definitely don't see it recovering. And I wonder - just at the outset - how Reichert thought this would play out.
4:44
It's been apparent for some time now, as you said, that the Republican
4:48
Party of today is not what it was 20 years ago in Washington state.
4:53
And certainly right now, there seems to be a major disconnect and a big gulf
4:59
between the Republican grassroots in the state - a lot of those were at that
5:04
convention and very passionate about Bird - and Republican mega-donors.
5:09
It's not to say that those mega-donors are moderates, but they seem to be motivated a
5:14
little bit differently than the grassroots and they don't quite see eye-to-eye.
5:18
Looks like after years of messaging and the donors' goals of basically
5:26
friendlier tax policies for them - which in essence is no tax policies for them,
5:31
basically - that they encouraged and cultivated the grassroots of today and
5:38
basically handed over a lot of power.
5:40
And now they don't have control and they don't have an understanding
5:45
of who they are, so it is creating chaos in this Republican race.
5:49
I think a big question is - where does that leave Mark Mullet,
5:53
conservative Democratic candidate for governor, in this whole race?
5:58
And it looks like there's even a new development on that front.
6:02
Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, and you set it up really well - the right-wing
6:04
alliance between big corporations and the social conservatives is coming apart
6:09
because the social conservatives, they're saying - We're in control, actually,
6:12
and you're going to do things our way. What do the big corporations do?
6:16
Well, what they do is they go recruit Mark Mullet, who's Washington
6:19
state's version of Joe Manchin, who systematically undermines
6:22
Democratic priorities in Olympia. They recruit him to go run for governor.
6:26
And like Semi Bird, Mullet has been trailing in the polls so far.
6:29
Bob Ferguson has a big, big lead over Mullet in terms of who Democrats
6:33
are supporting for governor. And not just a big lead in terms of polls - Ferguson has out-raised
6:39
Mullet significantly, $6 million to about a million dollars.
6:41
But, Mullet has a plan.
6:44
And in fact, Mullet has a super PAC. And what has begun this week is big corporations and wealthy donors on
6:50
Mullet's side are now spending money to run ads on TV and mailers to try to
6:55
boost Mullet's campaign for governor.
6:57
They want Mullet because he's a very corporate-friendly Democrat - he
7:01
opposed the capital gains tax, he's not very friendly to labor unions,
7:04
unions are lining up behind Ferguson. And these big corporations know that it's going to be increasingly difficult
7:10
for them to ally with Republicans to get their low-tax, anti-worker policies done,
7:14
so they turn to someone like Mullet. And Mullet really needed two things to go his way to have even a shot at this.
7:21
First, he needed that super PAC to come through for him - and now it looks like
7:23
they're going to spend at least a couple million dollars to try to boost him.
7:27
The other thing Mullet needed was division on the Republican side and
7:31
that is happening as well - the fight between Semi Bird and Dave Reichert.
7:34
Now, what may happen, of course, is the Republicans may just wind up coalescing
7:38
behind Semi Bird, especially if Trump were to come through and endorse Bird.
7:42
If that happens, I think Reichert's candidacy fades, and
7:46
you're looking at a very likely top-two between Ferguson and Bird.
7:49
But Mullet and his backers are hoping that Mullet somehow sneaks
7:52
his way over a divided Republican vote into a narrow second place
7:57
and have a Mullet versus Ferguson runoff - that the corporations can
8:00
then try to spend their way to victory. Now, I don't know that that works.
8:04
Even then, what you've seen in places like California - where it's two Democrats
8:07
in the runoff - is Republicans don't vote for the more conservative Democrat.
8:13
Republicans just skip that race entirely. Mullet is trying to pass himself off as somehow being pro-abortion, even though
8:20
Planned Parenthood has endorsed Ferguson, even though Mullet undermined the Keep Our
8:24
Care Act in the legislature this session - Mullet's record on these things is not
8:27
as good as Mullet will tell you it is. Point being - the MAGA base is not going to vote for Mark Mullet over Bob Ferguson.
8:35
I don't see Mullet having a shot at actually winning this election,
8:38
but he's got two things lining up his direction right now in terms
8:41
of the divisions on the right and a corporate super PAC backing him.
8:45
So it's all up to Bob Ferguson now to respond to this and get
8:49
his campaign really into a high gear - he's been doing well so far.
8:52
He's got a poll lead, but he's going to need to step it up as well as we
8:56
get into the heart of the primary. Crystal Fincher: We will continue to follow the gubernatorial saga and
9:03
the issues that are really impacting the state and where the candidates
9:06
stand as this continues to play out.
9:09
I want to talk about some corporate influence on a local level now, and
9:13
that is Councilmember Sara Nelson's attack on gig driver rights and wages
9:21
that is being pushed by these gig app companies, delivery app companies.
9:26
What's happening here? Robert Cruickshank: I feel like, honestly, for today's show - as we look back at
9:30
this week, it's going to be a regular theme of big corporations wanting to
9:35
either buy elections or buy policy.
9:38
In this case, we're talking about buying policy. This is where Sara Nelson coming into office and wanting to repay some of
9:44
her backers - in this case, the gig companies, Uber, DoorDash - which don't
9:49
want to have to pay their workers well.
9:51
It's notorious that these drivers don't usually get paid very well when it's just
9:54
simply left up to the whim of the company.
9:58
And so Seattle has an Office of Labor Standards, Seattle also
10:01
adopted a gig worker minimum wage. These companies are very upset about this, and they've gone to
10:06
Sara Nelson demanding change. Nelson pledged in council meetings in recent months that she would try to
10:11
respond favorably to what they want. And Erica Barnett at PubliCola just reported yesterday exactly
10:17
what that response will look like.
10:19
Nelson wants to eliminate the minimum wage for drivers, she wants to cut their base
10:24
mile per payment in half, she wants to eliminate a minimum $5 payment for each
10:28
delivery driver, she wants to eliminate penalties that would be imposed on
10:32
companies that fail to pay their drivers. She wants to deny their workers a right to file lawsuits against
10:38
delivery companies that withhold wages. She also wants to make it more difficult for the city to enforce laws and
10:45
regulations on these companies - doing things like giving these app companies
10:49
30 days to correct violations before taking enforcement action, barring the
10:54
Office of Labor Standards from imposing additional requirements at all, and
10:58
making it impossible for the Office of Labor Standards to actually get
11:01
information from these companies about how they're treating and paying workers.
11:05
It is a really shocking attack on the rights of workers - some of the
11:08
lowest paid and least consistently paid workers in our city - where
11:12
there's a history of these companies either underpaying or stealing wages.
11:17
And Sara Nelson is ready to give these companies everything they want.
11:20
What we'll have to see is whether the city council goes along with this.
11:23
I can't imagine it is popular with the people of Seattle to slash the
11:27
minimum wage of low-paid workers.
11:29
Nelson's betting it is, but I'm betting that there's actually a
11:32
much bigger fight coming on this. Crystal Fincher: I agree with you that it does look like there's a
11:36
much bigger fight coming on this.
11:39
One element of this that I do wonder about is the proposition, we've seen
11:44
stories covered that say - Well, restaurants are suffering under this
11:47
system now and it's too expensive for the restaurants, the volume of orders
11:52
is decreasing because it's so expensive because of all the fees, and obviously
11:56
the fees are because we're giving workers more money and not because of
12:00
any profit taking from the corporations.
12:03
And so a hope that the frustration over the level of fees creates
12:08
support for repealing this legislation and repealing these provisions.
12:14
Do you see that being successful or having any validity?
12:19
Robert Cruickshank: Well, I certainly don't see it as having validity. I know the last few years, our memories get blurry with lockdown and pandemic, but
12:25
I certainly remember 2020 when lockdowns happened and many local restaurants
12:32
pleading with people to not go through these app companies and to order directly
12:36
from the restaurant, to go have it picked up directly from the restaurant, or to
12:39
have the restaurant's own drivers bring it to you - because these restaurants
12:43
weren't getting paid very well for the services that they were providing.
12:46
They weren't getting good reimbursements. It was costing the restaurant more money to use DoorDash and
12:51
Uber Eats and things like that. So I think that these restaurants are being used by the big companies as a
12:57
excuse, but in reality, talk to local restaurants and they were never fans of
13:01
these delivery services to begin with.
13:03
And I think the other question - would it be actually politically successful?
13:06
I mean, this has been the dream of businesses in Seattle and Washington state
13:10
for the last 10 years - ever since the $15 an hour minimum wage effort took off here.
13:15
It started here obviously in SeaTac in 2013 and took the
13:18
country by storm after that. These businesses have always been hoping that at some point they can
13:23
convince the public to turn against a higher minimum wage, and it has
13:27
never ever succeeded anywhere it's been tried, even in red states - where
13:31
places like Arkansas, voters approve higher minimum wages with regularity.
13:36
I don't know that that succeeds here either. It's going to take, however, labor - I know Working Washington is working
13:42
very hard on this - to try to protect the minimum wage and the rights
13:45
and protections for these workers. That work is going to have to continue and the public's going to
13:49
have to get mobilized to stop Sara Nelson because I think - not only
13:52
do you want to protect the minimum wage for the gig worker drivers.
13:56
If Nelson succeeds, if these companies succeed in rolling back a minimum wage for
14:01
the gig workers, they won't stop there.
14:04
They will now come after the $15 an hour minimum wage itself - which is
14:07
now above $15 here in Seattle - and try to have all sorts of carve-outs
14:11
and loopholes, which they always wanted from the very beginning, and
14:14
they couldn't get because they knew the public wouldn't stand for it.
14:17
So this isn't just a battle over how much you're going to pay the DoorDash driver.
14:21
This is also ultimately a battle over the minimum wage itself
14:25
for all workers in the city. Crystal Fincher: Absolutely.
14:29
And another dimension that we learned about recently was Sara Nelson, who
14:33
owns Fremont Brewing, just sold a majority share of her firm to a firm
14:38
that owns dozens of restaurants that deliver through DoorDash - and that
14:44
potentially impacting the sale, the price.
14:48
Is this being looked into? Robert Cruickshank: So the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission says
14:54
it is reviewing this, but I think the public needs to push a lot harder.
14:59
I think there needs to be a very detailed, thorough review of not just the conditions
15:03
of the sale, but what communications were happening between Nelson, Nelson's other
15:07
business partners at Fremont Brewing, and the Seattle Hospitality Group, which has
15:12
now purchased a stake in Fremont Brewing.
15:14
Howard Wright is a major figure in Seattle Hospitality Group.
15:17
Howard Wright is also a major political figure, a major
15:19
donor, very active civically. What conversations were happening before the sale?
15:25
What conversations were happening before the 2023 election?
15:28
I think this needs to be looked at very, very closely.
15:30
Seattle thinks that it's a city that doesn't have the type of corruption
15:35
that you might see in other places. And I think Seattleites might be very surprised to understand what sometimes
15:40
can happen behind closed doors. And I think this is a very clear example where those doors need to be opened.
15:46
We need to see exactly what has happened here because there's a lot
15:49
about this deal that financially benefits Sara Nelson that needs to be
15:54
looked at very, very closely to make sure that nothing improper happened.
15:59
And if anything improper did happen, there are consequences for it.
16:03
Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. There needs to be an examination of how this came to be,
16:07
especially with the timing. And now that it's happening, Sara Nelson has an obligation to recuse
16:14
herself from this ordinance. People have different roles and positions, and we anticipate that when
16:19
someone is elected, it's possible that they'll have some personal conflicts
16:23
of interest with issues that arise.
16:25
We don't keep people from being able to hold office because there might be
16:28
a conflict, but we do require that they recuse themselves when one does arise.
16:35
It's why we require personal financial disclosures from every
16:38
person who holds office in the state. By recusing herself when there is a conflict, she would be acknowledging
16:44
the conflict and taking steps to ensure that her personal interests don't
16:49
interfere with her public duties. This is what helps maintain public trust in the council's decisions,
16:55
upholds the principles of transparency, accountability, and good governance.
16:59
This is standard. This is just what happens.
17:03
A financial conflict of interest is when an individual has a financial
17:07
stake in the outcome of a decision that they're responsible for making.
17:11
Seattle Hospitality Group, which operates several DoorDash
17:15
restaurants, just bought a majority stake in Sara Nelson's business.
17:19
There's no question Sara Nelson has a significant personal financial
17:24
interest - from several different angles - in this legislation.
17:28
This is a textbook example of financial conflict.
17:32
When a councilmember recuses himself, it means that they don't participate
17:36
in the discussion or voting for legislation that has the conflict.
17:41
Given that, I find it odd - knowing that this is undergoing an ethics
17:45
review - that the council would even allow continued discussion of this
17:49
issue with Councilmember Nelson present.
17:51
That means that the legislation would be shaped by someone with a
17:55
direct financial stake in it, which is why recusal exists - to make
17:59
sure that even that doesn't happen. So aside from the vote, she shouldn't be participating in conversation, she
18:05
shouldn't be negotiating and formulating this legislation with stakeholders.
18:10
Recusal exists to make sure that doesn't happen.
18:13
So if this continues, and certainly if this comes to a vote and Councilmember
18:18
Sara Nelson is involved with it, it would certainly be a scandal.
18:23
I want to turn to talking about the Comprehensive Plan and news
18:27
that the mayor's office removed anti-displacement proposals from the draft
18:33
anti-displacement framework in that plan.
18:36
What happened here? Robert Cruickshank: This is part of the bigger questions about this draft
18:40
Comprehensive Plan - which overall, the draft does not really address affordable
18:45
housing, it does not prevent displacement. In fact, the draft as a whole will make displacement worse because it doesn't
18:52
provide the ability to construct enough housing to meet the needs of people
18:56
living here, and the people moving here, and the people growing up who were kids
18:59
here who want to maybe stay in Seattle. But one particular piece of this that was reported again by Erica
19:05
Barnett of PubliCola this week is that there were elements in the draft
19:08
that would have talked more about new strategies that can be undertaken in
19:14
order to try to prevent displacement. Things like social housing, which voters approved last year - the
19:19
creation of a social housing authority.
19:22
This year voters will be asked to approve funding to help get that up and running
19:26
and start building social housing. Things like land banking, which is where you buy land that's affordable
19:31
now for future use, whether through the city or through a nonprofit.
19:35
And then right of first refusal laws in which community-based
19:38
organizations or even tenants would have the right to buy buildings that
19:42
are currently housing low-income tenants when they go up for sale.
19:45
There are a lot of buildings, especially Southeast Seattle, Lake City area, other
19:49
parts of the city that are still somewhat affordable where low-income tenants live.
19:52
Some families maybe own the building for a couple of decades, it goes
19:56
up for sale - that's the moment right there where when that sale is
20:00
concluded, the new owner may and often does raise the rent significantly
20:04
and price out the low-income tenants who have been there for a long time.
20:07
And so you want to provide the opportunity for people to buy that and
20:10
keep the tenants who are there, there. All those new ideas were scrapped by the mayor's office before the
20:16
draft Comp Plan went to the public. And instead, the mayor's office is saying - Oh, well, we'll just point to things
20:21
we're already doing and call that good enough for anti-displacement efforts.
20:25
And it's clearly not, because you're seeing displacement happen
20:29
with regularity across the city - primarily because we have not kept
20:33
pace with the demand for housing.
20:36
And as more and more people move here, or as more and more people are born
20:38
here, the competition for an increasingly scarce number of homes drives costs
20:43
up and makes displacement worse. So this is just another example of how the mayor's office has really undermined
20:50
this Comprehensive Plan and how City Hall, the council need to step up and
20:54
restore a lot of these things and pass a Comprehensive Plan that will allow
20:59
for quite a lot more homes to be built.
21:01
Otherwise, Seattle becomes San Francisco again, with even less
21:05
affordability and even more displacement. Crystal Fincher: I think what a lot of people are finding particularly
21:11
challenging with this is that it's been obvious that Bruce Harrell allies have
21:17
not been big fans of allowing more housing within more neighborhoods within Seattle.
21:24
That concern and that position has been justified oftentimes by people
21:28
saying - Well, if we just allow unfettered development and allow
21:33
new housing, that's going to create a greater risk of displacement.
21:37
And we're really concerned about displacement, so we need to be very
21:41
cautious about growth and make sure that we have anti-displacement policies
21:46
in place and that we do more to ensure that people aren't pushed out.
21:50
That's a concern that I think a lot of people can sympathize with.
21:54
However, we see that that doesn't seem to be a concern here and there
22:00
doesn't seem to be a legitimate interest in any new strategies.
22:04
So where does that leave us in terms of where the mayor stands and what's likely
22:10
to happen if it's left up to that office?
22:14
Robert Cruickshank: If it's left up to the mayor's office and we stay on
22:17
the current course that this draft Comprehensive Plan is on, we are on the
22:20
road to becoming San Francisco - where there's a movie that came out a few years
22:25
ago about the last Black residents of San Francisco, how the Black community
22:28
has been pushed out of San Francisco because of affordability problems.
22:32
The best thing to do to stop displacement is to make it easier to build
22:37
apartments in the parts of the city where a lot of people want to live.
22:40
And that is especially north of the Ship Canal - places like Northeast
22:44
Seattle, Ravenna, Wedgwood, Northwest Seattle, Ballard, Greenwood,
22:48
Wallingford, Fremont, all these places.
22:51
And there is construction happening in Ballard, but the rest of North Seattle
22:54
- especially between the Ship Canal and 85th, which is where a lot of the
22:57
amenities are, where a lot of people want to live - you need to upzone that area.
23:01
You need to make it easier for people to live there.
23:04
What that does, among other things, is relieve pressure on low-income
23:09
renters in Lake City, in Southeast Seattle, and in the other areas of
23:13
affordability that still remain. So one of your best anti-displacement strategies is - move the growth somewhere
23:20
else where it's mostly upper income white homeowners, which of course, once
23:25
you look at that, you understand why the mayor's office hasn't done that.
23:28
This is a very political calculation by the mayor's office - that his
23:31
political base would erupt in anger at him ahead of his reelect next year if
23:37
he proposes to make it easier to build apartments in their neighborhoods.
23:40
But that is what you need to do as an anti-displacement strategy.
23:43
The other things that were mentioned, of course - social housing, land
23:46
banking, right of first refusal - are really straightforward things that
23:50
aren't going to alienate anyone, so it's even more surprising that
23:53
they're not considering that. But ultimately, even upzoning North Seattle - these things are super popular
23:58
with the public - people want them, except maybe key elements of Harrell's base.
24:03
So he's making a political calculation about his reelect in 2025, but it may
24:06
have the impact of making the city even less affordable and creating even more
24:11
displacement for many years to come. Crystal Fincher: I want to turn to some brighter news here for a bit, and
24:18
news of the new light rail line between Bellevue and Redmond opening up soon.
24:24
When is it going to open and what kind of impact will this have?
24:28
Robert Cruickshank: Saturday. By the time people are listening to this, it'll be tomorrow when that opens.
24:32
So it will open from South Bellevue up to the Redmond Technology Center
24:37
station, which is Microsoft's big headquarters there, and many stops in
24:41
between, including downtown Bellevue. This is a huge deal.
24:44
Finally, after years - almost 30 years since the first Sound Transit
24:47
initiative passed, you're finally going to see trains running on the Eastside.
24:51
The only downside is they're not crossing the bridge yet to downtown Seattle
24:55
because of problems with construction on that bridge - they had to redo a lot of
24:59
the concrete pilings that were not done properly in 2019 and 2020 - that should
25:03
open next year, the final completion of the line into downtown Seattle.
25:07
But this is still a huge win.
25:09
And this is a win not just for riders who are going to now be able to experience
25:13
genuine mass transit on the Eastside. I think it's a win for Claudia Balducci of the King County
25:18
Council, who made this happen. Knowing that there were delays in getting the whole line open
25:24
across the lake, she said - Well, can we open just a starter line?
25:28
And Sound Transit took a look and said - Yeah, actually, we can do that.
25:31
I think it was the right call. If you look at BART in the Bay Area, it opened very similarly - a starter line
25:36
in the East Bay before the Transbay Tube opened in the early 1970s.
25:39
This is a good example - get people used to it, show people who are going
25:42
to commute between Bellevue and Redmond or even who just want to visit downtown
25:46
Bellevue, go to Bellevue Square, or who want to go up and are working
25:49
at Microsoft or want to check out the new bridge across the freeway.
25:52
This is going to be really great to show, I think, Eastside residents what mass
25:57
transit can be and give them a little taste and get them even more fired up for
26:01
when it opens across the lake next year. Crystal Fincher: Absolutely.
26:04
And we're even seeing that happening in Tacoma, with the light rail line
26:09
opening within Tacoma before the connection to the rest of the line
26:13
in Pierce and King County happens.
26:16
But certainly very exciting - a lot of residents there very eager to be
26:21
able to have another option to commute and to travel around their city.
26:27
Now, along with this and the overall light rail effort, we just saw the
26:33
Chamber launch a Save SLU effort.
26:36
What are they trying to save South Lake Union from?
26:40
Robert Cruickshank: You may see this on social media, you may wind
26:42
up seeing it even in ads elsewhere. Save South Lake Union is a new campaign by the Seattle Chamber
26:47
of Commerce and you should ask yourself - what are you saving it from?
26:51
You're saving it from a subway station at the heart of South Lake Union
26:56
at the intersection of Denny and Westlake on the line out to Ballard,
26:59
which is still being planned nearly eight years after we approved it.
27:03
And Amazon is throwing a fit. Amazon does not want this station to be located there because they're
27:08
concerned about the disruption to car traffic during the construction process.
27:13
Even though Sound Transit's own research shows that a station at Denny and Westlake
27:18
will have much higher ridership than their [Amazon's] preferred option, which is
27:22
to move the station off to the north and to the west closer to Aurora and further
27:25
away from the heart of the neighborhood, further away from offices, further away
27:29
from homes, further away from shops. And Amazon has now enlisted the Chamber of Commerce's help in this - trying to
27:35
lobby the mayor, trying to lobby the Sound Transit Board to move the station.
27:39
Moving the station is going to cause more delay in the process to get this
27:43
line built - and again, it's been eight years since we approved ST3.
27:48
It's appalling and I think unacceptable that it's taken this
27:51
long to get the planning process complete and construction started.
27:55
The longer you wait to start construction, the more expensive it becomes.
27:59
And now, what the Chamber and Amazon want is a station that's going
28:03
to be less useful and carry less riders, which is problematic from
28:07
the rider perspective, as well as problematic from a climate perspective.
28:11
But the Chamber, in another example of our theme of today's show - big
28:15
companies trying to buy elections and buy policy - is now going to spend a lot
28:18
of money to try to convince the public and convince the Sound Transit Board
28:22
that they should move this station. And this comes on top of the decision in the Chinatown neighborhood last year that
28:28
another deep-pocketed person, developer Greg Smith, was able to get the Sound
28:33
Transit Board - with Dow Constantine's help - to move the station out of the
28:36
heart of Chinatown, even over the bitter objections of many people in Chinatown
28:40
who wanted the station to stay there. So this is becoming an example where deep pockets believe they can just
28:46
move stations around as they want - to get it out of their way or to help
28:51
get what they want, even if it means a worse experience for riders and
28:55
undermining the overall transit system. So it's really frustrating to see this.
28:59
Crystal Fincher: What can people do to make their own
29:02
voices heard in this process? Robert Cruickshank: Well, I think it's sending a message to the mayor - Bruce
29:07
Harrell is on the Sound Transit Board, so is Councilmember Dan Strauss - telling
29:11
them to keep the station at Denny and Westlake, keep it useful for riders,
29:15
and no more delays in the planning process, we need to get this underway.
29:19
And sending a message to other members of the Sound Transit Board - you can
29:23
send a message to the whole board and tell them - keep the station where
29:25
it is, no more delays, no more moving the stations around, let's get this
29:29
thing under construction already. Crystal Fincher: Absolutely.
29:34
I want to close today by talking about news - really national
29:37
news - made by a local hospital here.
29:39
And that Seattle Children's Hospital, in a settlement with Texas, won't
29:45
turn over gender-affirming care records in a lawsuit with the state.
29:50
How did this lawsuit come about? Robert Cruickshank: The state of Texas, and particularly their Attorney General
29:55
Ken Paxton, have been going around trying to undermine gender-affirming
29:59
care, especially for young people - starting in Texas, but they're trying
30:03
to use, as they do, their leverage to undermine that care around the country.
30:09
And so they had sent a request to Seattle Children's Hospital demanding
30:14
that they hand over records regarding gender-affirming treatment potentially
30:18
given to children from Texas. This is part of their overall effort, similar with what these red states
30:22
are doing with abortion - eliminate the right to abortion in their
30:25
state and eliminate the ability to go out of state for that service.
30:29
They tried to do the same thing with gender-affirming care - prevent it
30:32
from happening in Texas and prevent kids from Texas from going elsewhere.
30:36
And Seattle Children's has a nationally-known and
30:40
nationally-regarded services for kids who need gender-affirming care.
30:45
And so Texas, in an effort to harass families who are
30:48
seeking that, sought records. And to their immense credit, Seattle Children's said - No way.
30:53
We are not turning this over - and in fact, Children's Hospital sued the
30:56
Attorney General of Texas to block this.
30:59
This week, news is that there's a settlement, especially after
31:02
a judge had dismissed the suit. And so the settlement is that Seattle Children's doesn't have to turn anything
31:07
over, so they have won that battle.
31:09
In return, Seattle Children's says they will not conduct any operations
31:13
in the state of Texas - the extent of their operations in the state of Texas,
31:17
where they had maybe a couple people doing remote clerical work from Texas.
31:21
So the status quo remains. People from around the country can come to Seattle, can come to Seattle Children's
31:26
Hospital and get gender-affirming care.
31:29
And those records aren't going to be turned over to right-wing
31:31
bullies back in their home state. So it's a big win.
31:34
And kudos to Seattle Children's Hospital for taking that stand.
31:38
Crystal Fincher: Certainly kudos for taking that stand, for
31:40
fighting, and securing this victory.
31:42
And I think just another warning to the general public that - one, these
31:47
states are aggressively pursuing the cessation of health care for the trans
31:53
community, overall, certainly they're using children as their initial foothold.
31:59
But they - in a variety of legislation in a variety of states - made it
32:03
clear that they're targeting the entire trans community and beyond
32:07
to the greater LGBTQ community.
32:10
Also how important it is to make sure that we have data protections and
32:14
that we address when and how it is appropriate to collect data and share it.
32:19
And I know there have been attempts that have fallen short and some attempts
32:23
currently in process in state legislatures across the country, certainly in ours.
32:29
But I think it is just a reminder that we have to pay attention to
32:32
this - we have to be very proactive about safeguarding this data.
32:36
Organizations need to be very careful and examine what they're collecting
32:41
and why, because we're seeing this data weaponized by states in these situations
32:48
against members of our community. So important update and occurrence, and certainly hope we see more hospitals and
32:57
healthcare providers taking these stands.
33:00
And with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on
33:03
this Friday, April 26th, 2024.
33:06
The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng.
33:08
Our insightful co-host today was Chair of Sierra Club Seattle,
33:12
long-time communications and political strategist, Robert Cruickshank.
33:16
You can find Robert on Twitter at @cruickshank.
33:18
You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter at @HacksWonks.
33:21
You can find me at @finchfrii, with two I's at the end.
33:24
You can catch Hacks & Wonks on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you
33:28
get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar.
33:32
Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions
33:34
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33:38
delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen.
33:42
You can also get a full text transcript of this episode and links
33:46
to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com
33:50
and in the episode notes. Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
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