You’d be forgiven for mistaking Rachael Savage for a crunchy, queer elder who’s always one kombucha away from launching into a 30-minute tirade against Ronald Reagan. Savage, who owns The Vajra, a “metaphysical boutique” on Capitol Hill, wears jewel-tone lipstick, sports a face tat, pins delightfully gaudy broaches to her coats, and insists, as a longtime Seattle resident, that she’s a “city girl” through and through. 

But her recent introduction to the Seattle political sphere paints a different picture. Savage faced accusations of racist fear-mongering over a short, semi-viral clip in which she almost chickened out of taking Republican Attorney General candidate Pete Serrano on a tour of the Capitol Hill light rail station. She’s also half of the brains behind the newly launched “Savage Citizens” organization that’s leading a campaign to block the construction of a new 120-unit supportive housing building on Belmont Avenue in favor of mandatory treatment and abstinence-only living spaces. On top of that, she is teasing a 2025 mayoral run if Mayor Bruce Harrell, who has already overseen the transition to a tough-on-crime approach to public drug use, fails to call in the US military to bolster the City’s response to the fentanyl crisis. 

 

Her current political trajectory retraces the arc of Seattle City Council Appointee Tanya Woo, whose profile rose after she partnered with the King County Republicans to block an expansion of the SODO services hub in 2022. It also reflects the arc of State House candidate Andrea Suarez, who became a highly polarizing community figure through her work with the controversial organization We Heart Seattle, which conducts encampment clean-ups with a bootstraps attitude. Setting aside her Capitol Hill bohemian exterior, Savage seems more like the latest adherent to the burgeoning tradition of pearl-clutchers who promote a paternalistic, Treatment First NIMBYism that does more to generate poverty porn for television news segments than to actually help alleviate suffering, all in the service of trying to build name recognition with Seattle’s wealthier, whiter, higher-propensity voting bloc ahead of an inevitable run for office.  

The Racist Zoom

Savage introduced herself to many Seattleites in a semi-viral clip posted on Twitter by Republican Attorney General candidate Pete Serrano. The two filmed the video after Savage Citizens invited elected officials and candidates–including Mayor Harrell, gubernatorial hopefuls, and those running for attorney general–to join them for a walking tour of Capitol Hill. 

In the 25-second clip, Savage led Serrano to the main Broadway entrance of the Capitol Hill station. Despite thousands of Seattleites bravely venturing into the depths of the station everyday without issue, Savage appeared to bristle as the two approached the stairs to the mezzanine. 

“Alright, do you not want to go down?” Serrano asked, sensing her fear.

“Well, I’m with you guys, but I, uh, I feel…” she said. 

Then he interjected, “If you’re not comfortable, we don’t have to go. We can turn around.” 

“No, I’ll go with you guys. It’s good. You need to see this,” she said.

During this interaction, the person holding the camera zooms into a Black man sitting on a bench holding a grocery bag, strongly implying that a Black man made the station unsafe for Savage. 

The video sparked outrage online. Capitol Hill resident and local politico Andrew Ashiofu said in a quote tweet, “As a black male you are seen as a danger. I am more scared of running into this lady and her point[ing] me out as a criminal just because I am black.”

The Savage Citizen duo, which includes Joseph Souhara, says they would not have posted that clip as is. 

Savage said she was not afraid of the man in the video.

“I didn't film it,” Savage told The Stranger. “I think it was unskillful. I think it was the luck of the draw that [the man on the bench] happened to be a man of color. We saw many people on our walk that night using fentanyl, mentally ill, in medical distress.”

Souhara, the other half of Savage Citizens, said he does not believe the videographer had “racist intentions.” He claimed the zoom allowed the audience to see if the man was doing drugs. 

“[Serrano’s team] was unaware of the reaction it would cause—they’re not from here,” Souhara said of the Pasco mayor. 

Serrano did not respond to The Stranger’s request for comment. 

The man does not appear to be using drugs or holding anything that resembles drug paraphernalia, so the suspicion that he may be using drugs in the first place seems predicated on racist stereotypes. But Savage insisted the zoom-in was part of the videographer's style, not a specific reaction to the presence of a Black man during a conversation about safety. In the 12-minute cut of the footage that the campaign released later, the videographer employed a similar zoom on a Black man and a white man at a bus stop.

Still, Savage stands by her claim that the light rail is dangerous. She pointed to a recent article from KOMO that asserts Sound Transit has seen “a 53% spike in cases of reported passenger assaults, as well as an 80% rise in the number of reported attacks on transit workers.” However, Sound Transit attributes the rise to increased reporting due to added security at stations and on trains. Moreover, as Divest SPD pointed out on Twitter, that dramatic increase to the number of recorded transit-worker attacks may reflect a change in the definition of assault under President Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill. According to Sound Transit, “Assaults against a transit worker now include when an agent of the transit system, such as an operator, fare ambassador, or security officer feels threatened by a member of the public. Previously, threats that did not include any bodily contact were categorized as Unlawful Transit Conduct.”

Battle on Belmont

The light rail clip made her local Twitter’s main character of the day, but Seattleites can expect to see more of Savage. 

Earlier this month, she and Souhara launched Savage Citizens to organize around the fentanyl crisis. 

“I thought someone else was going to fix this problem, I didn’t think it was my job,” Savage said in a video message. “And I don’t think anyone’s coming to fix it at this point, so I decided to get off the sidelines and get involved.”

So far, Savage Citizens consists of two members, and they have yet to officially register their organization with the Secretary of State's Office. Souhara said they are working on it. If supporters click the big “donate” button on their website, the money goes to a “holding fund,” according to Souhara. The two claim Savage Citizens has received $10 in donations so far. 

Right now, she and Souhara are working to block the Downtown Emergency Service Center’s (DESC) upcoming 120-unit supportive housing building on Belmont Ave. 

“We’re for housing,” Savage told The Stranger. “We're just not for drug-tolerant housing.”

Savage Citizens takes issue with the fact that DESC will not require residents to remain abstinent from alcohol and drugs. DESC Executive Director Daniel Malone confirmed that the building will not have such requirements: “It’s an apartment building, so the tenants have leases… leases typically would not require people to participate in treatment or demand abstinence,” says Malone. 

DESC and Malone believe people want to improve their lives, they just need the foundation to do it. 

“When you provide real, basic support that everybody needs, invariably it is accompanied by significant improvements in people's lives, whereas simply requiring people to change their behaviors in order for them to have a safe, stable place to live, has not shown those same kinds of outcomes,” Malone says. 

Savage and Malone represent two sides of an ongoing debate that policy wonks see playing out nationally between a “Treatment First” and a “Housing First” approach to the concurrent drug and homelessness crisis. 

Savage wants to send people with substance abuse disorders to mandatory treatment facilities located outside of the city to “seperate” them from drugs. This abstinence-only approach helped Savage and Souhara recover from their addictions. 

But the Treatment First model does not work for everyone. In fact, much of the research shows the Treatment First model is less effective than the Housing First model when it comes to ending homelessness. A study comparing participants of a Housing First model in New York City to those in residential treatment found that after five years 88% of the Housing First tenants remained housed and only 47% of the Treatment First group remained housed.

Souhara argues that the Housing First model simply “warehouses” those dealing with addiction. His logic closely tracks with criticism from conservative commentators who claim that Housing First enables drug use, but research published in the American Journal of Public Health shows decreases in alcohol use among residents in one of DESC’s Housing First programs despite allowing alcohol consumption. 

Besides, the existence of the DESC building does not threaten the Treatment First model. Abstinence-only spaces still exist for those who will thrive in that environment, but Savage Citizens' advocacy against the building does threaten the housing of at least 120 unhoused people who Malone says would face “indefinite misery” if the campaign is successful. 

Given the public feedback, Malone doesn’t seem very worried about Savage. DESC has seen and survived much larger, much more coordinated efforts to block projects. 

Send in the Troops

As Savage and Souhara continue their campaign to block new, supportive housing on the Hill, they are also pressuring elected officials and candidates to commit to calling in the US military. 

Savage envisions troops coming to Seattle to build field hospitals like they did during the COVID-19 pandemic. “They're calling it an epidemic. Why don't we treat it like one and get people the care that they need?” asks Savage. 

Savage also imagines the military bolstering numbers at the Seattle Police Department (SPD). From the first quarter of 2020 to the first quarter of 2024, SPD has lost almost 350 net officers despite increased recruitment efforts, according to the department's latest report to the city council in May. She would also like the military to supplement the jail guard staff to allow for more arrests. 

Though Seattle and every other city has militarized its police force, aspiring officers do need to undergo law enforcement training before hitting the streets. According to a frequently asked questions page maintained by SPD, “Prior military or military police training does not count as prior law enforcement training, and you will be considered an Entry Level candidate.” 

It is unclear if Savage’s proposal would help to alleviate suffering among those with substance abuse disorders. The military has not built and staffed field hospitals to support drug treatment in any other US city, and when Governor Jay Inslee deployed the state National Guard to set up COVID-19 testing and vaccination locations here, they didn’t force everyone to go to them and take the vaccines. And even if the military did construct such a system, it would likely suffer from the shortcomings of the existing Treatment First model, which sees fewer participants housed long-term. And no city has arrested its way out of the drug crisis so far, try as they might. 

Still, the Savage Citizens duo sent a letter demanding such policies to President Joe Biden and other 2024 presidential candidates, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr, Governor Inslee, the candidates looking to replace him, the attorney general candidates, King County Executive Dow Constantine, and Mayor Harrell. They asked that recipients pledge to call in the military by January 1, 2025. 

When asked about Savage Citizens’ proposal, Harrell’s office told The Stranger, “No, he is not considering this.” His office did not elaborate further. 

Mayor Savage

If Harrell doesn’t change his mind, then Savage says she will challenge him in 2025. Ideally, Harrell would adopt her policies—“I don't want to do this. I'm busy,” Savage says. But she sees no other option if he fails to. 

In 2021, Harrell carved a lane for himself as the candidate who would more aggressively punish poverty via sweeps and arrests. With a commanding 58.6 percent of the vote, he won the race against former Council President Lorena Gonzålez, who was haunted by the specter of the recent movement to reallocate police funding to other social services. 

And he seems to have stayed true to his commitments. Under his watch, the City has conducted a historic number of encampment sweeps, re-criminalized public drug use, failed to relieve cops of their all-encompassing duties in the recent Seattle Police Officer Guild contract, and reestablished racist, classist, banishment zones.

But that policing approach is not enough for Savage. She voted for Harrell and had high hopes for him, and she acknowledged his efforts, but she said she didn’t feel enough of a sense of urgency around crime, drug use, and homelessness.

From the progressive perspective, it may feel as if Harrell has done a lot for the Savage Citizen types, but Savage might be onto something. Polling from this spring shows about 43 percent of voters approve of Harrell’s performance as mayor. But a different poll from fall of 2023 shows that, despite high approval rates relative to SPD and to the city council, Harrell’s ratings suffer when it comes to his handling of crime and homelessness, where he sees a 61 and 63 percent disapproval rate, respectively. 

Savage thinks she can tap into that dissatisfaction and win the 2025 election. 

As I already mentioned, Savage’s story reads a lot like those of Woo and Suarez. She said both those women were an “inspiration” to her. Unfortunately for Savage, following in their footsteps may not yield much success, as voters have thus far rejected both of them. 

Woo ran for the District 2 City Council seat in 2023, but she came up short. Luckily for her, the conservatives she ran with secured a majority, their donors told them to pick her for an appointment, and they obliged. She’s so far fared even worse in her second attempt to win an elected position on merit. Her progressive challenger, Alexis Mercedes Rinck, delivered a decisive referendum on Woo, winning a little more than 50 percent of the vote to Woo’s 38 percent. 

As Saurez never lets anyone forget, she’s an elected Precinct Committee Officer in the 43rd Legislative District, but she hasn’t done well with the voters in her run for the State House. She won a measly 20 percent of the primary vote, coming in second to progressive Shaun Scott’s dominant 59 percent performance. 

So far, the Savage Citizen project seems contained. They likely won’t block the DESC building, no one’s responding to their request to send in the troops, and Savage’s electoral chances look slim. But that was one wild Twitter clip, amiright?