It’s been two weeks since the election in Seattle and now the that the dust has settled we know who the candidates for Mayor will be, former United States Attorney Jenny Durkan and urban planner and activist Cary Moon. In my view, builders, developers, and people who operate housing need to hold off on supporting either candidate. I think the picture going forward is a lot more complicated the one might first think. The real question is whether Durkan moves toward Moon’s views, or whether Moon backs away from some of hers.

The Durkan Effect

It’s going to be really tempting to support Jenny Durkan at this stage. “Why not?” you might wonder, “after all she’s pro-business and she’d be a lot better than Cary Moon for builders and developers.”

Not so fast. It is true that Durkan was supported by the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce, but that organization hasn’t exactly been effective against City Council actions that impact small and medium sized businesses in Seattle, the minimum wage (they slowed implementation), were unable to stop the Council from meddling in how workers are scheduled, and didn’t stop an illegal income tax. The other candidate they supported, Sara Nelson who ran for City Council didn’t win. And the Chamber along with others spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to knock Kshama Sawant out of office unsuccessfully.

Along with being largely ineffective, the Chamber has never demonstrated any interest or support for small and medium sized developers outside of downtown. Their support of Durkan should be greeted with skepticism; it means their leadership thinks Durkan will keep supporting downtown developers, and their support will be confirmatory to Moon supporters that Durkan is the “establishment” candidate, which will rally the supporters of other candidates around Moon. Chamber support means Moon will be able to consolidate the substantial number of votes left by Oliver, Hasegawa, Farrell, and McGinn who all in their own ways ran against the “establishment.”

But isn’t Durkan the “adult in the room?” When I asked her intently and pointedly if she could describe the difference between the Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA) program, a forced sale of density to builders and the broader recommendations of the Mayor’s Housing Affordability and Livability (HALA) Committee she bristled at the question. She didn’t really answer, repeating bland statements about housing and affordability. She didn’t seem to understand the difference or really think that it mattered. Housing. Housing. Housing. We’ve got to do something. The bromides were not impressive.

When I challenged her about having one of her first meetings as a candidate with big Downtown and South Lake Union developer Vulcan, she said, “Don’t believe everything you read.” Hmmm. So the Seattle Times is fake news? The truth is that on day one, Durkan will be on the phone with what she apparently considers to be the “development community,” big time land use attorney Jack McCullough and Vulcan. Another supporter of Durkan is another big time attorney, Faith Pettis, who runs a practice that makes millions from transactions associated with Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC), expenses that drive up the cost of non-profit subsidize housing and have forced non-profit developers to use the MHA program to shake down small and medium sized builders to pay her fees. She was, without even blinking, the chair of the HALA Committee that recommended MHA. Can you say, “Conflict of interest?”

Jenny Durkan has yet to demonstrate an interest in the problems of the people who build and manage the vast majority of housing in the city. She has a lot of work to do to show she cares and will stand up for the real development community.

Cary Moon and the “Dark Energy” of the Real Estate Economy

Cary Moon believes in the Loch Ness Monster and Big Foot. And maybe even aliens. I’m kidding, but she and Charles Mudede at The Stranger effectively reprised the roles of Scully and Mulder on the X Files with their thousands of words long ghost story about sketchy foreign investors buying up all the housing in town and leaving it empty. That, she argued, is the reason why housing prices are “skyrocketing.”

Back in the real world, we all know that housing prices are up because supply isn’t keeping up with burgeoning demand and job growth. I wrote about the fact that even if there were dark forces (Dark Energy Mudede calls it) roving around the edges of the city, reviewing maps, and planning big buys, those evil foreign forces would have to buy 1400 apartments and empty them out in order to boost prices by 1 percent. Her views on speculation and the people she listens to about it are, simply put, absurd.

Moon has never managed anything as large as a city (neither has Durkan) and she has been on the outside of government, pushing it to pay attention to things like the waterfront and the viaduct. But it was her activism, combined with demands from the freight industry, which gave us the tunnel. Love it or hate it, the tunnel was a huge waste of energy for the city, as we battled over it for years. Moon oddly argued we needed access to the waterfront; we already have it both downtown and at places like Myrtle Edwards and Alki. We hardly needed such a battle and billions of dollars to let me launch my kayak from the deck at Ivar’s.

Now What?

I know. You’re thinking, “So what the hell are we supposed to do? Who do we support?”

I don’t know. But what I will be carefully watching like a hawk with progressive lenses (and so should you) is which candidate pulls the other candidate. Will Moon start abandoning her conspiracy theories? Will Durkan say that rent control is another “tool we should have in our tool box?” Which candidate will break first? Which one will say, “Me too!” first and most often? I have my guess and my bet. What’s yours? Call me and we can talk. Until then I’ll be watching, waiting, and listening. And yes, you can have my invitation to the Chamber’s Christmas party.