A tyrant currently leads a corpse in the presidential polls, the Supreme Court turned our democracy into a monarchy, Congress keeps sending Israel bombs to rain down on babies, Washington is staring down the same fifteen crises it’s been staring down for the last decade, and the only thing stopping the Seattle City Council from rolling back the rights of workers and renters is its own ineptitude. At this point, the arc of the moral universe has bent so far back toward injustice that it’s pretty damn close to snapping off and floating through outer space for the rest of eternity.

All of that is pretty scary, but we’re not helpless. We’re rugged individuals with great hair, great taste in art, and communicative sexual partners—and we can do a lot to bend that arc back toward justice.

We can march in the streets, we can shore up our community supports, we can smoke weed in the tub and cry a little, and, most importantly, we can vote to send the most progressive politicians possible to defend our rights and advance our agenda at every level of government.

And that’s why we’re here. Over the last couple months, we increasingly rage-filled, pot-dependent reporters on the Stranger Election Control Board have called a bunch of power-hungry politicians into our conference room, grilled them over their votes, probed their public and private statements, and critiqued their taste in music, all so we can help you fill out your ballot in a way that will hopefully lead to a less-fucked world. And this year, we realllllllllllyyyyy need you to vote exactly the way we tell you to.

Starting at the national level, polls give Republicans a decent shot at controlling every branch of government. If you’ve woken up in a cold sweat about a particular policy, then it’s on the table: Federal abortion bans, gender-affirming care bans, rollbacks to marriage equality–the works. We need to send Democrats to Congress who will block all that and advocate for a ceasefire in Gaza while they’re at it.

At the state level, we need to find all the billionaires, grab hold of their ankles, turn them upside down, and shake the money out of their pockets so that we can fund our education system, housing for poor people, transit, and treatment and recovery facilities.

We also need to pick a governor who can defeat anti-gay, anti-trans Republican Dave Reichert, a public lands commissioner who vows to save the trees, a superintendent with a solid plan to improve the schools, an attorney general who stands ready on day one to sue the fuck out of big corporations on behalf of consumers and to protect us in the advent of Trump Part II: The Retribution, an insurance commissioner who will fight to lower costs, a slate of progressive state lawmakers who will fund all of the above, and a Washington State Supreme Court justice who is going to be cool with all of that.

Here in Seattle, we have the opportunity to change out one of the dimmest light bulbs on the council for a brighter one—and we should absolutely take that chance.

At this point, you know the drill. In the following pages, you’ll find all the arguments we used to support our endorsements. If you’re too busy to read, then just find the Cheat Sheet and fill out your ballot accordingly.

Speaking of ballots, yours should arrive in your mailbox by July 22. If it does not, then ask King County Elections what’s up. (By phone at 206-296-VOTE (8683) or by email at elections@kingcounty.gov.) If you’re not registered to vote, then register online or by mail up to eight days before the election. If you’re unsure either way, then check VoteWA.

Once you have your ballot, rip it open, use a pen of any color to carefully fill in the bubbles we tell you to fill in, slide it into its cute little sleeve, stuff the whole package in the envelope, and then mail it in ASAP—no need for a stamp! If you don’t trust the mail, then just drop it into a nearby dropbox no later than Tuesday, August 6, at 8 pm.

Oh, and, please consider tipping us for the work. The Seattle Times says you’re all suffering from “tip rage,” but surely that doesn’t apply to your willingness to support local journalism in the face of democratic decline. Right? Let’s prove ’em wrong.

The Stranger Election Control Board is Hannah Krieg, Vivian McCall, Charles Mudede, Ashley Nerbovig, Megan Seling, the Hawk Tuah girl, and Rich Smith. The SECB does not endorse in uncontested races, races with only two candidates (those go straight to the general), or races we forgot.

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United States Senator 
Maria Cantwell

Washington desperately needs to replace our US Senators, who have been in office for a combined 54 years, but, alas, no viable progressive challengers have stepped up to the plate. So, just as we were stuck with Senator Patty Murray in 2022, we’re stuck with Senator Maria Cantwell in 2024.

But that’s not all bad. If you give her another term, Cantwell said she will work to “grow the middle class.” She already got that work started by authoring the CHIPS and Sciences Act, which aims to create 44,000 semiconductor manufacturing jobs here in the US that companies may have otherwise offshored. She said she would also continue to “lead” the fight to increase affordable housing production in Washington, citing her attempt to score changes to the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program in a tax package that would add 1,700 affordable housing units to Washington’s housing stock in 2024. Of course, every year for the next 20 years Washington needs to build north of 20,000 units of affordable housing for people who make less than 50% of the area median income, and we’d hope that a US senator with 24 years in the tank could try to bring home a little bit more than a fraction of the need, so we’ll have to keep pressing her.

Her biggest electoral threat comes in the form of Republican Dr. Raul Garcia, who recently dropped out of the gubernatorial race and endorsed nutjob Dave Reichert. Garcia won’t say how he will vote in the upcoming presidential election, and he hesitantly supports abortion protections. We don’t have time for any bullshit on either of those scores, so we don’t have time for Garcia.

We’ll be watching Cantwell, and if she comes asking for votes again, she better have something to show for it. If not, one of you lefties with elected experience, serious fundraising skills, and statewide appeal better be running a solid campaign against her. Capisce? Vote Cantwell.

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United States Representative
Congressional District No. 1 
Suzan DelBene

If voters give Suzan DelBene a seventh term and a Democratic trifecta in the federal government, she pledges to lead the charge to expand and make permanent the Child Tax Credit, increase the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, and create a more “fair” tax code that doesn’t “favor the wealthy.” Doing so would mean significantly cutting child poverty, significantly increasing the number of affordable housing units throughout the country, and, well, we don’t know what she really means by creating a more “fair” tax code because she wouldn’t get specific about which sorts of progressive taxes she’d support or which Trump tax cuts she’d let die their extremely timely deaths in 2025. Given her past life as chair of the New Democrat Coalition, a centrist caucus within the party dedicated to preventing transformational change, and given her current life as chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, we’ll assume she’ll take the middle-of-the-road path she’s taken during her last 12 years in office.

But that’s a better path than the one that any of her weird opponents would take. Republican candidate Mary Silva writes like a conspiracy theorist, though she does rightly blame shadowy corporate figures with bad taste for many of the problems the country faces. That said, she makes a better case for not voting for her than we could ever make when she says, “I hold no special official qualification” for the position. Meanwhile, Republican Derek Chartrand dresses like a long-lost Trump failson, and he even randomly capitalizes nouns like one, but he mostly just champions civility and center-right positions on education and the environment. We’ve got plenty of that coming from DelBene already, so you may as well just vote DelBene. 

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United States Representative
Congressional District No. 7
Pramila Jayapal 

Those who stand firmly against genocide, forever wars, corporate greed, and cruel immigration policies will find themselves well-represented by four-term congresswoman Pramila Jayapal. 

Jayapal is an effective progressive—even with Republicans in control of the House this term, she still chalked up some accomplishments. As head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), she led the push for Biden to cancel student debt, and she vows to continue pushing him to cancel more. She and US Senator Elizabeth Warren also led a successful effort to reduce the prices for some inhalers and EpiPens. Last November, she and 24 Democrats signed a letter demanding a ceasefire in an attempt to at least moderate Biden’s position. And when she does talk to the President and to the Vice President, she tells them that supporting Netanyahu’s slaughter only makes Israel less safe. Whether they listen is up to them. 

If Dems take back the House, Jayapal would chair the House Judiciary Committee’s immigration subcommittee, wherein she promises to fight for immigrant protections in the face of the hard-right turn that so many of her Democratic colleagues are taking. She’ll also work to pass the CPC’s proposition agenda, which would break the gridlock in DC, rein in the clerics on the Supreme Court, and advance policies to reduce the cost of health care, ameliorate the housing and child care crises, invest in education, increase worker power and pay, expand protections for LGBTQIA communities, and, perhaps most importantly, legalize weed nationwide (woo!).

Even those who don’t stand for any of that stuff may take some comfort in the fact that she runs a pretty robust constituent services operation, which has helped more than 10,000 people navigate labyrinthine federal agencies, according to her office.

Of course, given the current political climate, Jayapal won’t get us everything we want. But we won’t get any of it if we vote for Republican Cliff Moon, who doesn’t appear to have updated his website since the last time he ran as a “normal American” pissed off about the PC police, the horrors of the defund movement, et cetera. Boring. Vote Jayapal.

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United States Representative 
Congressional District No. 8
Imraan Siddiqi

Imraan Siddiqi, a longtime civil rights leader who currently directs Washington’s chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, wants to divest from wars abroad so we can invest those US tax dollars right here at home. Instead of building bombs to drop on starving babies, he wants to create a better and cheaper health care system, construct more affordable housing, properly fund education, and shrink the carceral state while he’s at it.

He also speaks with passion and precision on the need for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza, a position driven in part by the pain and terror his wife’s family feels every day as they manage to dodge US-made bombs. Adding his voice to the growing anti-genocide minority in Congress would be the least the people of the 8th Congressional District could do for the world.

Despite his good politics and his persuasive anti-war rhetoric, however, he speaks in vague terms about progressive domestic policy, and his relatively low campaign funds all but foreclose a real path to victory.

For those reasons, we seriously considered endorsing three-term incumbent Kim Schrier, a pro-abortion pediatrician whose centrist politics position her to “get stuff done” in a Congress paralyzed by stubborn Republicans. We welcome, for instance, her recent passage of bills to continue funding landslide research and child emergency care research, as well as her bill to help lower some hospital visit costs. That’s exactly the kind of middling shit we expect out of someone who represents Sammamish.

But Schrier has moved way farther right on immigration and criminal justice than we think she needs to, and now she’s added warmonger to the mix. To list a few particularly heinous votes: In this last term, Schrier voted for the Laken Riley Act, which would allow ICE to indefinitely detain undocumented immigrants accused of theft, including Dreamers. So a cop could accuse a teenager of stealing some earrings from the mall, and that teenager could wind up in a federal immigration prison. When asked why she’d support a bill that will undoubtedly lead to this scenario, Schrier said, “Um, everybody needs to follow the law, and there is due process.” Now there’s someone who will always stand up for what’s right, even with a racist, xenophobic tyrant waiting in the wings!

She went on to vote for the so-called Middle Class Borrower Protection Act, which will ultimately make it harder for first-time home buyers to get a home loan, according to the Center for Responsible Lending. She also voted to expand the US’s sterling warrantless surveillance program, to meddle in local DC criminal justice politics, to censure Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib for criticizing Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians, and to send billions of dollars in weapons to Israel while ALSO hobbling the only organization who could realistically distribute aid in the country. Given that voting record, you won’t be surprised to learn that Schrier has not called for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza.

We know she cannot always do the right thing and vote the right way because she represents a “purple” district, but a lot of these votes are inexcusable and/or shit that even independents don’t like. True, we’d much rather have a Democrat in this seat than Republican Carmen Goers, a commercial banker whose policies would increase economic inequality and melt the planet, but we don’t see any danger of that outcome this year. Given Schrier’s absurd fundraising advantage, we think she’ll make it through the primary easily, and we’d rather see Siddiqi hold her feet to the fire en route to the general election than watch Schrier move even further to the right to stave off a Goers victory. Vote Siddiqi.

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United States Representative
Congressional District No. 9
Melissa Chaudhry

Over the last several years, we’ve seen a bunch of candidates come for 14-term Congressman and House Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Adam Smith, but, in terms of policy knowledge, rhetorical prowess, and sheer drive, none hold a candle to Melissa Chaudhry, a grant writer and civil rights advocate.

On every domestic issue, she lays out clear, practical solutions. To help build more housing, she wants to streamline permitting processes to let the private market do its thing, but she also wants to dump more money into public housing to build the units that the market simply will not build, introduce code variation pathways to allow developers to build regenerative and restorative communities that still meet safety standards, and direct more Congressional funds to community land trusts and co-ops to keep prices lower for longer.

To help deal with the state’s mental health crisis, she wants to reduce barriers to work for immigrants, invest in recruitment and on-the-job training for entry-level employees, and encourage cooperative management and team-based care to push out bad managers. She wants to expand the Supreme Court, hold them to binding ethics rules, nuke the filibuster in the Senate, legalize and protect abortion nationwide, codify Chevron deference, and more or less push every item on the Congressional Progressive Caucus’s proposition agenda. 

She spoke with authority on Israel/Palestine, Russia/Ukraine, China/US, and she, unlike Smith, embraces the reality of an increasingly multipolar world instead of stubbornly clinging to a unipolar, hegemonic one that has only led to more problems around the globe. To that end, she would not have, as Smith did, voted to send $26 billion in aid—the lion’s share of it military—to help Israel prosecute its genocide. She would not have, as Smith did, expanded the US’s warrantless surveillance program as intelligence agencies continue to abuse the program.

Now, we recognize and admit no small amount of idealism behind this endorsement. Chaudhry seems smart, capable, and empathetic, but she’s never held elected office before, we have little faith she can raise the kind of money she needs to raise to really be competitive, and she has written some woo-woo self-help blogs we didn’t really love—but then again, who hasn’t?

If we weren’t absolutely certain that Congressman Smith will prevail in this contest, as he always does, then we might have more strongly considered begrudgingly going his way. After all, as we’ve argued in the past, cutting off Smith’s head means a worse one will grow in its place on the House Armed Services Committee. Like it or not, the world can get worse, and Smith is nowhere near the worst of the Dems on that committee, let alone in Congress.

Moreover, in the realm of military funding, his experience gives him the skills needed to stop Republicans from doing the most horrendous shit imaginable. Just this year, for example, he helped block an amendment that would have prevented us from using military aircraft to bring Palestinian refugees to the US. He also did a bit of productive virtue signaling when he voted against the National Defense Authorization Act—aka the Pentagon’s budget, which he leads negotiations on every year for the House—after Republicans added a bunch of racist, transphobic, and anti-choice shit into the bill. And by all accounts, he runs a responsive district shop, he brings home some good bacon in the form of money for affordable housing projects and community centers, and he respects his enemies by giving them the time of day to argue their points.

But he also does some horrendous shit himself, such as taking the votes we mentioned above, and also comparing pro-Palestine protesters to January 6 insurrectionists, as if protesting at a politician’s home comes anywhere close to the same level of extremity displayed by a fascist mob attempting to stop the peaceful transfer of power. Smith deserves a worthy challenger. Vote Chaudhry.

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Governor
Bob Ferguson

Attorney General and internationally ranked chess master Bob Ferguson is by far the best option to be Washington’s next governor. In the past, he has supported more mental health resources in schools, LGBTQIA+ rights, the codifying of abortion rights in the state constitution, and data privacy rights, and we have little doubt he’ll continue to support those basic liberal policies.

If elected, he wisely plans to make housing a top priority of his administration. He envisions a cabinet-level position to oversee the issue, and he promises to encourage private developers to build 200,000 new homes in four years.

That’s all well and good and long overdue, but our enthusiasm for Ferguson drops off pretty hard on some fundamental issues. Though he’s supported the capital gains tax as well as taxes on big banks in the past, he wouldn’t commit to pushing the Legislature for new progressive revenue sources that we all know we desperately need to fund housing the market won’t build, education, transit, et cetera.

When we pressed him for clear plans on issues such as mental health or for plans to increase school funding, he told us he’d “cross that bridge when we get to it.” When we pointed out that it might be a little hard for voters to know what they’re voting for when they hear Ferguson say he’ll decide what to do once he’s in office, he disagreed with us. After spending 20 years in politics, Ferguson said, people know what to expect from him. He’s running a real “trust me, bro” campaign, and it fucking sucks.

Based on his interview with us, we bet Ferguson thought that we’d write a pissy endorsement about how he dodged answers so that he could tout our mean endorsement as evidence that he’s not beholden to the left. But really, we’re just disappointed that the effective straight-talker we knew as Attorney General Bob Ferguson didn’t show up when he was running to be Governor Bob Ferguson.

Nevertheless, he’s better than (arguably) Democratic State Senator Mark Mullet, or anti-gay, anti-trans, pro-Trump Republican Dave Reichert, or, lol, Republican Semi Bird—none of whom even showed up for our interview. Cowards. Vote Ferguson.

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Lieutenant Governor 
Denny Heck

In the face of a housing crisis, we need an urbanist like Lieutenant Governor Denny Heck to use his bully pulpit to bully the NIMBY pols. 

The lieutenant governor serves as the president of the state Senate. In that position, Heck cannot vote and cannot introduce legislation, but he can break ties and use his figurehead role to advocate for policy priorities. Because he can only move the needle so far, Heck said he’s been laser-focused on housing and will keep it up if reelected.

Heck flexed his advocacy muscles in 2023, dubbed the “Year of Housing,” to rally a diverse coalition of pro-housing organizations to pressure lawmakers to pass the so-called “missing middle housing” bill, among other measures to promote density that year.

In his interview with the SECB, he didn’t sound thrilled about his ability to keep up that pro-housing momentum in 2024, but it was a short session, so hopefully in 2025, he can get his mojo back. He plans to advocate for lot-splitting measures, transit-oriented development, and more permitting reform. The problem is so big, he said, it requires many bills!

But don’t get too excited. Heck’s not one to stick it to the landlord lobby. Under his watch, the Senate squashed a renter stabilization bill last session. When we talked to him, he wouldn’t dare say the word “control” or even “stability,” though he said he anticipates the Senate will deliberate some form of “increased rent security” next year. He made it clear that “elements” of the anti-rent gouging bill that the Senate killed may help some renters, but he wants to focus his advocacy next year on making sure the Senate understands that the housing crisis is “fundamentally an issue of supply and demand.”

That sucks, mostly because it’s just not true. The private market will not build half of the housing we need to build over the next 20 years, and in the meantime, we need to give renters more than a modicum of the stability that the government provides for homeowners.

But we could do a lot worse in this position. We could have Heck’s competition, former pilot-turned-Boeing-consultant Republican Dan Matthews, whose platform is littered with dog whistles such as “school choice” and “women’s rights to fairly compete in sports.” Yikes. We’ll take a market urbanist over a transphobe any day! Vote Heck.

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Secretary of State 
Steve Hobbs

Incumbent Secretary of State Steve Hobbs said that he and the SECB agree 80% of the time, and that’s going to have to be good enough for us, because no other candidate in this race is really qualified to do the job. And that’s not so bad, really.

In his first full term, Hobbs hired a team to do outreach to disenfranchised voters, started a civics course for incarcerated people, and gave counties money to tighten up election security. He also told us he got Dungeons & Dragons unbanned from prisons, which we did not know we should have been advocating for all along. This is why tabletop gamer representation matters, people!

The office definitely still has its issues, though. At the top of that list: It rejects more ballots from people of color than white people. Hobbs said he’s working on it, and he hopes to start a pilot program that allows people to cure their ballot via text message. Advocates also pointed their fingers at Hobbs when his office rejected nearly 70,000 ballots in the presidential primary because voters did not check the box for party affiliation. Hobbs seemed less confident about how to prevent that situation in the future—the Washington State Legislature would have to change a law, and he thinks the parties would probably fight it—but he’s establishing a work group to think up some solutions.

His only Democratic challenger, Marquez Tiggs, didn’t impress us. He didn’t have much of a handle on the issues, he defended the turnout-killing practice of odd-year elections, and he even argued against changing laws so that noncitizens could vote in local elections, which would include his own husband. To be fair, Hobbs doesn’t want to get rid of odd-year elections, and he doesn’t want noncitizens voting either, but he’s got a much better grip on the issues and the responsibilities of the office. Vote Hobbs.

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Attorney General 
Nick Brown

Experience wins out with Nick Brown, who rightly pointed out in his endorsement interview that no other candidate knew the Washington State Attorney General’s Office (AGO) as well as he did. Though we think State Senator Manka Dhingra is plenty qualified for the role, and though we liked her criminal justice policies better than his, Brown’s understanding of the department and his breadth of knowledge in the civil law arena tipped the scales in his favor.

Brown’s experience makes him right for the job. As the former US district attorney for Western Washington, he has already run a large public firm. During our interview, he demonstrated his familiarity with the AG’s role when he stressed the importance of tending to client services, the less-flashy work the office does to advise state agencies on how to avoid lawsuits. He argued the office could do more to intervene when they see agencies repeatedly dealing with the same issues, which could help prevent problems from developing to the point where the state ends up in a federal settlement such as Trueblood. That’s the kind of eye-bleeding specificity and unsexy-but-practical problem-solving we’re looking for from people seeking to run unwieldy bureaucracies.

We also liked Brown’s promise to focus a bunch of the agency’s resources on housing. He said he wanted to launch lawsuits against companies that collude on rent prices and to keep a better eye on ensuring compliance with the Landlord-Tenant Act. To be honest, he had us at the prospect of suing corporate landlords. 

We appreciated his plan to create a new unit dedicated to actively investigating wage theft and to supporting labor rights, as well as his acknowledgment that wage theft was far more detrimental to the economy than organized retail theft.

We liked Brown less on criminal justice reform. In particular, he offered disappointing answers on drug decriminalization. He said he would support decriminalizing drugs more if the state had a proper treatment system in place, but he also said that jails don’t really provide the help people need, which raises the question of why we should jail people for suffering from health problems in the first place. After all, it’s not just that jails don’t help people suffering from substance use disorder—they increase the risk of overdose and can prevent people from accessing the very things they need in order to stabilize, such as housing.

Dhingra gave great answers on criminal justice reform issues, and we also liked her proposed focus of tackling consolidation in the health care industry. However, her campaign made our eyes twitch after right-wing media accused her of lying in her campaign materials by calling herself a King County senior deputy prosecutor, despite leaving the office in 2017. In Dhingra’s defense, she has returned to her prosecutorial duties a couple times since taking her state Senate seat. Still, the prosecutor’s office asked her to clarify in her campaign materials that she no longer worked at the office.

Title kerfuffle aside, Dhingra’s strongest argument for the job revolved around her experience with the criminal legal system, but criminal work makes up just a small portion of what the AG does. All in all, we believe that Brown is more prepared to hit the ground running in 2025, which we’ll need in the advent of a Trump kingship.

Speaking of reality TV stars, we almost made it through the entire endorsement without mentioning the thing Brown should be most proud of, which is the fact that he once competed on Survivor. He lasted 30 out of 42 days, people! Vote Brown.

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Commissioner of Public Lands
Dave Upthegrove

Tree nerds already know, but your choice for public lands commissioner is probably the most consequential vote you will cast on this primary ballot. Thanks to some recent court cases going the planet’s way, Washington’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) can now manage its lands for the good of the public and not just for the good of the timber industry, and it can work with organizations to sell carbon credits instead of only tree trunks. Plus, the agency can now use money from the state’s new cap-and-trade program to conserve mature forests that would otherwise fall to chainsaws.

Only one person in this race wants to take full advantage of those opportunities: King County Council Member Dave Upthegrove.

After outgoing Public Lands Commissioner Hilary Franz beefed up our wildfire response, Upthegrove wants to focus on prevention and community resilience to reduce the number of fires that start in the first place. We love a pound of prevention. He also wants to work with tribes and other communities to map out appropriate areas to deploy more clean energy infrastructure and to build more affordable housing to help address the climate and housing crises. We love the commitment to early and consistent outreach. Finally, he wants to go full-steam ahead on DNR’s new program to conserve 10,000 acres of forests for carbon sequestration. We love sequestering anything, especially carbon. 

Upthegrove’s decade in the Legislature will help him get the money he needs to fill our firefighting and fire prevention coffers, and his three terms on the county council arm him with the political skills he’ll need to make sure local governments actually implement these policies. But it’s his stance on protecting older forests from the buzzsaw that makes him stand out among the million or so candidates running in this race.

Unless you brunch with the Lorax, you may not know about the extremely heated debate around protecting Washington’s so-called “mature legacy forests.” In brief, these forests aren’t old-growth, but most were logged before World War II and haven’t been logged since. They’re more structurally complex and biodiverse, and preserving them helps store a ton of carbon, maintain healthy watersheds, and provide space for recreation. Upthegrove and a broad coalition of environmentalists want to protect them, and no other viable candidate running for this seat wants to do that as much as he does.

Detractors in this race point out that timber sales help fund school construction and sometimes make up large portions of county budgets. Furthermore, they argue that older forests have a higher risk of bark beetle infestations, and wildfires might burn them up anyway, so it’d be better to cut down those forests and sell them rather than feed the beetles and fires.

However, both beetles and fires present more of a problem on the eastern side of the state, and the vast majority of mature legacy forests grow west of the mountains. Plus, more diverse forests help keep beetles away. Plus, DNR can manage those forests to help prevent infestations and wildfires, and Upthegrove said he’s down to do both. Plus, these mature legacy forests only make up about 3% of DNR’s forestlands anyway, and Upthegrove presented several convincing ways to get counties and schools the money they’d stand to lose from those sales. So, no, actually, we don’t have to cut down the trees.

Now, we’re well aware that the rest of the state may be tired of “elites” from King County telling them how they should live their lives and manage their lands, but we’re tired of “elites” in the timber industry keeping the state’s small towns dependent on one crop and then holding them out for ransom against tree huggers who want to diversify those economies while also saving the planet. The choice between saving the trees and saving rural economies is a false one—we can and should do both.

Unfortunately, none of the other candidates in this race think we can. We loved the energy and expertise that Makah Tribal Council Member and DNR Tribal Relations Director Patrick DePoe brings to the conversation. As he put it to the SECB in our meeting, he doubled Native American representation at DNR by hiring a second Native person. Moreover, if elected, he’d be the first member of a Washington-area tribal nation elected to any level of government in the state. Representation matters, and we want to see more Native Americans running shit at DNR, but he opposes saving legacy forests from the saw, and he’s taking timber money, so we’ll pass.

Democratic State Senator and firefighter Kevin Van De Wege is running to the right of both DePoe and Upthegrove, and he basically just buys the junky arguments put forth by industry lobbyists, which is frankly what we’ve come to expect from him, so we’ll pass there, too. 

Former Republican Congresswoman Jamie Herrera Beutler belongs to a party that seeks to burn down the planet, and the Trumpy Washington State Republican Party is backing Sue Kuehl Pederson, so none for us, thanks!

Finally, as fervent supporters of the gay agenda, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention that, if elected, Upthegrove would be the first openly gay executive in Washington State history. What does that mean? Well, for one thing, he told us he was “not opposed” to making all the trees gay. Vote for gay trees. Vote Upthegrove.

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Superintendent of Public Instruction 
Chris Reykdal

Anyone with a kid and/or a newspaper subscription knows that Washington schools face budget crises driven by all manner of systemic issues, stealthy and overt assaults from the right, and a recalcitrant Legislature unwilling to tax the rich in order to fulfill the state’s constitutional duty to fully fund basic education. The only candidate running with the brains, the energy, and the savvy needed to solve these problems is two-term incumbent Chris Reykdal.

In the face of persistent teacher shortages, Reykdal knows the best way to retain teachers is to “fucking pay them,” which is probably why he has so much support from teachers unions. It’s also partly what drove him to propose a living wage for paraeducators. 

He also knows that the state currently spends way less than it should be spending on education generally. Reykdal says he needs an additional billion dollars minimum to get schools where they need to be, and he plans to shake down the Legislature for that cash. Given his own time in the Legislature and his current understanding of the power players in both chambers, he knows just where to get it. 

Reykdal’s only formidable opponent, former education nonprofit CEO Reid Saaris, didn’t respond substantively to the question of how he’d break the political morass that prevents us from funding schools. Sad.

Private schools and the rise of charter schools also ultimately threaten public school funding. Reykdal didn’t just reject charter schools in our meeting—he said he wanted to shut them down. Meanwhile, Saaris has written that he opposes charter schools and would be open to “pissing them off,” but he wouldn’t firmly commit to publicly denouncing any PAC money from charter schools that might come his way. And we wouldn’t be surprised if that money is coming, as some of the biggest charter school advocates in the state have already donated to his campaign.

Saaris said to close the opportunity gap for students of color and low-income students, the state needed to provide “equitable funding” by investing 30% more in low-income schools. He said he’d desegregate advanced programs like he worked to do at his nonprofit, and he suggested vaguely that solving this gap came down to money, teaching, standards, and quality pathways. This problem should be solved in public education, but disparities in grade point averages, test scores, and Bachelors degree attainment start in grade school or earlier. Overhauling a complex, racist social system requires more than an abstract vision.

Now, Reykdal hasn’t closed that gap, either, but he has supported the programs that are helping, including early access programs and a transitional kindergarten program to complement them. He also wants to expand the state’s early literacy program, ensure schools have multiple ways to screen children for accelerated programs, bolster one-on-one support for kids with reading challenges, and convince the Legislature to wipe out fees for AP classes. Saaris didn’t get that specific.

In general, Saaris’s opaque, ambiguous proposals did not fill us with trust in his ability to take the reins of an agency that the Legislature consistently hobbles. When he and Reykdal agreed on a topic, Saaris knew less. And every time Saaris took a potshot at the department, either we or Reykdal disproved them on the spot. Lots of swings and misses from Saaris. Vote Reykdal.

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Insurance Commissioner
Patty Kuderer

The insurance commissioner runs one of the more important agencies you’ve likely heard little to nothing about. This department of nearly 275 people negotiates prices with companies who want to offer health insurance on the state’s exchange, regulates perhaps the most vampiric industry known to capitalism, and investigates all manner of complaints related to those companies. The place is also in trouble.

The agency endured a major exodus after a bunch of alleged racist and derogatory assholery from longtime Commissioner Mike Kriedler, who decided not to run for reelection for obvious reasons. We now need someone to right the ship and carry on the good work of staring down Olympia’s phalanx of insurance lobbyists, and that person is undoubtedly State Senator Patty Kuderer.

Kuderer has represented the Redmond area in the Legislature for the last seven years. During that time, she’s done a pretty remarkable job of defeating perhaps the only lobbying group worse than insurance stooges: landlords. She helped pass 2018’s raft of major tenant protections, a right to counsel for low-income tenants, and subsequent tweaks to Washington’s Landlord-Tenant Act that gave renters a little bit more power. Those wins give us confidence in her ability to dismiss industry bullshit and fight for consumers, as does her leadership on a handful of pro-consumer insurance bills she helped pass in recent sessions.

If elected, she plans to “pursue” a regional single-payer health care system informed by the findings of Washington’s permanent Universal Health Care Commission, which she helped create. She also wants to throw her weight behind a bill to make gun owners buy insurance to incentivize safe storage practices. And in general, she wants to focus the agency’s priorities on advocating for the consumers rather than the companies who squeeze us dry. We love all that.

Finally, no one else in this race is more equipped than Kuderer to help improve morale at the department. During her long career as an attorney, she’s represented people who faced sexual harassment and discrimination in the workplace, and she said she’s literally written employee handbooks. On day one, she plans first and foremost to listen to the agency’s staff and learn what they need to feel successful and safe, and then work to make those improvements.

Speaking of other candidates in this race, the only one who returned our meeting request was John Pestinger, a project manager for the agency who has little money and who seems a little too cozy with the insurance companies for our tastes. Also, a Democratic voter database lists him as a “strong Republican” voter. When we asked him why that might be, he said, “As a veteran, I tend to vote pro-veteran. So I can see how that skewed the votes Republican.” When we asked which Republicans he voted for, he declined to answer directly and insisted he was “a liberal and a progressive.” We disagree! Vote Kuderer.

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Legislative District No. 5
Representative Position No. 1
Victoria Hunt

As an experienced urban planner with a PhD in computational ecology, Issaquah City Council Member Victoria Hunt is an urbanist’s dream. But she’s more than just a dream. She showed us that she walks the talk—or, rather, rides it—when she took a 45-minute bus ride on the #544 to meet with us. Major transit swoon.

Her primary opponent, former Sammamish City Council Member Jason Ritchie, is no slouch when it comes to urbanist policy, either. (Literally, he spent a lot of the meeting just kind of aggressively leaning forward when we pressed him on stuff.) And we liked that he resigned from his council seat in 2021 after his colleagues voted to obstruct more housing growth in the wealthy enclave. But he’s running to the right of Hunt for bullshit reasons.

Hunt, for instance, enthusiastically supports rent stabilization, but Ritchie said he’d only support the bill if lawmakers tied it to more housing development. Hunt argued that such a provision would only slow down the bill, which is correct.

Hunt also took issue with Ritchie’s ideas for increasing the state’s housing stock, especially when it comes to affordable units. His pitch mostly focused on changing city codes to allow more fourplexes and accessory dwelling units, but Hunt rightly pointed out that those policies wouldn’t do much to meet our affordable housing needs. What we need is much larger investments in the state’s Housing Trust Fund.

On non-urbanist matters, Hunt voiced opposition to putting school resource officers (SROs) back in schools. To support that position, she gave us an informed, clear answers based on her conversations with parents during her time on council, which was nice. Ritchie, on the other hand, said he opposed cops in schools but wanted school districts to know they had the Legislature’s support in keeping their schools secure, and that for some schools, that may mean a cop working as an SRO. So … he does support cops in schools, though he does oppose those cops carrying guns and mace. Whatever the case, we don’t support Ritchie. Vote Hunt.

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Legislative District No. 32
Representative Position No. 2
Lauren Davis

State House Representative Lauren Davis spends most of her time and considerable talent in the Legislature trying to improve Washington’s inadequate behavioral health system and its dismal criminal justice system. After six years in office, she knows both still need plenty of work, but that’s not for lack of her ingenuity, curiosity, and sheer grit.

Knowing full well the Legislature’s aversion to passing progressive taxes, she puts in the hours combing through Washington’s list of tax loopholes, searching for the millions of dollars the state could be collecting to fund treatment facilities, recovery housing, jail reentry programs, and other starved, neglected, or practically nonexistent systems.

In 2022, for example, Davis tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to end a tax break for companies that warehouse opioids and other drugs. Eliminating that loophole could have added an estimated $53 million to Washington’s coffers. The bill failed, but Davis vows to keep pushing.

Davis has had several successes in the House, though, such as a bill she helped craft that requires hospitals in Washington to send every overdose patient home with a naloxone kit. Previously, hospitals would send people home with a script for naloxone that patients rarely filled. She also proudly touted her bill to eliminate an overly broad law that required the state to revoke a person’s license after any felony conviction involving the use of a car. The change makes it easier for people to follow sentencing conditions, such as meeting with their probation officers or maintaining employment.

The only drug Davis uses is sugar—and she admits to using it quite heavily—but she’s supported drug decriminalization in the past, so she doesn’t let her wise lifestyle choices get in the way of good policy, though she is more open to taxing vices than we are. Still, we’d happily take Rep. Davis and a maple bar over her no-show Democratic opponent and her election-denying Republican opponent any day. Vote Davis.

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Legislative District No. 41
Representative Position No. 1
Tana Senn

For someone who represents Mercer Island, State House Representative Tana Senn isn’t so bad. She sponsored and passed a bill to allow the Washington State Patrol to actually destroy the guns they confiscate, ending the State’s role as a gun dealer. On housing issues, she voted for rent stabilization and supports a 7% cap on rent increases. She also passed funding for electric school buses, which she highlighted as part of her passion for policies that address climate change.

She’s quietly pretty good on criminal justice stuff, too. In 2024, she championed a bill to make it easier for children convicted of a sex offense to apply for removal from the sex offender registry, so long as they complete certain court requirements. That’s a just and potentially controversial bill that not a lot of legislators would take on.

And she’s certainly better than her opponent, Republican challenger Emily Tadlock, who ran around in 2022 knocking doors to try to find illegal voters. We strongly encourage Tadlock to get a fucking life.

We do have concerns about Senn on the topic of Israel and Palestine. Senn seemed a little dismissive of Israel’s genocidal campaign against the Palestinians, calling it “totally sad that all of those people are struggling and dying from famine,” but then she shifted the conversation to Hamas failing to care for Palestinians and the Hamas government spending all its funds on building tunnels. Senn’s shallow arguments gave us pause, but, at the end of the day, US foreign policy doesn’t often intersect with state politics, and she does want to cap our rents, so, for now, vote Senn.

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Legislative District No. 41
Representative Position No. 2
My-Linh Thai

When the SECB interviewed State House Rep. My Linh Thai, we asked her what she was most proud of from her last two years in office. She said, “I thought you said this would be a short interview,” and then laughed at herself for a solid 15 seconds. In our view, Thai has earned the right to that level of confidence, and probably more.

Since we last endorsed her in 2022, Thai’s taken on the landlord lobby. She fought for and won more money in the state budget to represent tenants in eviction court. She also sponsored and pushed through a law that protects renters from greedy landlords stealing their security deposits.

If we elect her again, she said she will dedicate every single word that comes out of her mouth to advocating for a wealth tax to help flip Washington’s notoriously upside-down tax structure right-side up. The wealth tax she sponsored last session did not get very far, and she blames her fellow Democrats—after all, they have a majority, but they just gotta use it! Thai said she thinks it is a realistic goal to pass the wealth tax by 2025. She’ll do it by working with state Senator Noel Frame to build a coalition of advocates to lobby their hand-wringing colleagues.

After that, Thai said she’s pretty tired and would like another refugee to take her spot. But right now, she’s got Republican challengers to beat, landlords to piss off, and a whole lotta wealth to tax! Vote Thai.

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Legislative District No. 43
Representative Position No. 2
Shaun Scott

For 30 years, House Speaker Emeritus Frank Chopp sat in this seat, which covers the University District, Wallingford, South Lake Union, Capitol Hill, and Madison Park. From that perch, in the wake of the 1994 red wave he rebuilt a durable Democratic House majority that now successfully contests and holds seats in exurbs, even as it tries to foster progressive talent with new ideas closer to the cities. Now that he’s ready to step down, he hopes to pass the torch to Shaun Scott, who is by far the only candidate in this race worth passing it to.

With his focus on housing, renter protections, and the needs of the poor in general, Scott ranks as a worthy successor to Chopp, who got his start as a rabble-rousing housing activist. True to form, Scott supports rent stabilization and all manner of tenant protections. In a district where more than 70% of the households rent, he’ll be a particularly powerful voice in that conversation.

He also supports progressive taxes, and, like Chopp, he’s smart about tying them to the things that they pay for. For instance, to address the immediate need for much more affordable housing, he supports an increase to the Real Estate Excise Tax, using a fraction of the sale of McMansions and massive apartment buildings to pay for affordable units. He’d also raise the Oil Spill Response Tax to fund schools and social services, which would help the people disproportionately affected by dirty industry.

In areas where Chopp’s leadership position (or genuine beliefs) occasionally made him meek, we think Scott will be bold. Whereas other liberal and lefty politicians running this year waffled on the question of passing a state law to ban police unions from bargaining over accountability measures, Scott was clear that he would. Whereas some liberal politicians look the other way as their cities pointlessly and expensively sweep homeless people down the street, he’s unequivocal that sweeps are harmful and ineffective.

As a lobbyist for the Statewide Poverty Action Network, Scott knows how Olympia works, and he knows just who he needs to talk to in order to advance his ideas. And as an organizer with the Bernie Sanders and Nikkita Oliver campaigns, he knows the work he needs to do to get to the Capitol in the first place.

Of the many people (and doofuses) The Stranger interviewed for this round of endorsements, Scott numbered among the most informed candidates. His primary opponents cannot include themselves in that count.

When we asked which piece of legislation candidates would be most passionate about passing, middling Democrat Daniel Carusello told us he’d want to set limits on AI technology and increase data privacy, but he seemed generally uninformed about similar efforts at the national level that would preempt state action. He supports progressive revenue taxes, and he doesn’t think police accountability should be bargainable, but his answers did not have anywhere near the specificity of Scott’s.

Stephanie Lloyd-Agnew did not show up for our meeting, so we don’t expect she’d show up for the people she aims to represent.

Last and least, there’s Andrea Suarez. The executive director of We Heart Seattle is a “homeless advocate” who’s reviled by homeless advocates in Seattle and King County. She opposes housing-first solutions to homelessness and has implied on social media that needle exchanges enable drug addiction. (When we asked her to clarify, she told us that she supported them, but she wanted them to better collect needles). She’s running as a Democrat, but she associates with conservatives, and her rambling answers resemble the free-associative style of the right-wing talk show hosts who adore her. She knew nothing about the process of police bargaining, and she could not give us an answer when we asked if transgender children had the right to make medical decisions in consultation with their doctors. Those responses and her general lack of knowledge more than disqualify her from representing perhaps the bluest, queerest, renter-heaviest district in the Legislature. Vote Scott.

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Legislative District No. 46
Representative Position No. 1
Gerry Pollet

Writing an endorsement for State House Rep. Gerry Pollet feels a little bit like living in that meme where an army dude kneels in front of someone’s bed, shielding them from missiles as they sleep. We are the army dude putting our young, hot bodies on the line to protect a sleepy, 12-year incumbent, but not for no reason.

Let’s start out with some good stuff. In his last term, Pollet raised the cap on special education funding. Good on him! And double good on him for committing to get rid of the cap altogether in his next term. If we elect him again, he promises to be a fierce ally to Seattle Public Schools, which could potentially close 20 elementary schools. To save the schools, Pollet said he will propose a $1.1 billion increase to their budgets, but that will not solve some of the structural problems driving closure. He said Seattle must also plan for affordable, family-sized density near public schools so families can afford to live near and fund the district.

That brings us to some less-than-flattering moments for Pollet. Over the last couple years, he pissed off a lot of urbanists by watering down the so-called “missing middle” housing bill, which increased housing density in some areas across the state. But through all the booing, Pollet stands by his actions, saying he did it all in the name of displacement.

He doesn’t think he’s the NIMBY King the urbanist types make him out to be. Earlier this year, he sent Mayor Bruce Harrell a six-page letter, complete with footnotes, blasting his housing growth plan for not increasing density enough. Harrell also disappointed him when it came to protecting vulnerable residents. Pollet said it is “ironic” that the urbanist types who gave him so much grief about his so-called anti-displacement crusade got mad at the Mayor for removing anti-displacement strategies from the housing growth plan. He wants to pass a law requiring cities to include anti-displacement strategies in their comprehensive plans to prevent that bullshit in the future.

Not sure if we can convince any urbanist types to forgive Pollet, especially when he wants to make the transit-oriented development bill less profitable for developers, but hey! He wants to pass rent stabilization!

And if that’s not enough, at least he’s not his Republican competitor, who has the transphobic equation “woman = adult human female” in her Twitter bio. Nor is he his Democrat challenger who no one’s heard of, and who declined an interview with our endorsement board. Vote Pollet.

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Legislative District No. 47
Representative Position No. 2
Chris Stearns

To put it nicely, State House Rep. Chris Stearns contains multitudes on the issues of criminal justice reform and taxation, but ultimately he’s the best choice for this Covington-area seat.

Stearns voted, not very happily, to recriminalize public drug use last year. But if we elect him again, he will continue his work to retroactively strike “juvenile points” that judges can use to add years to someone’s sentence. He came close to passing the policy last session, but it died in the Ways & Means Committee because some lawmakers thought it cost too much. Stearns feels more confident in 2025 because his colleagues won’t be so worried about reelection.

On the more questionable side of his judgment, last year, Stearns pushed a bill to give cities the authority to impose sales taxes to pay for cops, courts, and treatment without taking it up with the voters. The bill didn’t go far, and he probably won’t reintroduce it again in its exact form. He gets that regressive sales taxes suck, but he correctly argued that cities do not have many options to raise revenue. But we correctly argue that pearl-clutching cities would just use the authority to throw away money on cop bonuses during a national police shortage, under the guise of providing “treatment” in a cynical attempt to ameliorate progressives. Could you imagine Bellevue spending a penny of such a tax on a new treatment center? Get real.

ANYWAY, on the less questionable side of his judgment, if we reelect him, he’ll support a wealth tax and secure more progressive revenue to make our tax structure less burdensome on working people.

Even with his flaws, Stearns outshines Republican and apparent sadist Brian Lott. Lott advocates for “tougher penalties” and less government spending at a time when we need public health solutions and much more money to fund schools, housing, transit, et cetera. Vote Stearns.

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Justice Position No. 2
Sal Mungia

Sal Mungia wants to join the state Supreme Court to expand access to the legal system for all people and to ensure the courts treat people fairly regardless of their race, and we endorse him in the hopes that he’ll achieve those goals with the quickness. Given his enthusiasm for lawyering and for civil rights, we think he’s got a good shot.

For a lawyer, Mungia seems genuinely dedicated to making sure the legal system treats people equally. Early on in our conversation, he said he agreed with the legal reasoning behind “the bright-line Rhone rule,” which helps judges to prevent attorneys from eliminating jurors based on their race. He also decried the bias against Black plaintiffs in the civil legal system, which he witnessed firsthand as a personal injury attorney for Gordon Thomas Honeywell in Tacoma. And his pro bono work has led him to support a litany of worthy causes, including his push to secure improved jail conditions for people held at Pierce County Jail.

One of the more equitable, useful, and all-around good things the State Supreme Court could do for the people of Washington is overturn the stupid 1933 court decision that outlaws a progressive income tax. We tried many different ways to figure out how he would rule if the Legislature tried to force the court’s hand on that issue, but he repeatedly (and wisely) thwarted us with “No comment.”

However, his opponent, Federal Way Municipal Court Judge Dave Larson, admitted that he would have sided with the conservatives in viewing the capital gains tax as an income tax and not an excise tax. That made the choice easy for us haters of regressive taxes.

We found Larson pleasant, and we like his preference for treatment courts. But for all his promises to remain neutral on the bench, in June, he spoke at an event with GOP gubernatorial candidate Dave Reichert and said, “‘It’s time that we take back the judiciary in Washington state,’” according to the Chronicle. In his defense, Larson said he only meant that the people needed to take back the court to have it better serve them, but we find that hard to believe. Instead, we believe in supporting the candidate who hasn’t aligned himself with a brain-dead Republican bigot. Vote Mungia. 

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Council Position No. 8
Alexis Mercedes Rinck

The SECB’s shriveled heart grew three sizes when we met the progressive challengers to Council Appointee Tanya Woo; one size for community organizer Saunatina Sanchez’s moxie, one size for professional policy wonk Alexis Mercedes Rinck’s prop copy of the City’s Comprehensive Plan, and one size for the good humor of Tariq Yusuf, the Robin Hood of tech bros. We like that guy! In fact, we like all of them!

But we felt most confident in Rinck’s ability to beat Woo. Woo may not be the evilest of masterminds on the city council, but she represents a dependable vote for big business, landlords, and the mega wealthy—and there’s plenty of that on the council already.

Don’t get us wrong! Progressives don’t sacrifice anything by voting for Rinck. She’s more than just a safe bet to knock out Woo. Of the three progressive challengers, Rinck would be the strongest, most consistent fighter for progressive revenue, which we desperately need to keep libraries open, labor standards enforced, and homelessness services running.

But there’s a few tinfoil-hat-wearers on SECB who alleged some kind of conspiracy based on Rinck’s long, long, LONG list of endorsements. She’s got the full weight of the Democratic Party behind her, plus countless progressive advocacy groups. Given all the fractures on the left, racking up that many supporters counts as quite the feat, and serving them all raises questions about whose concerns to prioritize. Indeed, in our meeting, we bullied Yusuf into arguing that Rinck would be the most likely of the three progressives to “sell out” (our words) because she’s got so many constituencies to please. Sanchez argued a similar point, calling her an “establishment Democrat” akin to US House Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. 

Rinck shut that shit down real fast, though she couldn’t decide in the moment if the AOC thing was that insulting, lol. Her ability to attract so many endorsements while maintaining progressive positions speaks to her political skills, which will make her a force on the conservative, do-nothing city council. In the immortal words of Hannah Montana, Rinck gives Seattle “the best of both worlds.” She’s got some residual lefty grime from her protesting days, and she’s got experience in the belly of the beast of bureaucracy, the King County Regional Homelessness Authority. In fact, she gets credit for one of the biggest wins in that shitshow authority—convincing the suburbs to pay into the regional approach to homelessness. If she can get Bothell to fork over cash, maybe she can get Council President Sara Nelson to support one single renter’s right? Or at least build an opposition caucus that the left can build upon in 2025 and 2027. Either way, we win. Vote Rinck.