David Brewster, a founding member of Post Alley, has a long career in publishing, having founded Seattle Weekly, Sasquatch Books, and Crosscut.com. His civic ventures have been Town Hall Seattle and FolioSeattle.
Crosscut/KCTS must move from its Seattle Center building by the end of 2024. An unexercised purchase agreement would move the media company to First Hill.
Lorena Gonzalez is not broadening her appeal or moving to the center for the general election, but sticking with a mobilize-the-base approach. Bruce Harrell is a unity candidate, with softer positions.
Compassion Seattle had a difficult birth, steering a course among the business community, the service providers, and the good-government types who opposed the charter-amendment route. Even with the court setback, the group may have political legs.
Those who challenge the entrenched power of this "insurgent status quo" badly lack exciting issues, other than nostalgic evocations of Sepia Seattle. In short, the primary is far from predictive of the November battles.
Lorena Gonzalez, the current city council president, has passed her first two key political tests -- keeping labor united behind her so that Jessyn Farrell has not been able to peel off that support; and holding the ethnic coalition on her side, lest Colleen Echohawk carve it away.
The Stranger, like most newspapers, has endured wrenching changes in recent years. It survived all the cuts, particularly in its mainstay entertainment advertising, thanks to a generous amount of federal PPP money and its new pitch for one-time and monthly contributions, now amounting to 35 percent of revenue.
A basic rule in politics is to frame the main issue (or villain) to be addressed in such a way as to position yourself as the best person to fix it. The framing is key. So what are the possible framing referenda, locally?
