Everything Is Political: What Voters Should Know About Big Money in Seattle's Mayoral Race

I want to talk about money in Seattle politics. But, you might be thinking, we got rid of it with the democracy voucher program, didn't we? Kind of.

The program gives candidates access to taxpayer dollars (up to $100 per registered voter) based on how many vouchers they collect, while limiting their fundraising to fixed amounts and placing caps on individual donations that don't come from vouchers.

With the fundraising caps, the theory goes, even a candidate with lots of corporate backers can't flood the zone with advertising. Better still, the democracy voucher program seems geared to benefit candidates without corporate backing, as it allows everyday citizens to "contribute" whether or not they've got the disposable income to do so, while precluding a more well-heeled opponent from accepting individual donations larger than $500 in a mayoral race or $250 in any other race.

The program is overwhelmingly popular: The proposition to reinstate its supporting levy garnered 75% in the August primary — and for a candidate to opt out of it at this point is almost suspicious. If you need more money than the caps allow — more money than your opponent is even allowed to raise — aren't you just trying to buy the election?

Thus, the consistently high participation in the voucher program. Every city-level candidate except Council President Sara Nelson is participating in it this year, and the overwhelming majority of candidates have signed the candidate pledge in prior elections.

In other words, we did it. We got money out of politics and forced candidates to compete on their ideas and accomplishments. 

But … what's the catch?

Enter the independent expenditure (IE). It wouldn't be America if we didn't find a way to uplift and empower corporate speech, and the IE does exactly that, functioning something like a local-level Super PAC. IEs are allowed to spend money advocating for or against any candidate, so long as they keep a firewall between their organization and the actual campaigns. They are also allowed to raise an unlimited amount of money. Per the Washington State Public Disclosure Commission (PDC), "Independent expenditures and electioneering communications are important because they are a constitutionally protected form of speech and, unlike contributions, not subject to limit."

Seattle election law defines IEs as any spending "on behalf of, or opposing any election campaign" that "is made independently of the candidate, his/her political committee, or agent, or of any ballot proposition committee or its officers or agents." It also stipulates that such expenditures be "made without the prior consent, or the collusion, or the cooperation" of the candidate or their campaign.

As long as IEs fall within those boundaries, they are not subject to any of Seattle's specific contribution limits, or to our prohibition against candidates accepting contributions from industries that employ lobbyists. Election law does require that any communications paid for by an IE include a disclaimer stating that said communication was not paid for by and does not represent the candidate. These are invariably in fine print.

This all brings us to the elephant in the IE room: a Super PAC called Bruce Harrell for Seattle's Future — I'll let you guess who it supports — has raised over $1.2 million. The sole IE supporting Mayor Harrell's challenger, Katie Wilson for an Affordable Seattle, has raised only about $86,000.

Bruce Harrell for Seattle's Future gets its funding from 229 donors, most of whom have given rather large amounts. Think one $100,000 donation and a smattering of $50,000 gifts. Katie Wilson for an Affordable Seattle, on the other hand, has only one donation with five digits: a $10,416.98 gift from a software engineer. Notably, the IE has no organizational donations whatsoever.

Seattle law does, in theory, allow Wilson to catch up. She can be released from the $800,000 general election fundraising cap if she can demonstrate that there is a significant imbalance in IE spending against her. However, the problem then lies in coming up with $1.2 million afterward, whipping up an advertising counteroffensive, and getting it all done before Nov. 4. Doing that is, to put it lightly, unlikely.

Ultimately, IEs are constitutionally protected speech, and so long as Harrell's campaign has no influence over what IEs in support of him do with their money, there's nothing untoward going on. But we passed a campaign finance law that was supposed to eliminate the influence of outside money in our local politics. What we have instead is exactly what we were trying to get rid of: a very vocal, very rich minority — many of them from outside Seattle — pouring money into a Seattle election to get their way.

Is there anything we can do about it?

Well, first off, that moneyed minority may not get its way. Large corporate interests and individual donors poured millions into the 2019 Seattle election and still lost. Plus, Wilson won over 50% of the vote in the primary and beat Harrell by 9 points, a rightfully stunning result.

But whether Harrell or Wilson wins, in allowing this much outside influence to undermine the spirit of our democracy voucher program, we've all lost. We should absolutely renew the democracy voucher levy on Nov. 4, but we need to do more. That may not be as easy as amending the law — IEs are, as the PDC noted, constitutionally protected speech — but we can use another powerful tool to eliminate such spending: shame.

We already do it, in our natural suspicion of candidates who, as is their legal right to, opt out of the democracy voucher program. Let's add accepting large IEs to that list. While candidates can't, by law, tell IEs what to do or not do, they can publicly disavow anything an IE does on their behalf or against their opponent. If they want to earn our votes, they should.

Got something *political* I should know? Tell me about it: Tobias.CB@SeattleEmerald.org.

Tobias Coughlin-Bogue is a writer, editor and restaurant worker who lives in South Park. He was formerly the associate editor of Real Change News, and his work has appeared in The Stranger, Seattle Weekly, Vice, Thrillist, Thrasher Magazine, Curbed, and Crosscut, among other outlets.