Nelson’s Up For Reelection — Don’t Buy Her “Pragmatic Progressive” Schtick by Hannah Krieg Seattle City Council President Sara Nelson announced Wednesday morning her bid for re-election to the citywide Position 9 seat on Council. In her own self-mythos, Nelson portrays herself as a departure from “[y]ears of performative, ideological decisions” to “delivering real results – prioritizing safety, livability, and a city that works for everyone, not just political theater,” as she said in a press release. That schtick worked for her in 2021 when she ran as a referendum to the previous City Council, which had earned a reputation for taxing big business, protecting tenants, expanding workers' rights, and somewhat addressing the concerns raised by the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.  But in just three years, Nelson transformed from the council’s political outsider to its ring leader. Now, after the reactive voting public overwhelmingly rejected her protégé, Tanya Woo, in favor of progressive Council Member Alexis Mercedes Rinck, Nelson now faces the challenge of defending numerous instances of her own “performative, ideological decisions” and “political theater” against an inevitable backlash candidate. That candidate has yet to emerge, but when they do, they’re welcome to reference this incomplete list of times Nelson made a little song and dance of her pro-cop, pro-business ideology.   Who needs a study when you have vibes: In her first months on the City Council, Nelson introduced a resolution “supporting the development” of an incentives program that aimed to attract new officers to the Seattle Police Department (SPD). A resolution —or a non-binding action by the council—is by definition “performative.” And, in true “ideological” fashion, she didn’t let inconvenient information slow her largely symbolic crusade. The Seattle Department of Human Resources (SDHR) found inconclusive results regarding the efficacy of hiring bonuses. In particular, SPD did not see an increase in applicants even with the City dangling thousands in front of them at the end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022. The department even appeared to caution against hiring bonuses as it could make current employees feel undervalued, leading to more departures. In an April 2022 committee meeting, Nelson encouraged her colleagues to dismiss the City’s findings — “This is one area where we don't need a consultant, really, to study the benefit of incentives,” she said. Instead, she pushed for immediate implementation of the policy, despite lacking evidence that it would effectively boost staffing levels.  With little influence on the body, she couldn’t do much more than that. But lucky for her, she had a powerful ally in Mayor Bruce Harrell — at least when it came to cops. In July 2022, Harrell announced his plan to allow SPD to dole out hiring bonuses of up to $30,000 for lateral hires and $7,500 for new recruits. Later that summer, the City Council approved a hiring incentives pilot program. More than two years later, the City remains about 500 officers short of their decidedly unpragmatic goal of a force of 1,400 during a national staffing shortage. According to KOMO, despite the hiring bonuses, SPD lost 40 officers and gained only 15 in the first six months of 2024. Nonetheless, the council renewed the incentive program this year, even increasing the bonuses for lateral hires to $50,000.  Nelson does a little interference as a treat: In July 2022, Nelson took a firm stance against former Council Member Andrew Lewis’s move to put Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) on the ballot next to an initiative for approval voting —a relatively untested system that seemed designed to favor moderates and establishment normies. Nelson, in a written statement and on the dais, accused the council of “interfering” with the will of the people in a rushed, opaque process. At the time, one could speculate that she made such a scene because she supported approval voting over RCV, but she insisted her vote against adding RCV to the ballot actually symbolized a vote for “good governance.” That principled stance crumbled when earlier this year lefties gathered enough signatures to put a tax on corporations to fund social housing on the ballot. Nelson folded, joining her council colleagues in supporting a pro-business alternative, drafted up in a suspicious process that could leave the council vulnerable to recalls. The curtain closed on Nelson’s outrage about good governance over council interference — No encore.  An unsupportive supporting character: During budget negotiations in 2022, Nelson misrepresented the opinion of LaNesha DeBardelaben, the then president and CEO of Northwest African American Museum (NAAM), in order to further her own agenda. Nelson argued against an amendment to reroute $500,000 from the SPD advertising budget to NAAM for desperately needed repairs, claiming the DeBardelaben told her in a phone call that she was “disappointed” the funding would come at the expense of the cops. DeBardelaben told The Stranger that Nelson “egregiously misconstrued” their conversation. “I would never go against any amendment that invests $500,000 into the Northwest African American Museum,” DeBardelaben told The Stranger at the time. “... NAAM is a cultural gem for children, for elders, for families, for artists, for the constituents of all city council members, and for everyone.” And why would she misrepresent DeBardelaben? Nelson never answered The Stranger’s request for comment, but it seems pretty clear she used DeBardelaben to bolster a defense around her police maximalist agenda. Seems ideological to me!  Grandstand: In the world of political theater, Nelson might deserve a Tony nomination for the following performance. In 2022, Nelson joined with former Council Member Alex Pedersen, another conservative outlier, in a symbolic vote against the 2023-2024 budget. This was despite the fact that the two received basically everything they wanted in the package, especially when it came to cops. The budget increased police funding from $355 million to $370 million, fully funded the Mayor’s ambition to hire 120 additional officers, and allocated $4 million in hiring bonuses. Since the budget’s passage was already assured,, “performative” seems an apt description of their little stunt. It drips with irony when you consider how conservatives like Nelson accused former Council Member Kshama Sawant of epitomizing “performative” and “ideological,” stances yet both Nelson and Pederson mirrored Sawant’s long standing practice of casting symbolic votes against the budget —something Pedersen himself had previously criticized. This one’s dedicated to the Downtown Seattle Association: After the State moved to recriminalize drugs in 2023, the City Council had no obligation to enshrine such a law on the City level, but Nelson, in partnership with Republican City Attorney Ann Davison, decided to anyway. She forced – and rushed – a mostly redundant virtual signal to carceral interests such as the Downtown Seattle Association (DSA), which was hungry to put drug users in jail where they would be, temporarily, out of sight and out of mind. The dramatic affair became a wedge issue in the 2023 campaign and may have been the nail in the coffin for Lewis’s re-election campaign. But did it solve so-called “street disorder?” Apparently not to the council’s own standard.his year, the new conservative majority marked new Stay Out Of Drug Area (SODA) zones to banish those charged with drug crimes in an effort to spread street disorder around so as not to offend Seattlites and tourists with the jarring sight of poverty and the public health crisis.   Ritual sacrifice: In her first two years, Nelson had limited ability to do anything beyond the symbolic without help from the Mayor. But the tables turned after the 2023 election filled City Hall with her political allies who elected her council president over two more experienced members, Council Members Dan Strauss and Tammy Morales. Despite running in 2021 as a “pragmatic progressive” and leaning on similar branding in her re-election launch, Nelson’s first move as Council President did not fit the criteria for either “pragmatic” or “progressive.” She fired head of central staff Esther Handy, a highly unusual and shocking move that, while within her purview as president, flew in the face of pragmatism, according to City Hall insiders. And, those insiders couldn’t help but see a political motive in the firing. Handy, who served effectively under both progressive and conservative council presidents, still carried progressive stink on her from her time working at Progress Alliance and Puget Sound Sage. Nelson then replaced Handy with then Director of the Office of Economic and Revenue Forecasts (OERF), Ben Noble, who seemed to better align with her ideology as a proponent of fiscal austerity. Grab the popcorn: When conservatives bemoan “political theater,” they're often calling for civility, which usually boils down to keeping your volume down and avoiding personal attacks on colleagues. However, Nelson took part in one of the most scandalous personal attacks on Morales, which eventually led to her resignation. The council had to fill an open seat when former Council Member Teresa Mosqueda left the body for the County Council earlier this year. Disregarding the will of the voters, the council voted to appoint Tanya Woo, immediately following her loss to Morales. Morales took offense to the appointment, viewing it as a decision influenced by the majority’s corporate donors. She called the appointment a “foregone conclusion,” reducing the public process to little more than a puppet show. Adding to the insult, the council’s choice of someone who had actively campaigned against Morales felt like a deliberate slight—especially as Morales was already isolated as the sole member outside the conservative bloc. How I wish we had the full footage: Nelson's flair for the dramatic resurfaced in February 2024 when she couldn't help but accuse left-leaning public comment regulars, namely Stop The Sweeps, of exploiting the plight of refugee families to advance their own anti-surveillance agenda, as if the two issues couldn’t be directly and clearly connected.  Her evidence? A few Instagram infographics urging people to sign up for public comment on Tuesday to support demands for housing and to oppose ShotSpotter. She called the show of solidarity “craven political opportunism” and limited public comment to just 20 minutes as punishment for the behavior. Surprise, the move backfired. Public commenters got pissed and staged an impromptu protest since Nelson denied them the official channels through which to levy concerns. The ordeal ended in six arrests and an hour and a half delay, meaning it would have actually saved time and some heat from the press to listen to her constituents rather than silence them. But the spectacle of publicly airing your personal beef with activists and eventually throwing them in jail is probably more satisfying. Cliffhanger: Despite her new power, Nelson’s biggest political endeavor of the year petered out without explanation, calling into question her characterization as a politician who “delivers real results” instead of engaging in virtue signals to her corporate overlords. Nelson embarked on a dramatic crusade against the newly established gig worker minimum wage earlier this year. But after a huge backlash from organized labor and ethical concerns that jeopardized her anti-worker majority, she gave up the fight and we haven’t heard a peep since. One might also characterize the ordeal as theater because she claimed to have conducted stakeholding with both sides of the debate. However, the group she cited as representing workers' interests was, in reality, an organization aligned with Uber's agenda.  Cyberbully (2011) starring Emily Osment City Council: Most recently, her council came under fire after Morales announced her upcoming resignation in a scathing press release that accused her colleagues of bullying her, undermining her legislation, and eroding the institution as a whole. Addressing cultural issues like these are all of the council members’ responsibility, especially the council president. Although Nelson denies it, she failed to create an environment where everyone could reasonably do their job for their constituents. Instead, she allowed, without public pushback or apology, the City Council to openly scold Morales on the dais, stunts that reinforced to both Morales and the public the new power dynamics on the council. I’m sure I missed some of Nelson’s not-so-pragmatic and not-so-progressive moments during her tenure on the council and I’m almost positive we’ll see more theatrics before election day, but 10 examples seem like a good enough counter argument to her self-branding. Behind the scenes, politicos speculate Nelson will struggle to win this election. According to a poll by Northwest Progressive Institute conducted earlier this year, only 22% of likely voters approve of Nelson’s job performance and 32% said they disapproved. Her disapproval rate ranks even higher than Woo’s, who lost spectacularly to newcomer Rinck. As I reported following Rinck’s blowout win, Washington Community Alliance (WCA) data analyst Andrew Hong chalks up the pendulum swing to Rinck to a uniquely reactionary voting public that holds an anti-incumbent bias rather than progressive ideals newly awoken between the 2023 election and the 2024 election.  Nelson’s consultant, Ben Anderstone, echoed Hong’s analysis in November, arguing voters who went center in 2023 picked Rinck in 2024 for “not-especially-ideological reasons.” “Seattle City Council never really stopped being unpopular,” Anderstone said previously.  Anderstone, who did not want to speak directly about his client, said incumbents are not destined to lose, “but any incumbents need to effectively message around [voter’s] frustrations.” Nelson, in her press release announcement, acknowledged there’s still work for the council to do.  "Seattle isn’t where it needs to be yet, but we’ve come a long way. We’ve shifted from failed policies to approaches that are starting to work, and I’m committed to seeing those efforts through,” she said. "By the end of this next term, I want our residents and people nationwide to know Seattle turned an impossible situation around by tackling tough issues and playing to its strengths.”