regional failures
and how my opponent shaped them
GOOD INTENTIONS AREN'T ENough
I love this region. That's why I refuse to pretend everything is working.
For years, our elected leaders have spent more, created more programs, passed more taxes and promised more compassion.
But we have to be willing to ask a harder question:
What actually happened?
Walk through Little Saigon. Drive down Aurora. Talk to a small-business owner wondering whether Seattle is still the right place to grow.
These outcomes weren't inevitable. They were shaped by decisions — and by a governing philosophy that too often confused compassion with a reluctance to enforce reasonable rules.
Teresa Mosqueda has been one of the most influential voices behind that philosophy.
01 - The CID
WHEN COMPASSION BECOMES PERMISSION
Few neighborhoods demonstrate our regional failures more clearly than Chinatown–International District and Little Saigon.
Residents and businesses have lived with open-air drug markets, public consumption, theft and disorder while government struggled to establish basic expectations for public spaces.
In 2023, Seattle finally passed legislation giving the City Attorney authority to prosecute public drug use and possession under Washington's drug law.
Teresa Mosqueda voted no.
She argued that prosecution would further criminalize addiction and said she could not support the legislation without greater assurances of treatment and diversion.
I agree with part of that diagnosis: we absolutely need treatment.
Where we disagree is the conclusion.
A humane society should offer treatment aggressively.
It should also be able to say:
You cannot openly smoke fentanyl on a sidewalk, operate a drug market outside a neighborhood business, or make a public space unusable for everyone else.
Those principles are not in conflict.
MY APPROACH
Compassion + accountability.
Treatment available when people are ready for it.
Intervention when they aren't.
Diversion for people willing to change.
Consequences for chronic dealers and offenders.
Public spaces that actually belong to the public.
Treatment should be an alternative to incarceration — not an alternative to enforcing the law.
02 — AURORA
PROTECT THE VICTIMS. TARGET THE PEOPLE EXPLOITING THEM.
Aurora's prostitution and trafficking crisis presents the same fundamental problem.
Women are exploited.
Pimps and traffickers profit.
Residents encounter prostitution, shootings and criminal activity in their neighborhoods.
And too often the political debate becomes trapped between two bad choices:
Ignore the behavior — or punish the victims.
We can do better.
There is value in outreach, victim services, massage-worker protections and efforts to identify exploitation inside illicit businesses.
But those policies cannot substitute for confronting the people actually creating the violence and exploitation.
Seattle's own later legislation addressing Aurora described pimps and sex traffickers as major drivers of violent crime along the corridor.
That should be our focus.
MY APPROACH
Be hyper-generous toward victims. Be hyper-accountable toward exploiters.
Aggressively investigate pimps and traffickers.
Target buyers who knowingly participate in exploitation.
Give trafficking victims safe housing and services.
Allow victims who cooperate and successfully leave exploitation to clear offenses from their records.
Use cameras and other appropriate tools to identify traffickers and violent offenders.
Maintain visible law-enforcement presence where trafficking and gun violence are concentrated.
The goal isn't to arrest our way out of prostitution.
It's to make Seattle one of the most dangerous places in America to operate a trafficking enterprise — and one of the safest places for a victim to escape one.
03 — OUR BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT
YOU CANNOT TAX YOUR WAY TO PROSPERITY
Seattle's economic engine has paid for extraordinary public services and opportunities throughout our region.
We should protect it.
Instead, our political culture increasingly treats successful employers as an inexhaustible source of revenue.
Teresa Mosqueda was one of the principal architects and strongest champions of Seattle's JumpStart payroll tax, which created a new tax on compensation paid by many of Seattle's largest employers.
The Council later increased JumpStart tax rates.
Individually, policymakers can argue for each tax.
But businesses don't experience taxes individually.
They experience the combined cost of operating here.
Seattle now layers a business-and-occupation tax, payroll taxes and other regulatory costs onto one of the country's already-expensive operating environments.
Meanwhile, downtown office vacancy climbed dramatically after 2019, office property values have fallen, and Bellevue has increasingly competed for employers and investment.
Not every business move is caused by taxes. Remote work, interest rates, public safety, housing costs and national economic forces all matter.
But government should be asking:
Are we making it easier or harder to create the next great company here?
Too often, the answer has been harder.
MY APPROACH
I am a Democrat. I believe in robust public services.
I also believe somebody has to create the prosperity that pays for them.
King County should:
Make taxes simpler and more predictable.
Consider economic competitiveness before imposing new taxes.
Measure the economic impact of major regulations.
Speed permitting and construction.
Recruit emerging industries instead of assuming today's employers will always remain here.
Grow the tax base instead of continually increasing the tax rate.
The best long-term revenue strategy is economic growth.
04 — PUBLIC SAFETY CAPACITY
RULES DON'T MATTER IF GOVERNMENT CAN'T ENFORCE THEM
Our region spent years debating policing as though having fewer officers was itself an accomplishment.
The consequences are now obvious.
Officers are stretched thin.
Low-level crimes often receive little response.
Investigators have fewer resources.
And even when political leaders finally decide something should be enforced, the personnel often aren't available to do it.
Teresa Mosqueda repeatedly expressed skepticism about additional police spending and voted against some efforts intended to preserve or strengthen SPD staffing.
Accountability for police officers matters.
So does having enough officers to answer the phone.
Those ideas are not contradictory.
MY APPROACH
Pay officers well. Expect extraordinarily high standards. And maintain enough staffing to enforce the laws we pass.
Good policing requires both:
Capacity + accountability.
THIS IS THE REAL DIFFERENCE
I don't question Teresa Mosqueda's compassion.
I question her judgment.
Again and again, our region has embraced policies with admirable intentions while resisting the uncomfortable question:
Is it working?
When drug markets occupy sidewalks, we need more than outreach.
When women are trafficked, we need more than programs.
When businesses leave, we need more than another tax proposal.
When billions are spent, we deserve measurable results.
Government has obligations to everyone:
To the person suffering from addiction.
To the woman being exploited.
To the immigrant shop owner trying to keep the doors open.
To the worker commuting home at night.
To the taxpayer funding all of it.
Compassion without accountability eventually fails the very people it was intended to help.
A DIFFERENT STANDARD
My approach is simple:
BE GENEROUS.
Treatment. Housing. Opportunity. Second chances.
BE ACCOUNTABLE.
Enforce reasonable rules. Measure results. Protect taxpayers. Demand improvement.
CHANGE WHAT DOESN'T WORK.
Government programs should not become permanent simply because their intentions are good.
We can be a progressive region without accepting dysfunction as the price of compassion.
THE GOAL
Safe neighborhoods → Thriving businesses → Effective services → A region people can afford to call home
A DIFFERENT STANDARD FOR KING COUNTY
Practical. Compassionate. Accountable
If you believe government should be ambitious about helping people and equally serious about measuring results, join the campaign.