Transit advocate Rob Johnson is racking up cash and endorsements in his campaign against incumbent Jean Godden. Kelly O
I really hoped to use this space to tell you about the sweet date I went on with Jean Godden.
It would be all about how we tooled around the district, checking out her favorite badass lady-owned businesses and talking (again) about what bullshit it was that she got paid less than her male coworkers at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer back in the day. She’d show me the neighborhoods she’s lived in, including the one in which she once had to leave her house around Christmastime because she got a death threat for writing a column in favor of abolishing the death penalty.
And, since we hadn't talked in a while, she’d catch me up on all of her new ideas—or even one idea—for how to tackle gender pay equity in her next term. It’s a complex, hard-to-fix problem, but it’s the one Godden cares most about. At the very least, maybe her campaign team would have ripped some stuff off from Morgan Beach over in the 3rd.
None of this happened. These days, incumbent city council member Jean Godden isn't exactly cooperating with The Stranger. Her council office has been MIA when asked about her positions on things like police reform and increased notification times for “no-fault evictions.” Ditto for her campaign staff, who didn't respond to requests for this piece. Godden didn’t come to our endorsement interview, either—because, her staff told us at the last minute, she had to film her video voters guide segment.
This is probably my fault, but it's also not that strange if we look at Godden's campaign strategy so far. The people who decide this off-year primary election are going to be mostly older, more conservative voters—and Godden knows that.
“With the official suggestion that election turnout could be as low as 30 percent due to this summer sunshine," Godden wrote in a recent campaign e-mail asking supporters for donations, "we could be looking at one of the oldest average election turnout[s] (over 62 years old)—and just voters who vote all the time. If that’s the case, chances are many of the voters in the August 4th primary will probably have voted for me many times in the past.”
In other words, she's straight up counting on voter apathy—especially among young people—in order to keep her job.
I did encounter Godden at an arts-focused candidate event last week organized by Council Member Nick Licata. I weaved in and out of groups of sweaty mingling political types, lingering awkwardly near Godden until she finished her conversations. When I finally cornered her, she said she didn’t show up for our endorsement meeting because, “I figured if I wasn't going to get the endorsement, why come to the meeting?”
And why hasn't she returned our calls and e-mails?
Sometimes The Stranger has deadlines, she told me, demonstrating a working understanding of what journalism is, “and we have other things to do.”
So, you’re saying you’re not intentionally not talking to us?
“I’m not not talking to you,” she said. She then told me, again, how much she loved being called a “badass bitch” by my predecessor Anna Minard and walked away.
***
District 4, where Godden is running against four challengers, covers northeast Seattle including the University District, Ravenna, most of Wallingford, and Eastlake.
It’s a district that’s both urban and suburban with a lower percentage of people 65 and older than the city as a whole, according to Nielsen data compiled by the Seattle Times. The district is home to a slim majority of renters but, as political consultant Ben Anderstone pointed out when I talked to him earlier this year, many of those renters are students who tend to move around a lot and feel less connected to local elections. District 4 is, Anderstone said, “a swing district, and a very polarized one.”
With light rail expansion already underway, neighborhoods like the University District will see more growth, pitting pro-density types against nail-biting neighbors worried about development taking away parking, open space, and views from a high school.
Based on name recognition and fundraising, Godden is likely to make it through the primary. (She’s raised $85,300—that's $20,000 more than her best-funded opponent.) In the general, she’s likely to face either Rob Johnson or Michael Maddux. Johnson is director of the advocacy group Transportation Choices Coalition; Maddux is a paralegal and Democratic party and parks activist.
But remember that EMC poll from last year measuring council members’ popularity? In her district, Godden had the same 21 percent “unfavorable” rating as stone-cold Kshama Sawant, but a lower favorable rating and a higher “can’t rate/never heard of” percentage.
So, does Godden's name recognition necessarily translate to approval? Is there an alternate universe in which she gets knocked out in the primary? We’ll see.
***
If Godden loses her job this year, there's a good chance it's going to be because of this guy: Transportation nerd/J. Crew model Rob Johnson.
I meet Johnson at a parklet in the University District. Nearby, Sound Transit is building a light rail station that will, by 2021ish, offer riders an eight-minute train to downtown. He sees this area as a place where transportation, growth, and density debates are all happening at once.
“This light rail is one of my biggest professional accomplishments,” Johnson says, “but getting people to and from the light rail, particularly east and west, when it opens, both on bus and bike and walking, is going to be one of the biggest challenges the city’s going to have.”
Johnson is a single-family-home owner but an unabashed fan of density. He supports the mayor's $930 million transportation levy, more bus-only lanes, and asking Sound Transit to help fund affordable housing on top of its new light rail stations. He thinks the housing levy (a property tax) should be expanded as one of the primary ways of funding new affordable housing. He says he “didn’t love” recent legislation from Council Member Mike O’Brien—made more dramatic by Tom Rasmussen—that reels in density in low-rise zones.
Johnson is non-committal on linkage fees to make developers fund affordable housing, but says he supports a land value tax. That would tax properties based on the value of the land without taking into account what’s actually on the land. The goal is to increase taxes for developers who are holding onto property without building anything on it and to discourage single-family homeowners who are holding out in up-zoned areas.
That, Johnson explains as we take a bus from the parklet to the Roosevelt neighborhood, would create money to build affordable housing and push more density. (Like other campaign trail tax ideas, this one is legally iffy.)
In his role as director of the Transportation Choices Coalition, Johnson has been one of the region’s best known transit advocates. But that group is sometimes at odds with others over how willing environmentalists should be to compromise. Take, for example, the recent debate over the state legislature's transportation package, which includes taxing authority to fund new light rail but also billions for new highway construction and a "poison pill" meant to prevent a new clean fuel standard. While the Sierra Club held out in opposition to the package, the TCC reluctantly praised the deal.
In a recent e-mail, Johnson's campaign called the package "certainly a compromise on achieving better environmental standards statewide" but also "a clear victory for transportation choices in Seattle."
Perhaps because of that collaborative brand, a certain air of inevitability has settled around Johnson's campaign. He’s crushing Godden’s other challengers in fundraising and racking up a surprising mix of endorsements. Among them: The Sierra Club, the King County Labor Council, the Chamber of Commerce’s “Civic Alliance for a Sound Economy,” and the anti-$15 Seattle Restaurant Alliance. And just last week: the Seattle Times. He got a 100 percent score on the Downtown Seattle Association’s scorecard (higher even than Godden’s 93 percent).
In the pine bunker of the pub under Third Place Books in Ravenna, Johnson pushes back against the criticism that he'd be another Seattle-nice compromiser on a city council already full of those. He says he supports reducing traffic on 65th Street, the new University District business improvement area, and calling for height increases in the district. Those are all positions that have "absolutely lost me votes," he says.
“I’ve got a core set of values on land use and transportation issues in particular, but on progressive policies more generally,” Johnson says, slipping into political speak. “But I’m not so dogmatic as to think there’s only one way to get there, so I’m open to different concepts about how we can achieve those objectives.”
***
Michael Maddux plays tax nerd to Johnson's transportation wonkery. The parks and Democratic party activist doesn't actually clash with Johnson on policy that often. Adorably, they recently carpooled to an endorsement meeting. The difference is in priorities.
Maddux’s campaign is focused on—surprise—housing affordability, but with a focus on progressive taxation. He lives in a two-bedroom basement apartment in Eastlake, where he says the neighborhood has seen an influx of new development that’s not affordable. That’s stoking mistrust of the idea that supply alone can solve the city’s affordability crisis, Maddux says. He’s supportive of a “linkage fee done right” (read: one could withstand an inevitable legal challenge), using city bonds to pay for city-owned housing, and inclusionary zoning to require developers to set aside units at affordable rents.
“When I talk about rent increases, when I talk about what we can do around affordable housing,” Maddux says, “for me that’s my life now.”
Maddux and I walk to the divey Eastlake Zoo Tavern, where the haggard bartender really tries to sell us these electric pink, 9-percent-alcohol “slushies” since it’s so damn hot out. The bartender thinks I will be especially interested because, I guess, they are sugary and I am a lady and ladies like sugary pink drinks? I am decidedly not interested. We get a pitcher of Fat Tire.
Like a grad student who's cornered you at a party, Maddux can go on and on about housing policy and court rulings on taxes from the 1930s. But he punctuates that with things like this: “At the end of the day, it all comes back to our shitty tax structure in the state of Washington.” Instead of waiting for change from the state, Maddux wants the Seattle City Council to push forward more progressive taxes, even if it risks landing us in court.
He supports the city using some of its bonding capacity on affordable housing and also wants to use some of that authority to “go it alone” on transit. He wants city funds paired with the taxes that will fund Sound Transit’s ST3 plan in order to expand light rail at a faster pace than ST3 alone will do.
Maddux supported a plan from Council Members Sawant and Nick Licata to lower the proposed Move Seattle levy and get some of that money from taxes on businesses, commercial parking lots, and developers instead of property taxes alone. (Johnson opposed this alternative plan, which was pitched by Sawant and Licata as a more progressive approach.)
“[Johnson] is good on transit policy,” Maddux says about his opponent, “but how do we fund tranist? Flat fees and sales taxes.”
Up here in District 4, the spike in hate crimes on Capitol Hill rarely gets much attention. Maddux is talking about it as a place where his personal experience and his tax policies align. He's pitching a capital gains tax on high-profit property transfers to fund an LGBTQ community center and shelter.
Maddux says that as a teenager he “had my head kicked in” because he’s gay and spent three months living in a youth shelter. With the current council, Maddux can talk about his experience and likely get a majority of members to vote in favor of funding LGBT services. But to look at new kinds of taxes, like his capital gains idea, he says having an LGBT member on the council matters. (With Sally Clark already gone and Tom Rasmussen retiring after this term, there won't be anymore—unless there's something the other council members aren't telling us.)
“If we’re talking about safety for LGBTQ youth and I’m talking to fellow council members, it’s not going to be an abstract idea,” Maddux says. “This is my life that I’ve experienced."
***
The other two candidates taking on Godden are neighborhood activist Tony Provine and University of Washington alum and employee Abel Pacheco.
I meet Tony Provine at the Roosevelt light rail station under construction at 12th Avenue and 65th Street, where the conversation has a starkly different tone from Johnson's light rail optimism.
Provine isn’t explicitly anti-light-rail, but he laments the effects of construction on nearby businesses. When we stop at Thrive, a cafe and juice bar, he asks the employee behind the counter how the light rail station construction has affected business. She says it’s almost done them in. They even had to sell the rights to their name in order to stay afloat, she says, and are now looking for another one.
“Most businesses did not realize how bad it was going to get,” Provine tells me.
District elections have invited young, grassrootsy progressives into the process (see: Morgan Beach, Halei Watkins, Mercedes Elizalde), and have made more room for growth-averse
NIMBYs
neighborhood activists.
Provine is president of the Ravenna-Bryant Community Association and co-chairs the Northeast District Council of Neighborhoods. He’s also worked on the Seattle-King County Advisory Council for Aging and Disability Services.
His brand of conservatism is more related to growth than social issues. He's supportive of tent encampments and opposes a smoking ban in Seattle parks, but he’s skeptical of removing parking lanes for bike and bus lanes. As we walk through Roosevelt and the University District, Provine points out busy streets where he doesn't believe bike lanes should be built and quieter streets where they should. (One of these quieter streets is "beautiful Olmstead[-designed] Ravenna Boulevard." The grass is brown and dry, but I guess I get his point?)
Provine fought up-zoning near Roosevelt High School and favors turning the dilapidated property the city is seizing from slumlord Hugh Sisley into a park instead of affordable housing (he says it doesn't offer enough space to build housing). In a recent campaign e-mail, he promised he “won’t wage a war on cars.”
“Anybody who actually stands up for neighborhoods and some amount of having neighborhoods involved in planning for the growth and the density that’s coming is [called] a NIMBY,” he says as we walk and he points out businesses worried about losing their parking to bike and bus lanes.
Provine acknowledges he’s “no Roger Valdez,” referring to the developer lobbyist and density advocate.
"He’s always wondering why the city just doesn’t take charge and why we don’t build things for the people who want to move here? Why do we have to listen to the people who are already here?" Provine says. "I just find that argument is so illogical. They’re gonna be residents someday. Won’t they want to have a voice too?...The thing that attracts people to a neighborhood sometimes is its livability and if you destroy that, what are you left with?”
***
Using money and name recognition as meters, Abel Pacheco seems to have little chance of making it through the primary. Still, like other young candidates, the 28-year-old is an example of the longshot-but-not-totally-incompetent players the district system is attracting.
When we meet at MOD Pizza in the U-District, Pacheco has just finished an endorsement interview and has another meeting at 11 p.m. After door-belling the previous night, he says he went on a 5-mile run thinking about, “What could I have done differently?” The background photo on his iPhone is Michael Jordan from his “Flu Game.” The dude is intense.
Pacheco works in the Office of Minority Affairs and Diversity at the UW and previously worked for the Seattle Police Foundation, which “raises support and awareness for the Seattle Police Department.” He’s got the endorsement of the police union and says public safety issues are what inspired him to run. He’s calling for more community policing, including “community outposts,” where officers would be stationed in neighborhoods, and an expansion of the diversion program LEAD. But he equivocates on abolishing the police-stacked discipline review board as some reform advocates have called for.
As a “Latino man raised by a black dad” who’s also worked closely with cops at the Seattle Police Foundation, Pacheco is pitching himself as someone who can see both sides of police issues.
“I’m not a flame-thrower,” he says. “I’m a bridge builder.”
Pacheco rattles through a list of ambitious, if not always realistic, ideas for the city. He wants wifi-equipped busses so arrival times are more accurate. He thinks the Seattle Police Foundation could partner with credit unions to offer low-interest loans to police officers who want to live in the city. He’s proposing a lid over I-5 between 45th and 47th Streets, which would connect Wallingford and the U-District and, he says, possibly be home to affordable housing.
Pacheco says people he meets while door-belling are generally responsive to “new energy on the city council" and he thinks he can galvanize college voters.
“Young people do vote,” Pacheco says. “They just need a reason to.”
For an election that will happen while most UW students are away for the summer, even Jean Godden knows that's wishful thinking.
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