Despite Kshama Sawants talk about fighting hate crimes against LGBTQ people, Equal Rights Washington endorsed her opponent, Pamela Banks.
Despite Kshama Sawant's talk about fighting hate crimes against LGBTQ people, Equal Rights Washington endorsed her opponent, Pamela Banks. Alex Garland

The photo above is from a town hall meeting back in March organized in part by Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant. The meeting focused on what to do about the rise in hate crimes against LGBTQ people on Capitol Hill and coalesced around the idea of a shelter for homeless LGBTQ youth, as Ansel reported at the time. Finding the funding for such a shelter in this year's budget was "a high priority for us," Sawant said at the meeting.

Since then, a task force recommended approaches other than an LGBTQ-specific shelter, but Sawant has continued to make LGBTQ rights and services a visible plank of her campaign for reelection. She promises to advocate for an LGBTQ community center, fund anti-hate-crime groups, and increase funding for youth homelessness, among other things. One of her most prominent supporters is Danni Askini, executive director of the Gender Justice League, who was on that task force about hate crimes.

Considering all that, it was surprising to see last week that the LGBTQ advocacy group Equal Rights Washington endorsed Pamela Banks, Sawant's opponent, in the race for District 3, covering Capitol Hill and the Central District. (The group skipped this race in its primary endorsements.)

ERW board chair Monisha Harrell tells The Stranger that's because the group didn't get any time to talk to Sawant, despite repeated requests and "email chains practically begging them to come and give us 20 minutes."

"If we can’t get adequate access to the person representing us in our district," Harrell says, "that speaks volumes."

Harrell also says that after Sawant's first election in 2013, the campaign asked Equal Rights Washington for help paying off campaign debt, but couldn't make Sawant available for a meeting and never followed up with the organization after that.

"The issues we’re dealing with are really, really important," Harrell says. "We want to know we’ll actually have leaders that will listen to us... If you can’t get [access to] an elected when they're running for office, you can’t get them when they're not running for office."

Equal Rights Washington will encourage people to vote for their endorsed candidates through phonebanking and e-mails to a 55,000-member e-mail list, Harrell says.

Harrell is the niece of Council Member Bruce Harrell, who is supporting Banks. But she says that wasn't a factor in this decision and that she was "a huge supporter of [Sawant] when she came into office."

"We expected this race to actually be our toughest," Monisha Harrell says. "We expected this to be our knock-down, drag-out, in-the-room-for-hours [process] and unfortunately it just didn’t turn out that way."

Philip Locker, political director for the Sawant campaign, says campaign staff told ERW their suggested interview times didn't work for her and asked for alternative times, but they didn't hear back. He says he's not sure whether the 2013 campaign asked ERW for help covering its debts, but that it's "conceivable." Locker says Sawant will be "happy to continue work with [ERW] and reach out to them" if she's reelected.

The question of access to Sawant has been one of Banks' most repeated critiques of Sawant since she announced she was running.

"I get results for people because I listen and I'm a fighter," Banks said at a recent debate. "My opponent only listens to people who think she's great."

But Askini, with the Gender Justice League, calls Sawant "the most accessible" city council member. She points to Sawant's high rating from the LGBTQ-focused endorsing group SEAMEC, her attendance at Trans* Pride Seattle, her work helping to organize the hate crimes forum earlier this year, and her support of all-gender restroom legislation. (The all-gender restroom law was pushed by advocates, former council member Sally Clark, and then Mayor Ed Murray. It was sponsored by Bruce Harrell and got a unanimous vote from the city council in August.)

The ERW endorsement "surprised a lot of people in the [LGBTQ] community," Askini says. "There is concern within the community about the repercussions of one of the largest LGBT rights organizations not endorsing the candidate who has been a champion on our issues."