Forget About Sawant: We Need A Charter Amendment
It was five years ago, and on my Facebook feed all I saw, everyday, all day long were posts about Donald Trump. Were my Facebook friends all supporters of the Trump campaign? No, they were outraged middle to left residents of the general vicinity. At one point I started posting images of jackasses every time I saw a Trump post with a message saying that my goal was to get people to stop talking and posting about Trump! I failed. Are you happy now?
The Sawant Trump Connection
Well, the same thing that was true about Trump is true about Kshama Sawant. Like Trump, Sawant is a performer, an artist who is very good at getting you and others all wound up. Here’s the truth: almost nothing that Sawant has pushed for ever passed in its original form. From the $15 minimum wage to the latest tax on jobs, Sawant jumped around and turned out crowds of people to yell and scream, but in almost every case it was her colleagues on the Council and the Mayor that passed some form of what she was calling for. Sawant can’t do anything on her own; she’s one vote on a dysfunctional legislative body in a City government headed by a Mayor that has lost touch.
What’s amusing is that when I have said, “Good riddance!” at the thought of Mayor Durkan being removed from office by a recall vote, people have actually said to me, “What, you want Sawant to be Mayor?” This is the thrall that Sawant has people in. It’s pure genius in some ways: make a lot of noise, throw out extreme ideas, and watch your Council colleagues bend over backwards to water those down into actual policy in the name of “social justice.” She gets the credit (and the blame) and the city lurches further toward chaos. It’s a story as ugly as the myth of the Titan Cronus.
And by the way, Sawant isn’t up for reelection until 2023, and the last time the business and real estate community tried to take her out with a kid that supported rent control, it failed spectacularly. Remember that? Want to do that again? Even if you could make her disappear right now, today, it’s too late, this Council is already dominated by people who support her ideas.
Can you say, “Please, Mayor Gonzalez?”
So stop worrying about Sawant. Start worrying about Mayor Gonzalez, the real political powerhouse at City Hall. Gonzalez shut down efforts by Sawant and Councilmember Tammy Morales to pass a jobs tax, until the unrest after the killing of George Floyd. Now the tax is law, because Gonzalez, President of the City Council, reversed course and let it happen. Gonzalez is a brilliant politician, with very little driving her agenda but accruing more power; the best politicians always are. She knows she has to balance what’s going on in the streets, with Sawant, and what is rational policy. So far, she’s played it perfectly, setting up the Mayor to look impotent while casting herself as the champion of social justice and a rational actor compared to the apparent lunacy of Sawant. She is our own local Francis Urquhart (not the rip off, the real one on the BBC).
Again, who’s getting the blame in the business and real estate community for the chaos in the streets, the new tax, and the departure of Chief Best? Not Gonzalez who crushed the Mayor by overriding her veto of the tax and pushing for slashing Best’s salary and laying off police officers. Weirdly, Sawant gets the blame. Guess who the business and real estate community is going to start paying obeisance to soon? That’s right, it is Councilmember Gonzalez who, if Durkan does get tossed, will become Mayor. And if I was advising Gonzalez, I’d be planning my Mayoral campaign against the wounded Mayor and the inevitable crush of left leaning wild eyed candidates that will emerge next year, not to mention the right leaning, “lock ’em up” crowd as well. Gonzalez, a lawyer like Durkan, will seem like the best most moderate candidate. She’s not a moderate, however, but an opportunist (as long as we’re not letting our liberal arts education go to waste, they’re in the vestibule of hell in Dante’s Inferno).
Who’s to Blame and Will They Do it Again?
The business and real estate community are to blame for this mess, constantly focusing on the next six months and the four corners of their pro forma instead of the next six years, always worried about keeping “friends” at City Hall in hopes of making some kind of deal. And legal challenges and lawsuits take too long and only confirm the “greedy landlord and developer” narrative. No, lawsuits won’t pressure City Hall to do anything differently, it will only make the Council look like they stood up for the right reasons against people who claim they’re struggling during COVID-19 but want to evict people into homelessness.
The difference between making a deal in the real world and making one in politics is vastly different; in politics, like the story of Cronus, its a battle for power and dominance, not a better rate of return than treasuries. Like I said, if I was Gonzalez or advising Gonzalez, I’d be gathering support and money now from the inept and cowering Chamber of Commerce and others who want to “make a deal.” Gonzalez will take your money and then do whatever she wants and you will not be able to stop her.
The madness in this city will get worse with this dynamic, not better. Getting rid of Durkan and containing the left led by Sawant by paying homage to Gonzalez and the “moderates” only feeds the bad housing policy (tax housing to make it less expensive), the bad public safety policy (defund the police to make the city safer), and bad economic policy (create opportunity by disincentivizing job creation). Gonzalez supports and embodies these perversions because that’s where people’s heads are at; corporations are bad, tax the rich! As Christopher Matthews said, in good times regular people like the rich because they think they might get rich, and in bad times they hate them because they’re worried they’ll be poor.
What we need is fundamental change in the form of an amendment to the City Charter, something that can be done every odd year — and I don’t mean odd like weird, I mean any year that cannot be divided exactly by 2, like 2021. Last spring I wrote up a sketch of a charter amendment. I’m posting it below. If you like this idea (there are a lot of details to be worked out) let me know. If something like this is going to happen, we need to start working on it now.
Is the Seattle City Council working for you?
The Seattle City Council doesn’t seem to be listening to the people. When voters expressed anger about the proposed “head tax” on jobs, people quickly signed petitions to repeal the tax. The Council wrongly said that the business community lied to voters to get signatures. When the documentary Seattle is Dying aired, the Council dismissed it as right wing propaganda rather than taking the concerns about drug use, mental illness, and crime seriously.
It’s time to change the City Council to make it more representative of the people who live, work, and own businesses in the city!
Charter Amendment Proposal
- Change number of council districts to 25 based on population;
- Councilmembers will be elected to two-year terms with a term limit of 6 years;
- The compensation for Councilmembers will be set at 60 percent of Seattle’s Area Median Income ($42,150 in 2018) as established by HUD;
- Child care will be included for members of the City Council as part of compensation as well as health benefits and one staff person who will be compensated at the same level as the Councilmember;
- The Councilmembers will be elected by ranked choice voting using the model that took effect in San Francisco in November 2019; and
- Each year the Mayor’s Budget proposal must be presented to the voters for an advisory (approve or disapprove) vote before submission to the City Council for approval.
