Leader of Super PAC Wants the Seattle Council to Know Who is Boss.

Happy New Year! (Except for the part about corrupt lobbyists and back room dealing at City Hall.)

Hello friends, family, neighbors, and frenemies!

I hope you had a wonderful holiday season and a Happy New year. Ours was filled with love and light and finally, for me, enough down time. I’ve got a brand new nephew who brought lots of cuddles. He and his precocious big brother–who is just shy of three–added an extra dash of delight to our Christmas celebrations. 

You may or may not have missed me, but in the time I’ve been out of touch, I’ve migrated my newsletter over to Substack. I had hoped to hang back a bit longer, but alas–there is too much going on.

Unfortunately, we’ll start with a whiff of corruption here in the Emerald City.

Tim Ceis is a local lobbyist who is life-partnered with the head of the Seattle Chamber. He’s also the guy who got the MAGA + big business lobbyists together to buy the city council election through SuperPAC spending. He recently got caught sending out an email letting those very big money donors who bought the election know that it is time to cash in their chips and let the council know they need to do their corporate overlords’ bidding. 

He even said the quiet part out-loud:

“The independent expenditure success earned you the right to let the council know not to offer the left the consolation prize of this council seat."

In other words, You bought the election; you’ve earned the right to tell the council what to do. 

In my own race, when my opponent Maritza Rivera pretended this kind of tit-for-tat corruption wasn’t what was up, she was telling an ugly lie and she knew it. But she didn’t respect voters enough to speak the truth (or take any courageous stances on nearly any topic for that matter. Imagine this job being worth that to a person!). Anyway, now people like Tim Ceis and his back room cronies plan to run this city as their own fief for the next few years. They put over a million dollars into getting Rivera, Rob Saka, Bob Kettle and the rest elected, so they could get a big ROI on their investment through lower taxes.

Unfortunately, they have a very powerful ally. Mayor Harrell used taxpayer dollars to hire that same Tim Ceis to sell the public on his sophomoric idea to move a future Sound Transit station, from a location that the voters picked to one that the Mayor likes better, a plan that will inconvenience millions of riders for decades and waste tens upon tens of millions of dollars. In fact, Mayor Harrell has paid Ceis $310,000 of taxpayer money, in multiple tranches, to keep his contract just under the city’s automatic trigger for a competitive bidding process.  

You can’t make this stuff up. 

I’m looking forward to seeing the Seattle City Councilmembers who promised to go over the budget with a fine-toothed comb scrutinize that ridiculous waste of money and the obvious cronyism that drives it.