Embarrassing anti-business stunt by Seattle’s Lorena Gonzalez fails spectacularly

Councilor Lorena Gonzalez. (Seattle Canal)

Seattle City Council president and mayoral candidate Lorena Gonzalez suffers from a number of missteps. Yet ironically, they are all orchestrated. An act of virtue signaling her contrived support for the workers exploded on her face. How embarrassing.

Gonzalez was first called upon for supporting an illegal, race-based entry fee at a gay pride event because she thought it would win her points with the activist community. And is she a lawyer? All it did was remind the community that they are one of the least competent lawyers in town.

In a tweet, Gonzalez reveals her complete ignorance of the city she claims to represent. To what end? So that she could present her own business plan. But one small problem: your plan doesn’t provide any details beyond left-wing topics of conversation. Your plan is missing … the plan. It also erases Asians from our diverse city.

Rantz: Seattle DOT is trying to exclude whites from the free ORCA program

Lorena Gonzalez doesn’t understand the economy (or much else)

The Downtown Seattle Association (DSA) asked the mayoral candidates to outline their economic recovery plan for Seattle’s core business districts. Without them this city cannot survive. They bring Gonzalez in most of the revenue to waste on ideologically driven politics that are destroying the city.

But the Gonzalez campaign declined to participate.

Gonzalez called this a bold decision, claiming the DSA had asked candidates to “come up with stimulus plans that focus solely on downtown businesses.” She could not, she said, because “our city cannot afford a mayor who believes that the recovery should focus exclusively on large corporations”. It has its own worker-centered plan called “Progress for All”.

She sounds offended by the DSA approach. Even outraged. Gonzalez is fighting for the workers – but not for the tens of thousands who work in downtown Seattle. And she would never want to have anything to do with the DSA. She cautioned the group because of its “stark differences from DSA’s purely downtown approach to economic recovery.”

However, that won’t stop Gonzalez from appearing in a DSA mayor’s debate on June 29th. It’s also a U-turn in her February 2021 comments, in which she told Q13 FOX reporter Brandi Kruse that she hopes to reopen the “downtown core … employment” hub not just for the city of Seattle, but for the hub the region.”

To believe Gonzalez’s twist, you’d have to be as stupid as she thinks.

. @ downtownseattle urged candidates to come up with economic recovery plans that focus solely on downtown businesses. I declined to answer because our city cannot afford a mayor who believes recovery should focus solely on large companies. Https://t.co/a7ov0G8f6b

– M. Lorena González (@MLorenaGonzalez) June 22, 2021

Gonzalez doesn’t think you’re too bright

Gonzalez doesn’t think much of the Seattle voters. She thinks they’re stupid.

First, she denies that a group of companies called “Downtown” is interested in finding out about redevelopment plans for companies in the city center. Gonzales wouldn’t turn down a black business alliance asking about black companies. She would go for it and pretend she was an advocate for civil rights. And despite Gonzalez’s opinion, an area of ​​around 13,000 small businesses deserves attention.

Second, despite the “Downtown” in the DSA name, they represent 12 neighborhoods – from Pioneer Square and the International District to South Lake Union and western Capitol Hill.

Third, and most importantly, DSA doesn’t just represent “big corporations,” a collective term people use to demonize companies.

In fact, DSA membership includes over 1,700 businesses, arts and cultural organizations, and nonprofits. According to the DSA website, member firms include Bocz Salon, Converge Media, Commute Seattle, Elliott’s Oyster House, Mary’s Place, and Rachel’s Ginger Beer. They are not “big corporations”.

And no, the DSA questionnaire to the candidates did not focus on “big companies”.

The defamation of business by the “big corporations”

It’s easy to search for “big companies” in Seattle.

When addressing socialists and angry 20-year-olds stuck in their jobs as baristas who spend more energy pursuing anti-business activism rather than learning more skills to move forward, Gonzalez’s strategy makes sense. Fill out a campaign version of a lazy Mad Lib and you have a campaign of your own.

Like Gonzalez, they don’t seem to recognize that a lot of the town’s small businesses started off with these wicked big corporations. Ask any of the many small business owners who struggled to survive when Amazon closed offices due to COVID.

But it’s the same tired anti-business strategy that brought Socialist Councilor Kshama Sawant to power. The only thing Gonzalez lacks is an iconic fan base.

While Gonzalez ignores the tens of thousands of downtown workers who she claims only work for large corporations, her plan is just a series of partisan buzzwords and topics of conversation. And the closest it comes to offering ideas when they are either stolen, generic, or actions already taken.

The uninspired economic memo disguised as a plan

In the “Progress for All” memo, Gonzalez presents a “bold vision” she stole from braver, more intelligent, and more partisan politicians from her.

The first part of their “plan” deals with the Green New Deal. Gonzalez just repurposed the national Green New Deal talking points and added Seattle to it.

“We have to modernize our industrial infrastructure and prepare to build the technology for the green economy,” wrote one employee in the plan. How detailed!

Then she turns to her plan of revitalizing the neighborhood. But she doesn’t come up with a plan. She says what we have to do, not how we have to do it.

One of her topics of conversation is “ensuring that land use, transit and trade policies support entire neighborhoods with arts, restaurants, entertainment, healthy eating, pharmacies, affordable childcare, parks and common spaces”. If this is a problem right now, it would be your own fault. She heads a council that has no serious opposition to progressive politics. But the issue arises: the only thing missing is the actual plan to do what it says it does.

Gonzalez forgot that we have a large Asian population

Gonzalez is also pushing her Defund police news while she claims she supports Seattle’s color communities. She just forgets about Asians.

“Whether we are black, white or brown, we want our families to be whole and our communities to be alive,” write her staff on her behalf. “Politicians who blame those who struggle to pay rent or demean those who fight for justice, and widen the gap between the haves and the have-not. Let’s stop monitoring poor, immigrant, black and indigenous neighbors and instead invest in resilience and economic security. “

Black, white or Latino but not Asian? Or does she think Asians are white like so many other progressives who claim we live in a land of white supremacy that keeps colored communities in poverty? Asian families are better off economically than whites. Still, the claim of racism cannot be enforced when a minority community outperforms whites, so progressive Asians ignore or lump them together with whites.

And their demand to “stop” minority communities is worth mentioning. First off, the Seattle Police Department doesn’t have enough manpower to overwhelm a neighborhood. They work with or under the minimum cast, and Gonzalez tries to make matters worse with their frequent demonization of cops.

In addition, activists and neighbors who live in the International District have asked for more police resources to combat the rise in crime. And in districts with the highest violent crime, it is black residents who are disproportionately victims of violence. The police don’t shoot them. These neighborhoods would benefit from more police, not less.

Crime is increasing in advanced cities. Democratic politics are to blame for this. Please watch the video that Facebook tried to censor. pic.twitter.com/GlXmcG0Rdh

– (((Jason Rantz))) on KTTH Radio (@jasonrantz) June 26, 2021

She supports the workers in Seattle except when she hires consultants

Gonzalez works hard to explain that she supports the local economy, and that means the Seattle workers! Most importantly, she decides to hire consultants outside of Seattle to run her campaign.

The Gonzalez Campaign Spends Thousands of Dollars with Katherine Bobman Consulting. The firm’s focus is on political fundraising. They are based in Bellevue.

They also spent thousands on Backstory Strategies LLC, a company focused on media strategy. Gonzalez used them for video production. Based in DC. The $ 29,000 spent on Seattle voters’ election? Greenberg Quinlan Rosner did it, also in DC

I guess she couldn’t find any more political strategy help in Seattle. To be fair, finding digital production companies in Seattle can be difficult. Maybe she should check the Downtown Seattle Association membership directory. Nine companies are listed and none are large companies.

Gonzalez is a politician for the people … who don’t know any better

You can tell that Gonzalez’s campaign has worked tirelessly to compile the list of their hopes and dreams, some of which have little to do with the economy.

They at least spent a working lunch with it. Not the whole lunch break, of course. I imagine part of lunch was spent complaining about the poll that Gonzalez is behind mayoral candidate and likely winner Bruce Harrell.

People who think they are setting ambitious goals without an actual plan to achieve them might be impressed with Gonzalez’s fluff. She certainly spends a lot of time telling the working class that she’s got their backs without really proving it.

“Seattle residents deserve a mayor who dreams as big and works as hard as they do,” wrote Gonzalez (or rather a senior executive) in a campaign ad disguised as an editorial in the Stranger.

I definitely agree with this statement, although Gonzalez wants you to think that she is the one who dreams big and works hard. But her dreams were co-opted by other people, and she couldn’t bother to explain how she would achieve her goals.

Did you like this opinion article? Then listen to the Jason Rantz Show on weekday afternoons from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. on KTTH 770 AM (or HD Radio 97.3 FM HD-Channel 3). Subscribe to the podcast here. Follow @JasonRantz on Twitter, Instagram and Parler and like me on Facebook.