Super Scary-Wary Anti-Abolitionist Push Poll Hits the Field, Foreshadowing Contentious Races for Seattle City Council and City Attorney – Slog

Much more likely. Next question. Screenshot of stupid poll

Someone has apparently paid an opposition research firm to run a push poll to scare off Seattle voters from Seattle City Prosecutor Nicole Thomas-Kennedy and Seattle City Council candidate Nikkita Oliver . One of the polls says that the text-based polls ask “different people for different candidates,” so they could try to put Seattle supporters off other candidates, but I’ve only seen the anti-NTK / anti-Oliver poll.

Change Seattle, an independent agency that supported Sara Nelson’s bid for the Seattle City Council against Oliver, paid $ 15,000 to a Texas-based Oppo “research consultancy” firm late last month. I sent an email to ask if they paid for the survey and if they would like to request a partial refund as the company spelled Sara’s name with an “h” multiple times on one of the questions. I will update this post if I hear anything, although admittedly this is a total guess and it could be one of the other PACs of the big companies lined up to take down the progressives.

In the meantime, let’s break down this nonsense really quickly.

The survey begins with general preference questions before delving into a few scare-mongering questions about NTK, and then delving into eight lovelessly phrased questions about Oliver.

Typically for the genre, the polls cast these candidates in the worst possible light by cynically exploiting crime fears to drive myopic real estate owners into the arms, in this case a person who became a Republican during the Trump administration and a beer lobbyist who co-owns a brewery is. However, the news in the poll is useful as a preview of the news rich people and businesses will cram into our mailboxes and sidebars this election season.

The Ann Davison Experience

Before the survey introduces the candidates running for city attorney and asking for positive / negative news, the survey asks three loaded questions about whether respondents would be more or less likely to vote for a candidate based on some statements about homelessness and criminality Punishment that buys itself into the right frame of these topics. The survey asks whether the respondent “supports the removal of tent camps from city parks and sidewalks if the people living there refuse to accept accommodation and services”, “supports the pay of the police by at least 50% and the number of officers in Seattle further reduced “. and then “supports ending the prosecution of low-level domestic violence cases”. Storage, defunding and DV – oh my god!

To briefly address these points: (1) If you are interested in reading the 824th story about why some homeless “refuse to accept shelter and services,” last month’s Seattle Times story is a good place to start. (2) Asking people to support candidates seeking to spin out of police and penal institutions without mentioning the massive related investments in housing, psychiatric care, and other supports and services that these candidates are making in crime prevention first place is to tell only half the story.

After this little warm-up, the survey carries out positive and negative news about NTK and Davison. The NTK negative framework fabricates “critics” who say that their “only experience is running restaurants and bars” and that it is part of a “radical abolitionist moment”.

It’s funny to see NTK on “experience” in this race. NTK has four years of public defense practice in Seattle, and Davison has appeared before a court in the Puget Sound area a total of five times in her career, and nearly all of those cases involved wills, according to some court records that Publicola reviewed. In terms of her familiarity with the office and the attorneys she will oversee if she wins, NTK beats Davison by a mile in terms of experience.

In an email, Davison referred to her “16 years of legal experience, mainly as a civil litigation attorney”. During that time, she claimed she once “helped a doctor from the Democratic Republic of the Congo become a US citizen” but spent most of her time “professional sports agents and front office workers … in a transactional office” to represent. To see if you’d hire Davison for these services, visit their company’s website and spend the rest of the day reading this abstract poem:

Davison’s personal company. Screenshot from the website

The positive Davison frame introduces her as “pro-choice moderates,” and the negative admits that “critics say” that she is “actually a right-wing law-and-order Republican.”

There’s no question that Davison is a right-wing Republican. During Donald Trump’s presidency, she joined the Republican Party to run for lieutenant governor, a position she wanted to “get rid of” in order to save money, even though anyone who serves in that position also heads the Senate .

In addition, until she took a position as campaign manager for Davison, Marina Udodik worked for years as operations and database administrator for Westgate Chapel, an anti-LGBT evangelical church that was currently hosting Christian nationalist Charlie Kirk and sponsors the anti-abortion group Obria. In an email, Davison said that Udodik’s “previous work and positions have nothing to do with or affect me or my campaign,” and she reiterated her new line on electing Democrats like Joe Biden at the federal level. She didn’t answer when asked why she hired someone to be her campaign manager who doesn’t list political work on her LinkedIn, or how she was introduced to Udodik.

You will likely try to portray Oliver as Antifa-Sawant

After all of the prosecution rubbish, the version of the poll I’ve seen turns their attention to the open city-wide city council race. In its basic positive / negative messaging test, the survey accurately describes Oliver as a “community organizer, artist and lawyer” but excludes her experience of co-directing Creative Justice and then glosses over her broad political positions without context: “Oliver has pledged to tax the rich, 100% off the police force, pass a Green New Deal for Seattle, and stop all camps of homeless people. ”

In contrast to Oliver’s introduction, “Sarah” Nelson’s introduction mitigates her conservative views with context, arguing that she is “a progressive small business owner” who “supports a Housing First approach to homelessness, but also believes that we have unsafe camps in ours.” Parks and neighborhoods need to quit “. , and downtown. ”

From there, the poll asks eight lovelessly phrased questions that aim to do two things: tie Oliver to Sawant and insist that they literally want to get the police off before a heroic cop steps in to get your beloved Christ child in front of the Saving Sex Trafficking a homeless zombie fresh from an open air drug market murder that has supplanted the quirky cafe you never go to.

I’m not going to waste time going through every single one of these questions, but I will point out once again how insincere it is to post random Oliver tweets about cops and abolition without mentioning their platform to accommodate everyone in Seattle, themselves Separate from the police to “invest in culturally engaging community-run care solutions,” invest in education, move forward with redress, “provide mental health care to all Seattle residents who want them,” and all the other supports and services whom they would struggle to stand up against as the city turns away from its punitive response to low-level crimes.

Oliver has said that they don’t believe this process will happen overnight, but that it is time to act urgently. In a confirmation interview with the Stranger Election Control Board last spring, Oliver said the city should “further reduce the Seattle Police Department by 10 to 20% and expand our in-community response structures” “over the next few years.” on mental health crises, domestic violence, access to safe houses and affordable housing, provision of rental and food aid. “

The repeated comparisons with Sawant are mostly just funny for me. Trying to hang Sawant around another politician’s neck is quickly becoming the oldest trick in the book, and I don’t know if it ever really worked as an electoral strategy in the Seattle area. Republicans tried assistant prosecutor Manka Dhingra, and she is now Senator Manka Dhingra.

This push poll is the second such poll conducted in the Seattle area in the past few weeks. The other was a pro Bruce Harrell poll that described him as a “civil rights and small business advocate,” which wasn’t exactly the case when he presented himself to a corporate group in Pioneer Square on Monday. “I was chief counsel for a large company [CenturyLink]; I ran a law firm downtown, “he said, explaining why he would be the best, most energetic mayor.