I’ve been caught up writing a magazine feature—and got to go longer than usual this time—so, here’s just a quick Fizz.
1. The Sound Transit board is set to release an update today on its ST3 proposal to run light north to Everett, south to Tacoma, East to Issaquah, plus two new lines in Seattle (Ballard to Downtown and West Seattle to Downtown.)
The price tag on the $50 billion plan hasn’t been a polling problem, so I’d look for that number to tick up sightly ($54 billion?) as they try to solve other problems such as the daunting 25-year timeline.
2. The King County Democrats issued some endorsements this week.
State senator Pramila Jayapal (D-37, Southeast Seattle), who’s had to split a couple of local level endorsements—the 36th in Ballard and the 46th in North Seattle— with state representative Brady Walkinshaw (D-43, Capitol Hill) in the race to take retiring U.S. representative Jim McDermott’s (D-WA, 7) seat, won the King County Democrats endorsement this week.
Candidates need a two-thirds vote, and Jayapal cleared that easily with 67 percent.
Both Walkinshaw, and the third main candidate, King County council member Joe McDermott, couldn’t meet that threshold getting just 44 percent and 37 percent respectively.
McDermott, for his part, won his home district LD, West Seattle’s 34th District, last February. And Walkinshaw, 32, has swept the young Democrats endorsements.
In other news that may be relevant to the Jim McDermott scrum, there’s a footnote to Hillary Clinton’s surprise win and surprise challenge to the (let’s be honest, self righteous) Bernie Sanders’s camp rap about “the popular will of the people.” (In Tuesday’s primary, which Clinton won easily, 660,000 Democrats voted overall as opposed to just 230,000 in March’s caucus that Sanders won.) Here’s the footnote: Clinton won McDermott’s 7th District, super liberal Seattle, by a greater margin than she won the rest of the state. Jayapal who is running to the left in the race was endorsed by Sanders.
In a race for lieutenant governor that features three sitting state Democratic senators—Karen Cyrus Habib (D-48, Kirkland), Karen Fraser (D-22, Thurston County), and Steve Hobbs (D-44, Lake Stevens)—Habib was endorsed with 92 percent while Fraser and Hobbs both failed to make the cut. Hobbs, who may have run into trouble with rank and file Democrats over his moderate approach and clashes with the teachers union over education reform legislation, didn’t even get a second.
One upset, King County council member Dave Upthegrove, a longtime state legislator who headed up the senate environment committee championing green issues, failed to win the KC Democrats endorsement in the race for commissioner of public lands, while his opponent, Futurewise Director Hilary Franz, was endorsed after getting a 41-1 recommendation from the endorsement committee.
3. Meanwhile, the Seattle Times has a good summary of the disagreement between mayor Ed Murray and council members Sally Bagshaw and Mike O’Brien over removing homeless people from the Jungle. Murray pro, Bagshaw and O’Brien con[1].
4. Finally, feminist all-star Lindy West read to a sold out crowd (1,200 people) at Town Hall last night. (Traffic didn’t seem to keep anybody away…[2])
More men should have been there, though, as West advised that men talking to men about sexism is a powerful way to address the patriarchy.
Here’s my colleague Matt Halverson’s great interview with West in the May issue of Seattle Met[3].
References
- ^ Murray pro, Bagshaw and O’Brien con (www.seattletimes.com)
- ^ Traffic didn’t seem to keep anybody away… (www.seattlemet.com)
- ^ Matt Halverson’s great interview with West in the May issue of Seattle Met (www.seattlemet.com)
