The real winners of election season: campaign consultants, pollsters, yard sign printers. Paid with you tax dollars, no less! Fun side effect: arguing on social media and realignment of political norms beyond all recognition. 🤷🏻‍♀️

I guess when you can't win by running on the issues, you fall back on complaining about who supports the opposing candidate? I'm not finding that particularly persuasive.

@4 you have it exactly backwards. Politics is built on coalitions of interest groups. Individual politicians don't matter - the people that back them do

@5 Ah, interesting, I did not know that. I just went over to the SEEC website, and pulled up a list of the top contributors to Harrel's campaign. In the top 10, I see a woman who lists her occupation as a homemaker, a retired person, and a doctor who works at Seattle Children's.

So, using your methodology, Harrel must be the best candidate for women's issues, the elderly, and healthcare. Thanks so much, what a useful tip!

Hannah, I'm disappointed you didn't link to my Stranger staff writer bio. So I'm going to add it here. And in the interest of completeness, you might have also mentioned that I have also provided (mostly on a pro bono basis) some strategic consulting advice to the IE for Bruce Harrell and to Seattle for Common Sense. Fingers crossed that I'm going to be celebrating on election night!

Now, for my Stranger bio:

Sandeep Kaushik [yes, indeed, please do remember that name!]

A former drug addict of no fixed address and ambivalent sexual orientation, Kaushik landed at The Stranger only after being poached from the Seattle Weekly’s recruiting department, which had lured him from the scenic vista of Cleveland, Ohio. Kaushik can often be overheard working on assignments for other publications (Time Magazine, The Boston Globe) while on the clock at The Stranger, but he has never once been reprimanded. Experts credit his good luck not to the fact that he quintuples the company’s minority employee quotient, but to the fact that Kaushik is a husband and father, with another kid on the way.

@7 Sorry, dropped an "L" from Harrell.

I'm Hanna, a stupid ignorant white chick who's never actually needed to deal with the real world. Listen to me. Lol....

@8
That’s awesome Sandeep!!!

I am one of those many who have donated to the more moderate candidates in this race, via both their direct campaigns and voucers, as well supporting PACs that the candidates do not control. I can't speak for all of the other donors you cite but can say with certainty that the only benefits I seek in supporting my favorite candidates is a city that is a decent and safe place for all.

I live in a nice in-city home and have not suffered to date break-ins, package thefts, or assaults. My local park is relatively free of campers but has seen a few off and on. I can fly away on nice vacations and have a second home in a rural area. I do not suck at the teat of city spending and whatever the outcome of the race, the economic impact on my existence will be nil. Life is good blah blah, hate me. But when I see those who are hurt by our city's horrible priorities, I see many people of color, with shootings, assaults and property crimes impacting them disproportinately. I see small businesses being shoplifted to the point of destruction and despair, I see neighborhoods and precious parks stolen by drug addicted vagrants and see these same vagrants living lives of desperation with indifference to the core sources of their problems.

I want better for my town and see the fail of the current electeds and regime. What this election has unleahsed is meaningful organization on the part of moderates which until now had been nil. For some time labor, especially SEIU and SEA have been very adept of taxing their members and building large war chests for their favorite candidates, who have delivered nicely to a radical agenda that disproportionately serves the more base elements of our city - the takers vs. the givers. Moderates were asleep while organized leftists took over the council with serious dollars. Our electeds pay obeisance to the grifters who survive and are employed on the tax dollars the rest of us pay. Well played till now.

As the article notes, the total dollar numbers are not dissimilar between the progressives and the centrists. The current toxicity has awakened the center, including a new and angry donor base. We are no longer asleep and no longer afraid to put our names on donor lists and disclosures. I hope we as a constituency have just gotten started and that we will show our numbers and dollars in every election going forward, as well as the imminent recall vote of Sawant, who is not hurting for her special interest workers and dollars from across the nation it appears. We are coming for you destroyers of all that can be good.

@14 Importantly, she is a Libra.

The babbittry of the Seattle electorate is unnerving.

Here we see people protesting the status quo in the streets, nevertheless the turgid “business as usual” mentality is lurking within the mass political psychology.

This would be a great opportunity to throw the pro-developer corporatists out of office and vote the progressive Stranger ballot recommendations.

Per usual, The Seattle Times is recommending a conservative, pro-business slate of candidates when we need to address the homelessness and gun violence social decay with vigor.

Don’t allow the real estate developers to get in the driver’s seat and let Seattle become further socially stratified.

The torpor we endured under the Durkan administration should be reason enough to vote for progressives like González, Thomas-Kennedy and Oliver.

Also, stand-up with Sawant and agitate for proactive homelessness solutions and worker rights.

Remember to vote for Nguyen and the roster of Port candidates to get some fresh horses in Port leadership.

This election is an excellent opportunity to get more energetic leadership and make Seattle more socially evolved and livable, with more sidewalk cafes for example, as opposed to tent campers and transients crapping in the alleys.

@16 None of that is going to happen.

Well the right wing again rears its ugly head. Never having to live from paycheck to paycheck
most likely and had to go homeless because they lost their job or are running from abuse or mistakes caused by desperation - they shit on anything that threatens the status quo that could help the disenfranchised. The types that joined the white citizens councils in the past.

You are not moderates but really right wing who are afraid that someone else wants a bite of the apple.

It won't work for you.

17 We can make it happen. Movements bigger than you.

@19 I should hope so.

@16 "This election is an excellent opportunity to get more energetic leadership and make Seattle more socially evolved and livable, with more sidewalk cafes for example, as opposed to tent campers and transients crapping in the alleys."

The only way to get rid of the tent campers and transients camping in the alleys is to vote for Harrell, Nelson, Davison, and Wilson. The other candidates (MLG, NO, NTK, and TM) will double down on the failed policies that allowed the problem of tent campers and transients crapping in the alleys to fester.

We need to get rid of MLG and TM and stop NO, and NTK. Then hopefully in January we can get rid of KS.

Then we can start the hard work of returning Seattle to normality.

The Stranger has never admitted the legitimacy of Ed Murray's victory over Mike McGinn (and the victory of the SR-99 tunnel, over McGinn's deceitful opposition) were legitimate, just as it has yet to admit the same about Jenny Durkan's triumphs over both candidates the Stranger endorsed. The headline here shows how heavily those chronic refusals have become institutionalized at the Stranger.

Refusing to admit defeat, to learn from it, and to move on rarely ends well, and repeatedly refusing to admit the legitimacy of others' victories both shows and breeds a nasty intolerance of dissent. This is how a former hipster alt-weekly, which once cynically questioned everything, became a mere propaganda outlet, defending chosen candidates beyond all facts and reason. Hannah Krieg seems to be the real deal, a talented writer and reporter, who informs entertainingly. Here's hoping she punches her ticket here and moves on quickly, before becoming tainted by association.

What a steaming pile of baloney this slog turned out to be!

If private enterprise spends money to support a candidate "its called stealing the election". Does this presume that these evil empires can reach into the minds of a voter and use their cash to brain wash them?

If they can, then I suggest we spend money to help the brain washed idiots who simply believe of these "political ads"...for example the last little racist ditty than Gonzales pooped out.

If a trade union or the government is manipulated into paying for a candidate (vouchers) which is far more disturbing....then its somehow "not buying the election"?

Just a tip... don't read a political opinion from someone who barely got out of puberty and trust it.

She barely knows what she is talking about... that's just a fact.