Restaurant Community Activist Jeanie Chunn Joins Race for Seattle City Council District 2

A fifth candidate has entered the race for Seattle City Council District 2. National small business advocate Jeanie Chunn threw her hat into the ring this week.

Chunn joins the hotly contested race alongside Jamie Fackler, a city building inspector and union steward, real estate investor Takayo Ederer, transportation policy and operations manager Adonis Ducksworth, and assistant city attorney Eddie Lin. The election will take place in November, following the resignation of former City Councilmember Tammy Morales in January. Morales held the seat for five years.

After years of community advocacy, Chunn, of Beacon Hill, is running for office for the first time.

Chunn, 49, was "born into restaurants," the candidate said in an interview. Her grandparents owned Chinese restaurants on the East Coast, and her mother worked as a bartender up until the day before Chunn was born.

Moving to Seattle in 1999, Chunn worked as a restaurant server to support herself and her daughter, and made her way up the restaurant industry career ladder. She said people often undervalue the work of those in food service.

"In reality, it's a lot of work to make a restaurant successful," Chunn said. "We're able to take really big ideas and break them down, and move quickly. I think that can be applicable to all areas of our life, including building policy and organizing people."

Chunn is campaigning on labor rights, housing for all, and protecting BIPOC businesses.

Chunn has been a longtime advocate for workers in the food service industry, according to her campaign website. In 2020, the candidate cofounded Seattle Restaurant United (SRU), a coalition of restaurant owners who supported each other during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Over 1,000 restaurants and bars in King County had permanently closed their doors between March and December 2020, The Seattle Times reported. SRU advocated for legislation to protect restaurant workers, such as requiring proof of vaccination to dine indoors.

On a national level, Chunn also serves as co-chair of the Independent Restaurant Coalition and director of High Road Restaurants, a coalition that promotes race and gender diversity within the industry, she said. In her work, Chunn advocated for policy in raising minimum wage and providing pathways to leadership for women and People of Color in restaurants.

If elected to City Council, Chunn aims to end homeless encampment sweeps and ensure funding for Proposition 1A, a grassroots measure passed in February that will allocate $50 million a year to build housing for low-income and middle-income residents.

"Our current mayor keeps pushing policies focused around sweeps and jail, but these have not and will never solve this problem," Chunn wrote on her campaign website.

In 2023, Seattle spent an estimated $27 million on encampment sweeps, Real Change reported.

Chunn criticized other policies, such as Stay Out of Drug Areas and Stay Out of Areas of Prostitution laws Mayor Bruce Harrell signed into effect last September.

"[These laws] are just so dehumanizing," Chunn said. "And it breaks my heart when I think about how we've deteriorated as humanity."

Chunn also aims to introduce progressive policies that protect city workers — from wage theft by large corporations to ensuring affirmative action in the workplace.

"Conservative institutions love to talk about street crime only to distract us from the millions of dollars our biggest corporations steal from their own employees," Chunn wrote on her campaign website. "If we are going to support workers in this city, we need to start by showing them where we stand."

Outside of her community work, Chunn enjoys yoga, karaoke, and the outdoors, she said.

"I love this city. When you love something [this much], you also see its potential," Chunn said. "I want to change the [perspective from which] policy is made. I want to come from a place of compassion and care and love."

Chunn has not filed campaign donations as of Tuesday, May 6, according to the Ethics and Elections Commission. Ducksworth is leading donations at $89,709, Lin is next at $79,025; Ederer following at $26,916. Fackler has reported $2,215 in contributions.