Seattle city attorney election: What’s at stake

He doesn’t expect it, and certainly doesn’t hope so, but Seattle’s longest-serving elected official – who briefly looked like he was going into a fourth term – suddenly finds himself caught between two adversaries who hold opposing visions of what the prosecutor might be. With the two ends of Seattle’s political spectrum flowing on either side of him, Holmes could fall in the middle.

“It’s a strange place for me,” said Holmes.

To his left is Holmes facing Nicole Thomas-Kennedy, a former public defender who is running an explicitly abolitionist campaign. Its aim is to reverse the criminal prosecution of the accused. It has called for the eviction of homeless people to be stopped from public areas and has adopted the language of the protesters – including labeling property destruction as a “moral imperative” in the context of systemic racism.

To Holmes’ right is Ann Davison, an attorney who once served in the front office of the Seattle SuperSonics and ran for Washington’s lieutenant governor as Republican last year. She attacks Holmes as if he were too soft on crime, too flexible on the city’s laws. Although she does not use the term “broken window panes”, the tenets of this police reform philosophy are clear in her campaign: if one does not deal with low-level crime, disorder or uncleanliness, the seeds of more serious crime such as murder, rape and assault are sowed.

Much of the progressive left has started to band together around Thomas-Kennedy, who recently received endorsement from The Stranger newspaper. Davison, meanwhile, has received support from a more centrist coalition, including support from the Seattle Times editorial team. A recent poll found that all three candidates were roughly equal, although more than half of likely voters said they weren’t sure.

For Holmes, who has easily won his three previous elections, the question is whether he will slip between the gaps.

The public prosecutor’s office is unique in that it only deals with administrative offenses and civil proceedings. King County and its chief prosecutor, Dan Satterberg, deal with the city’s crimes. Still, a lot is at stake for this race after last year’s protests. When electing a new mayor, voters choose who they want to make the city’s figurehead; The city attorney race is a chance for voters to say what kind of criminal justice they want.

As the final hours of the state’s spring nomination deadline approached, Holmes faced little competition and looked like he would have an easy path to re-election. This has led to wrestling among progressive circles and those who believed the city should curb the prosecution of offenses.

Thomas-Kennedy was one of those hand wringers. She had recently stopped taking on the day-to-day work of public defense in search of something with a more systemic lens.

“As a public defender, it’s very individual, it’s completely atomized, every customer after the other,” she said. “And it’s just a rush that will never end, and so I was trying to find a way to make bigger changes and I wasn’t exactly sure what that was.”

She kept saying this to her friends while also complaining that Holmes would not face any competition – until people started running them. And so she agreed just hours before the deadline.

When she introduced herself, Thomas-Kennedy decided early on to run as an open abolitionist – a take-it-or-leave-it campaign. To be an abolitionist does not mean legalizing all crimes.

“I think what it means to be an abolitionist is an acknowledgment that the current system is making things worse and a commitment to finding solutions to our problems rather than continuing to repeat that damage,” she said.

While certain approaches to domestic violence or DUIs could take some time to change, she said, much of the office’s work would end quickly – for example, tracking down shoplifting in favor of blackboard remittances or other services which people might have met their needs. She predicted massive turnover among the office’s current attorneys.

For Thomas-Kennedy, the prosecution is an opportunity. Unlike the responsibilities of so-called progressive prosecutors across the country – Larry Krasner in Philadelphia or Chesa Boudin in San Francisco – the Seattle prosecutor doesn’t have to worry about crime.

“I’m not saying that abolition is not for crime, but I am saying that abolition cannot start with crime,” she said. “So it’s a build-up system…. It is quite luxurious, I think, to run for prosecution because we are only talking about offenses and therefore there is no better place to start. “

The message from Davison, an attorney who has now run multiple times for local and statewide offices, is almost the exact opposite. Since Thomas-Kennedy accuses Holmes of being too harsh on offenses, Davison said he is not going tough enough.

“That [city attorney] must be restored to meet our agreed societal boundaries, ”she said. “I see our laws as a reflection of the values ​​of our city, and therefore these laws are there to mean something to the people who live here. And if you choose to look the other way, the rest of society is dysfunctional. “

Davison runs her own private law firm focusing on civil law in the fields of sports, business and contract law. She is also a referee.

Much of Davison’s campaign material relies on murder, rape, or assault – all crimes dealt with under another office. But her point, she said, is that low-level crime leads to serious crime. Although she recognizes that the prosecutor has no authority to prosecute crimes, she believes that the city prosecutor should be indirectly held accountable.

“Quality of life” crime “pervades our senses and tells us that there is a level of neglect all over the city and it affects us,” she said, “and then it starts to affect public safety because we become one Invite increase in severity and frequency. “

The theory is old and very controversial and was popularized in New York City as the “broken window” approach to law enforcement. Davison does not use this term, however. “I think this theory is faltering and I honestly don’t read about theories,” she said.

Holmes criticized both Thomas-Kennedy and Davison first and foremost for their lack of experience. In fact, it was his experience that led him to seek a fourth term when he was previously unsure. He decided to run again after Mayor Jenny Durkan announced that she would not run for a second term.

“Frankly, that was Seattle’s biggest problem – our inability to elect a mayor for two consecutive terms,” ​​he said. For this reason, constancy is doubly important in his office, he said. “Bringing more disorder into town hall really just means giving up town hall,” he said.

Holmes’ position between Davison and Thomas-Kennedy means he has to defend his approach as balanced – neither the soft portrait of him from KOMO’s Seattle is Dying special, nor the “common prosecutor”. Despite all the concerns about his election night, Holmes still believes his approach is “the progressive center, and I believe this reflects mainstream Seattle values”.

Regarding the prosecution of crimes, he pointed to recent efforts to establish a community court in Seattle where people can dismiss their criminal charges and contact housing, labor and drug services.

At the same time, he argued that stopping the prosecution of crimes would wreak havoc between the city and the county, and that it would be impossible to stop some prosecutions but not others. As in other races up and down, the city attorney competition is partly about the value of slow change versus something more drastic.

“A centuries-old and slowly evolving criminal justice system is that proverbial tanker on the ocean, isn’t it?” Said Holmes. “It takes time to change, and I claim that I have been able to demonstrate the power of the prosecutors, who have sole discretion on the prosecution, to make smart, data-driven policy decisions.”

Two out of three will run for the federal election. Depending on which two countries lead to November, the debate will be very different: is Seattle too lenient or not lenient enough?