After a decade of "progressive" rule which left city with skyrocketing homelessness, crime, car thefts, shooting, murders, human trafficking, rapes, rents, and overdoses, Seattle has moved on from this failure.

And, Hannah, a nose-ring is not a qualification for public office.

I've been reading recently that KCRHA is about as well-managed as Boeing. Maybe not the resume booster you think it is.

@1
“ And, Hannah, a nose-ring is not a qualification for public office.”

For progressives it is.

“…making her the first (and long-awaited) challenger to appointee Council Member Tanya Woo…”

Woo was appointed in late January. Hannah’s “long-awaited” link (to Twitter/X, natch’; Elon Musk being so wonderfully progressive) was posted on 12 March.

For the modern Stranger, less than two weeks ago has become “long-awaited.”

Glad to see a challenge to Woo, who should have been disqualified from appointment to the council for at least a year after losing the previous election. There's too much potential for bribery and other unethical dealmaking if losing candidates can be immediately appointed to vacancies by the winners. (To be clear, I'm not saying anything of the sort happened in Woo's case. But it illustrates a moral hazard inherent in current law that the council should fix.)

@5, huh? This isn’t uncommon. A losing candidate (Abel Pacheco) was appointed to Dist 4 after the incumbent left early. Where’s the conflict of interest?

Photo has no nose-ring. Just announced and she's already embroiled in a scandal.

@6: Pacheco was appointed 3.5 years after losing the 2015 D4 seat and then didn't file to run in 2019. Not exactly the same with Woo, who was appointed just a couple months after losing and then filed to fill the seat she was appointed for. She was essentially anointed to the City Council. Pretty sketchy move.

No thanks. You should have stayed in Pacifica.

You too Hannah. Please take your groupie with you when you move to Denver. Minneapolis is great too I hear.

@5/8 the notion that Woo is somehow tainted because she lost a district election is so absurd. The only reason the both of you feel that way is because she has a different political viewpoint. I have no doubt if this was a progressive council and they had appointed Ron Davis you would be cheering the addition of another progressive voice. If you want to complain about Woo that's fine but right now you and TS just sound like sour grapes.

@6 I don't know of any unethical conduct in Pacheco's appointment either. But what I'm saying is the current system creates an opportunity that sooner or later someone will try to capitalize on. ("If you stop running those damaging ads against me and I win, my allies and I will support you for the vacancy.") In any case it arguably disrespects the voters who just rendered a verdict on that candidate.

@11 Banning the appointment of newly defeated candidates for a year or so is an ideologically neutral, good-government proposal that the entire council should endorse. Sure, personally I'd rather have seen Davis appointed than Woo, but I would still support changing the law.

@11: Ha! "Tainted" is your word. If you don't find the Woo appointment and subsequent filing sketchy (which it inarguably is...hence the apples-to-oranges Pacheco spin) that says a thing or two about YOUR political viewpoint, don't you think?

"Tanya Woo 2024: Embrace the Sketchiness!"

@13 feel free to point out the sketchiness. I don’t think losing an election qualifies. There are numerous examples of people who lose elections yet get appointed to administrative gov positions like the cabinet or other offices. Our current VP lost an election. Is that sketchy too? We should want the best people representing us. You can argue Woo isn’t the best but like I stated losing the election isn’t one of the criteria.

Obviously homeless hardcore advocate swant2 written all over it. How about em mercedes, is she some how aspired to own one?

Quelle surprise: persons who bitterly opposed Woo replacing Morales on the Council now bitterly oppose Woo joining Morales on the Council. Talk about sore ‘winners’…

@12: “In any case it arguably disrespects the voters who just rendered a verdict on that candidate.”

The electorate in District 2 was almost perfectly evenly divided on the question of whether Morales OR Woo should be on the Council. No one has yet asked them if BOTH should be on the Council. The voters of the entire city will now decide that latter question. Voters making such decisions is now bad for democracy?

(Also, if we can’t have something simply because it could somehow someday be used to bribe an elected official, then we can’t have anything.)

@16 Well, that's why I included the "arguably" hedge. It's tangential to my moral-hazard case for changing the law but I think it does explain some of the ill will toward Woo. Many people are likely thinking, "We just voted against her, and she's on the council anyway? Something isn't right about that." Some jurisdictions have what are inelegantly called "sore loser" laws that have a similar aim of respecting the voters' will.

@17: Washington state already forbids the loser of a primary election from becoming a write-in challenger in the general election.

In this case, though, you’re proposing forbidding the Council from appointing a replacement to a city-wide seat because a very small majority in one single district voted for someone else. Why should barely half the voters in a single district have the power to bind the entire Council on the matter of the entire city?

(Also, you revealed a lot about your real motivations when you described voters in District 2 voting “against” Woo, instead of voting “for” Morales — or just for the best candidate overall. As I’d already written, who says a majority would not have picked both, if given that choice?)

I always laugh when I read the comments section on articles like this... I am convinced that a small group of right-wing "concern trolls" monitor the stranger for new articles so that they can jump in early to try to convince anyone reading that Seattle is/was a "Liberal Hell Hole" until finally being saved by a newly conservative city council.

I'm just surprised that y'all don't go post "me too" comments on seattle times op-eds complaining about street use permits for groups that don't explicitly do the bidding of billionaires.

@19: So, do the results of Seattle's general elections over the past couple of cycles more closely resemble the positions advocated by the Stranger, or do they more closely resemble the the positions advocated by the Stranger's commenters? Discuss.