Divisive Council Bullies Colleague, Public Commentors

So Much for "Good Governance"

In May, I wrote a piece called “Incendiary, Divisive Rhetoric Returns to the City Council,” noting that the aforementioned rhetoric also happened to be false. 

At the time, I highlighted a supreme act of projection—Cathy Moore had falsely accused her colleague Tammy Morales, from the dais, of name-calling. Reporters from the Seattle Times, Publicola, The Urbanist, and the Stranger could find no evidence supporting her claim and when pressed, Moore failed to provide any.

My hope was that the blowback from this embarrassing incident would prevent this kind of churlish behavior from happening again. After all, many of these folks at least feigned that they were running against divisiveness. 

Unfortunately, my hope looks rather foolish so far, as Moore’s May invective appears to have merely been the canary in the coal mine.

The South Seattle Emerald recently ran a piece titled “It’s Time to Call Out the Seattle City Council’s Civility Hypocrisy.” In it, the author pointed out that this behavior has become an ugly pattern. He starts with a recent example:

An earnest proposal from Morales to release all of the $20 million designated to expand mental health services for Seattle Public School students was met with a level of ire, intolerance, and inquisition of motives that on previous councils would have been an unthinkable deviation from decorum. Councilmember Maritza Rivera condescendingly lectured her District 2 colleague, four years her senior in council service, and accused her of misleading the public with a purely “performative” and “symbolic” proposal. Councilmember Robert Kettle went further by incorrectly accusing Morales of doing no substantive work with independent policy analysts and persisted in that misrepresentation even after being corrected by the director of the City Council Central Staff.

Note that Bob Kettle, after being corrected by the head of central staff, pressed the lie, something the Seattle Times’ political reporter referred to as “among the stranger things I’ve heard a councilmember do to a colleague in a meeting . . .

As Tim Walz might say—this behavior by Kettle sure was “weird.”

Illiberal, dishonest, and mean-spirited

The author of the Emerald piece then rightly connected the council’s disinterest in hearing from the people (Sara Nelson cutting off comments and any applause for testimony that disagrees with her position), calls for arresting peaceful protestors (Cathy Moore), dishonesty (Maritza Rivera), snide condescension toward colleagues (Maritza Rivera, Bob Kettle) and toward people of color pushing back on a hostile proposal (Maritza Rivera).
 

City Council has limited opportunities for public comment at council meetings, called for the arrest of public commenters, cleared council chambers to conduct meetings behind locked doors, and publicly accused community leaders who disagree with them of being misled or naïve. This illiberal streak was most glaringly on display when Rivera proposed an amendment to defund the Equitable Development Initiative, publicly lied about her amendment’s impacts, and, in turn, attacked the accurate analyses of community critics as misrepresentations. Rivera sheepishly withdrew her cut, but never took accountability for her misrepresentations or acknowledged the accurate feedback she received from the community. 

This contempt shown by Kettle, Rivera, Nelson and Moore—for their colleagues, for citizens, and for basic facts, should have no place in our city politics.

While there are many possibilities for why their favored candidate (Tanya Woo) is doing so poorly this year’s election, one possibility is that their petty bullying is turning people off.