NAACP: Maritza Rivera’s legislation a “slap in the face”

Seattle Times: Rivera's words "felt like gaslighting”

Maritza’s Assault on Marginalized Communities

In case you missed it, a couple of works ago Maritza Rivera showed us what really matters to her by introducing her first substantive legislation–to cut $25M for building affordable housing, childcare and healthcare facilities for marginalized groups in Seattle. 

Despite her attempt to slip it in unnoticed on the Friday of a three-day weekend, the blowback was broad, swift and fierce. 

When the City Council met the next business day, leaders from Seattle’s Black, Indigenous, Latino, and Asian communities excoriated Rivera’s assault on their constituents for over three hours.  

The President of the Seattle King County NAACP summed up the response when he said Rivera’s amendment was “a slap in the face” of the African American Community, “tone deaf at best, something more insidious at worst.”

I encourage you to click below and listen to his sixty second speech.

Rivera Replies With Condescension and Lies

After leaders from all over Seattle spoke out, Rivera said they were just being duped by disinformation and that her plan wouldn’t cut funding. 

(She was ultimately forced to remove the funding cut from her legislation, though she did manage to pass additional reporting requirements for these development projects—placing yet another disproportionate burden on underrepresented communities.)

In the meantime, Rivera has continued to double down on her dissembling–implying that these community leaders cannot think for themselves. One of the Seattle Times’ assistant managing editors and a regular columnist wrote in the Times that Rivera’s response “felt like gaslighting,” and then debunked Rivera’s claim that she wasn’t putting dollars at risk. 

Note that in addition to the leaders of tons of organizations whose funds were at risk because of these actions, the Seattle Times reporting staff, The Stranger, The Urbanist,  South Seattle Emerald, and Publicola, as well as in the text of amendment itself, it was made crystal clear that this would involve a massive cut to funding. 

It’s almost like Rivera is claiming that our news outlets are “fake news.”

Where The Heck Is This Coming From?

I’ve avoided spending too much time delving into Rivera’s public statements and actions purposefully, as she was my opponent and doing so is awkward.

Moreover, it hasn’t felt necessary, because clearly she has little clout on the council. In her campaign, she was quite adamant that public safety was her top priority area—and yet she couldn’t even get herself onto to the public committee. Her only chairmanship is on the library committee–a topic she clearly doesn’t care about, as she didn’t even deign to fill out the library foundation’s questionnaire during the campaign. So it just hasn’t felt necessary to dissect her behavior.

But an unusual number of people have asked me to share insight from my time on the trail with her, and so I have decided to weigh in.

Honesty Issues

Notably, this weird gaslighting isn’t a first for Rivera. She spent lots of time in her campaign signaling that spending cuts were coming and then denying it vehemently, even implying at a forum in Fremont that I was racist or sexist for pointing out her plans. (Incidentally, that her first legislation was for cuts to a vital program further verifies her dishonesty).  

This, among other bad behavior on the trail, prompted a rare rebuke from our own party. Yes, I had the party endorsement, but this was the party that was providing data for both of our campaigns and is extremely unlikely to publicly punish one of its own.

And yet the Democratic Party of King County, which represents the State Democratic party, concluded Rivera’s behavior was so out of bounds that they put out a statement regarding Rivera that said, among other things, “Defending support from big MAGA donors is one thing; adopting their deceptive gaslighting is quite another. This is disrespectful to voters, and has no place in the Democratic Party, in King County or elsewhere. We call on Rivera to cease these unacceptable behaviors.”

On the recent attempt to take away money from affordable housing, health clinics, and childcare for underrepresented minorities—I’ve been been puzzling over her claim that her budget proviso wouldn’t defund programs.

The strange little story she seems to be telling herself looks like it is rooted in the fact that her defund is two-step—something like—she set up a requirement that the programs cannot meet, and then they lose their funding. SEE–she didn’t defund them!

This reminds me of when I used to say to one of my boys, “I told you not to touch your brother” and one of them would say back, “I didn’t touch him, I touched his shirt!” Fortunately, now that they are 8 and 11, they are smart enough to know that that isn’t clever sophistry, it’s doltish drivel.

This lesson seems lost on Rivera.

Or she’s just a bald-faced liar. It’s tough to know.

But whether she is maleficent, or just maladroit, or some combination therein–is up for the reader to decide. 

Either way, she sure is proving malignant.