Newly-formed PAC with cast of familiar faces floods money into Seattle City Attorney race

Just over a dozen independent political action committees were formed in Seattle during the 2021 election cycle, with a new one added this week in support of City Attorney Ann Davison’s candidate.

Seattle conservatives seek influence behind the scenes

In Seattle, PACs are more formally known as Independent Expenditure Committees (IEC), with the ability to raise and spend large sums of money to support anyone who chooses them. You are working outside the spending limits imposed on the individual fundraising carried out by the candidates and cannot coordinate with the candidates in any way.

The IECs have already invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in Seattle’s mayoral campaign, and now the focus seems to be on a November showdown for the city attorney.

A new IEC, registered as Seattle for Common Sense (SCS), filed submissions to the Seattle Ethics and Election Committee on October 4th, with a team of familiar faces serving as its senior executives. These include Philip Lloyd, who served as treasurer of the now defunct homeless initiative Compassion Seattle, Victoria Beach, chairwoman of the SPD’s Afro-American advisory board, Erin Goodman, director of the SoDo Business Improvement Area (who also acted as the commissioner for the Compassion Seattle initiative) and 2017 Seattle City Attorney Candidate Scott Lindsay.

You may recognize Lindsay’s name as the name behind a now infamous 2019 report on Seattle’s so-called “productive offenders”. He is also named as co-producer of the KOMO successor “Seattle is Dying” entitled “Fight for the Soul of Seattle”, which was criticized by several local homeless advocates. Before running for the city attorney, he served as a public safety advisor to then-Mayor Ed Murray.

Just a week and a half after filing with SEEC, Seattle for Common Sense has already raised over $ 280,000 in cash grants. This is due to several large donations including $ 25,000 from local real estate CEO John Goodman, $ 10,000 from Microsoft President Brad Smith, $ 5,000 from prominent Trump donor (and Goodman’s business partner) George Petrie, and US $ 5,000 -Dollars from Jordan Selig, the daughter of another well-known Trump supporter and billionaire real estate mogul Martin Selig.

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Jordan Selig also reportedly offered to volunteer for the Kshama Sawant recall in September 2020.

SCS appears to have gotten started after spending nearly $ 68,000 on 105,000 campaign mailers to support Davison’s candidacy for city attorney. During the August primaries, a separate PAC registered as the Concerned Taxpayer Accountability Center spent $ 20,000 on mailers similarly promoting Davison.

Petrie, Goodman and Jordan Selig also all donated to a separate IEC in support of candidate Bruce Harrell, while Petrie and Goodman together donated $ 100,000 to Compassion Seattle between April and May 2021.

Davison raised nearly $ 300,000 in individual donations for their campaign. Her opponent Nicole Thomas-Kennedy brought in over $ 335,000.

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