What's up, South End?
First of all: Shoutout to everyone who came to the mayoral forum last weekend (or watched the stream). It was wonderful to see y'all and feel the love we all have for the Emerald and our city.
In the days after the event, there was a lot of talk about both candidates, and hearing people in the community be this engaged gives me hope for our collective future. This week, I've been asked a lot about the numbers published on both candidates' independent expenditures (IEs).
Currently, Mayor Bruce Harrell's IE has over $1 million, and Katie Wilson's is hovering around $100,000. I've been asked what this will mean for both campaigns moving forward.
Here's what I can say: The most recent polls show Wilson has a lead. Large sums of money have been pouring into Harrell's campaign, which will mean you'll see mailers, emails, flyers, social media posts, TV and radio commercials — the works — in direct support of Harrell or in opposition of Wilson. That is what that money buys.
But for the details on IEs, what they are, where the money comes from, how much influence they actually have, and what the community should do moving forward, I reached out to an expert.
Crystal Fincher is the executive director of KVRU, and she's a political analyst. I spoke with her recently to get all the answers we need as we move forward in this election cycle.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
MD: What is an IE?
CF: An "IE" is an independent expenditure. These are essentially unaffiliated efforts to communicate with voters about a candidate or a ballot measure. The difference is, with a campaign, you're giving money directly to the campaign. They're deciding what to do with it, and there are donation limits associated with campaigns, so you can't give over a certain dollar amount. It helps to control the amount of spending. That is not the case when it comes to independent expenditures; there's essentially no limit on what can be contributed, which is why you see some of these huge, exorbitant amounts of money, like over a million dollars, being given.
The caveat is that independent expenditures can communicate with voters, but they are prohibited from coordinating with the campaign. So they can't communicate directly with the campaign and they can't strategize on messaging. Now, what these efforts can do is look for signals from the campaign, and the campaign looks for signals from the independent expenditure to see what are the top themes of the campaign that may be useful to hit on. Or who are their opponents and what are the vulnerabilities of their opponents, and they may message some opposition, some contrast messaging or attack ads on behalf of a candidate.
MD: Does this really matter? Do large amounts of IEs have correlation with votes?
CF: Yes. And that's why you see it reported on so often, there's absolutely a correlation. A lot of people, certainly myself, wish it wasn't that way. There is way too much influence that money has, and that money and interests have in politics, and it's corrosive. What money really buys is communication, and that's for a couple of reasons: One is the general environment. If we were talking about 20 years ago, 30 years ago, there were multiple daily papers here in Seattle. There were multiple weeklies. There was a team of reporters covering the Seattle government. People had much more of an opportunity to be well-informed by just reading the media that was available. We're in a very different situation today, where we're stretched really thin when it comes to media resources. There's much less coverage, much less accountability reporting, much less of an opportunity for the things that people were able to access and learn from for free, or close to free, and that was freely available to look up at any time. That doesn't exist anymore.
So, to get your message out now, even voters to know who you are, to know that you're running and what you stand for, you essentially have to pay to get that message out. People are hearing most of the things about the candidates from online, social media, from mailers, from ads. These are the things that are really penetrating into households. Most people aren't affirmatively looking for information about elected officials and candidates, and so it really takes a lot of money in the form of advertising, social media, ads, online reach, digital ads, mailers, cable buys, over the top, advertising, that kind of stuff, and that's all really expensive. So, essentially, money is a bullhorn. Money allows you to talk loud enough and broadly enough to communicate to enough of the public to win.
Now, your message still has to resonate. You still have to be saying things that are compelling to the public and that make people want to vote for you. But that's what those independent expenditures buy. They buy communication, they buy the type of messaging that gets in front of voters, that reminds them that there's an election in the first place, and, conceivably, persuades them about how to vote.
MD: Knowing all of this, what should voters do to be informed?
CF: Pay attention to who the communication is from. Especially from independent expenditures. A lot of times, they'll have friendly, wonderful-sounding names, right? Like "Jobs PAC" or "People for Pragmatic Leadership." "Everybody Believes the Children Are the Future PAC," right? And all of these names are going to sound good and enticing, but it is really useful and helpful for people to know that the Washington State Public Disclosure Commission tracks all of this, and that everyone can look up who these folks are. So follow the money in all of these cases and see who these people are, because you can reliably predict what a candidate is going to be advocating for based on who the majority of their donors are and where the majority of their money comes from.
We are in some perilous times, and unfortunately that means that we're going to have to do another step of homework on our part to make sure that we don't allow interests that are contrary to our own — and people can make their own evaluation of what that is — to prevail, because they don't always say things that are consistent with what they believe or what they're advocating for.
It may feel like South Park and Georgetown are right next to each other — they are just 2 miles apart. But due to lack of transit and bike lanes in the areas, navigating between the two neighborhoods is hard without a car.
Contributor Jacquelyn Jimenez Romero reports that after years of advocacy from community members, the two South End neighborhoods are now connected by a new bike and pedestrian path.
You can learn all the details about the new bike path in Jacquelyn's article.
The mayoral race in Seattle is getting a ton of attention around town. Mayor Harrell and candidate Wilson have been facing off in debates all around the city.
But they aren't the only candidates squaring off that the South End should be paying attention to.
The Emerald is hosting a King County Executive Candidate Forum today (Saturday, Oct. 4, at 1 p.m.) in Skyway. The event has sold out, but I've heard that if you show up in person, there's a small chance you can still get a seat.
Contributing political columnist Tobias Coughlin-Bogue has done the work to get you prepared. He spoke with both candidates this week, and whether or not you plan to attend the debate, these articles have the info you need as you decide where to cast your vote.
Tobias' interview with King County Councilmember Claudia Balducci is here.
Tobias' interview with King County Councilmember Girmay Zahilay is here.
Tobias also had IEs on his mind and wrote about it in his latest column.
This is an abbreviated version of The Roundup newsletter. To get the entire newsletter, including a weekly list of events to check out and my shout-out to South End Gems, subscribe here. See you next week!
Mike Davis is the newsletter editor and Voices editor at the South Seattle Emerald. Born and raised in Seattle's South End, Mike is a longtime journalist who's covered everything from arts and culture to sports to politics.
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