The Stranger just received a fascinating email from mayoral candidate Christal Wood, all about ANOTHER mayoral candidate, Jeanne Dixon. For weeks, people have been musing about Ms. Dixon, who has no phone, has turned in no official campaign literature, and is still polling at 8 percent in the Mayor’s race. Well, Christal Wood gamely decided to get to the bottom of the mystery, and her firsthand report is posted below. Enjoy!

Jeanne Dixon, Mystery Woman by Christal Wood

Jeanne Dixon is polling at 8% in the Mayor’s race, and has so far all but avoided the press and any inquiries into her campaign. She has no phone, no e-mail address, no website, no financial reports, no picture, no statements, no nothing.

Dammit, no one’s gonna’ whup me based on name-recognition alone without accounting for it somehow. I had no choice. I had to seek this woman out. What would I find? Was it even her true address, or some convenience store, or um, “facility?” Would she run me off with her shotgun? Should I tell her who I am, or should I pretend to be a Jehovah’s Witness?

King County Elections lists Jeanne’s address as 2416 S.W. Cloverdale Street, in West Seattle, barely north of Seattle’s southern border. It’s a one-story, pale blue house with an intricately manicured lawn, with this year’s gardening perfectly aligned alongside their holes, waiting to be planted. I stepped through the opened chained link fence, walked up the stone path and knocked on her door.

A sturdy woman between the ages of 68-72, with silver hair baretted back answered. She wore a pink and grey plaid shirt over her khaki shorts and pink sandals over socks. "Are you *the* Jeanne Dixon, I asked?"

Jeanne Dixon is not a psychic that predicted John Kennedy's assassination. Jeanne Dixon is a former real estate agent, administrative professional and small-scale developer. She has received legal certification in research and bankruptcy, and credits in criminal law and legal writing. She's a former Overlake School District Superintendent Secretary, supervising secretary to Puget Sound Power and Light Treasurer's office, and District Director General of a
chemical company in New York.

Her main concerns are in the area of land racketeering at present, though the one handout she has is from a previous run as Democratic candidate for Secretary of State, highlighting her support for I-573 (Term Limits). It describes her as an "active fighter against white-collar illegal crimes upon the citizens by officials we trust!"

She talked about the insidious affect of transition from actual titles to deeds of trust in the real estate world--creating third-party trustee deed-holders that stand to exploit or outright usurp actual ownership rights, and denial of rights conveyed under certain homestead acts. In other words, people don't really own the land anymore.

Jeanne Dixon was once a member of West Seattle Crime Watch, and has taken part in a class action suit against King County for discrimination and fraudulent use of Federal housing funds in the wake of I-200 [Pacific N.W. Chapter of the National Black Chamber of Commerce v King County (case#C01-1208L)]. She spoke of her neighbor who lost her husband, was unjustly foreclosed upon, and was subsequently party to a suit. Her whole street, she says, has been subject to "inverse condemnation"-- being claimed through foreclosure and buy-offs for large-scale conversion by investors like Weyerhaeuser, Paul Allen and Microsoft.

Jeanne Dixon has no phone, because "when I run, they control the phones...AT&T and the others...just like with Nixon." She isn't really into the position of Mayor, per se, but if she won, she would be a champion of property rights. She doesn't want to get into whether she's for or against issues like the Viaduct and the Monorail, because she doesn't want that type of black-n-white thinking to influence voter choice...

Our conversation lasted for about an hour this way, standing in her doorway, with a view of piles of newspaper articles and paperwork strewn across her living room and dining table, similar to the piles I have at home. My mind wandered to thoughts like, `you just can't get housing like this in the inner city anymore, why aren't we doing more to about that?'... `This so highlights the position of seniorswe have to come to them'...'lazy, lazy journalists--I wish I had a camera'... Yup, she's right on that last point.' ..."Paul Allendown here, too?!”

I gave her some of my campaign materials, and told her I would look up the cases she'd shown me. We wished each other luck. Then I made my way back through the gate, leaving Jeanne Dixon, and her enduring mysteries behind.

Christal Wood for Mayor
P.O. Box 95535
Seattle, WA 98145
(206) 222-7522
www.christalwoodformayor.org