Seattle Times Editorial Opposes A Reasonable State Tax Code

And showcases some serious hypocrisy

Seattle Times Misses the Point (Again)

The Seattle Times editorial board’s recent piece, "Leaked email shows need for dialogue about revenue," is a masterful piece of irrelevant pablum.

The editorial board leaps from a leaked memo discussing how Democrats might craft messaging to pass progressive tax measures to an entirely unrelated conclusion: that this somehow underscores the need for "dialogue about revenue."

This argument not only misunderstands how political parties function, but also reveals a disingenuous bias that aligns the board more closely with Republican obstructionism than the Democratic values of most Washington voters.

Messaging Isn’t the Problem—It’s a Necessary Tool

The Democrats do not serve only as a debate club; they are a political party with a platform and a clear mandate to tax the rich. They have an agenda shaped by the will of their constituents and are responsible for pursuing policies that address Washington’s urgent needs: a housing crisis, regressive taxation, and poorly funded public services.

Crafting messaging to ensure those policies succeed isn’t sinister—it is doing their job.

The editorial board’s pearl-clutching over this leaked email suggests either serious ignorance or bad faith. Messaging strategy is part of democratic process. The alternative—failing to communicate effectively and thus losing public support—only ensures failure. While failure to fix our “eat the poor/coddle the rich” tax code may be what the editorial board wants (and indeed, most signs point to this)--they don’t need to pretend that Democrats share their reactionary goals.

Glaring Hypocrisy

Moreover, criticism of a party for considering its messaging strategy is horrendously hypocritical given that one the editorial board’s own members comes from a career in precisely this type of work. Worse, the Seattle Times editorial board mendaciously masquerades as if it has an interest in journalistic integrity and intellectual rigor. By their logic, Alex Fryer’s role on the board should be an outright scandal, far more than an internal memo about messaging from a political party.

A Pattern of Disingenuousness

This editorial fits a pattern I’ve critiqued before: the Seattle Times editorial board routinely implies it is some sort of impartial arbiter of public debate, while leaning into positions that undermine progressive policy and actively benefit the activist wishes of its owner. In the process, it consistently parrots the concerns of wealthy elites while ignoring the needs of everyday Washingtonians.

Let’s be clear: the editorial board’s interest isn’t in rigorous or thoughtful dialog. If so, it would embrace discussion of evidence-based policies, and pay attention to rigorous research from the social sciences. Instead, they know they are on the losing side of an issue. So they are deploying tactics like this one to slow things down and distract the population from the moral and economic necessity of tax reform.

The Editorial Board’s Republican Talking Points Machine

As I’ve written in other Rondezvous(es?), the Seattle Times editorial board has often aligned itself with Republican narratives, even as Washington voters overwhelmingly reject Republican leadership.

True, the board is a careful steward of its own power, only trying to push voters so far to the right while retaining their relevance. This is why, when there is no hope of a different outcome, they often endorse Democrats.

Even then, they often do this begrudgingly, such with their endorsement of moderate Bob Ferguson, which was what the Washington Observer called, an “unenthusiastic backing of Ferguson [that] reads more like a litany of reasons not to vote for the three-term attorney general.” But when they spy a chance for a Republican win–such as their attempt to unseat centrist Maria Cantwell–they go for it. They plumped for a Republican Jamie Herrera Butler for Washington State Public Lands Commissioner in November, and also endorsed Ann Davison as City Attorney in Seattle, who has actively worked to recruit people into the MAGA movement.

They also love Republicans that claim to be Democrats but that have been actively excommunicated by the Democratic party for their overtly Republican platforms, as when Andrea Suarez ran for a Seattle seat in the State Legislature, or when Jim Farrell ran for King County Prosecutor. Ditto for Democrats that receive censure from the Democratic party for acting like Republicans, like Maritza Rivera and Bob Kettle.

(Interesting fact I don’t think I have shared–in an interview, Maritza Rivera pretended not to remember whom she had just voted for a few months before, in the King County Prosecutor race involving Jim Farrell, when she said public safety was the reason she was running. She was almost certainly lying (again), to cover up the fact that she had voted for an obvious Republican against a moderate Democrat.)

From their endorsement of candidates who oppose climate action to their skepticism of even modest redistributive policies, the board’s positions are, whenever the opportunity arises in a way that won’t hurt their power, at odds with the Democratic party values of the state. Their latest editorial is no exception, subtly framing Democrats’ communications efforts to move us a small step toward a more moderate tax code as somehow radical.

The editorial board’s obsession with “dialogue” is also a distraction. Dialogue is valuable, but at some point, it must yield action–and the voting process yielded a decisive message when it came to tax issues. Washington doesn’t need more circular conversations about whether revenue reform is necessary—we know it is. What we need are leaders unafraid to fight for solutions and to communicate those solutions effectively to voters.

The Real Dialog We Need

The Seattle Times editorial board might start by having a dialogue with itself about its role in public discourse. If they believe that messaging strategies are inherently bad, they should stop deploying them. If they think political actors should avoid partisanship, they should hold themselves to that standard. But so long as they’re crafting editorials with a transparent ideological bent while criticizing others for doing the same, their calls for dialogue ring hollow.

The question Washington voters should be asking isn’t why Democrats are strategizing to pass tax measures—it’s why the Seattle Times keeps using its platform to undermine those efforts.