Seattle Council candidates make their case for citywide office

The candidates 

A lifelong Seattleite, Woo helped found the Chinatown-International District Community Watch during the pandemic to conduct safety patrols and do outreach to people experiencing homelessness. In 2022, she helped lead successful protests in Chinatown against the proposed expansion of a large homeless shelter. Woo and her family also own the historic Louisa Hotel, which was redeveloped into middle-income apartments after a 2013 fire.   

Woo said she’s running to continue the work she’s started in her first year on the Council. So far she has not been the lead sponsor on any substantive legislation that has passed but said she’s proud of the collaborative work the Council has done, especially around public safety. Woo said she is currently drafting several bills to address affordable housing, public safety and development that she hopes to enact if reelected.  

“I’m from community. Basically, I’m not a politician, I’m not a bureaucrat,” said Woo. “But I think what that really shows is that I love my community, I love my city and when I saw that there was need, I went and got it done.”   

Rinck was an assistant director at the University of Washington working on state budget and policy issues until she stepped down after winning the primary to focus on the campaign. Prior to that she held director and policy-analyst positions at the King County Regional Homelessness Authority and the Sound Cities Association. She moved to Seattle in 2017 to get her master’s in public administration from the University of Washington.  

Rinck said she is running to bring representation to the Council as a renter, as somebody who has worked in human services and, as a 29-year-old, for the next generation of Seattleites wondering “if this community has a home for them.” She said her experience working on homelessness policy, government budgeting and stakeholder engagement have prepared her for city leadership.  

“We have a housing crisis; we have a climate crisis. There are crises seemingly everywhere,” said Rinck. “I want to really push to make sure we’re moving with urgency on them and also doing the hard work of uniting communities to really solve problems.”  

Unsurprisingly, given Seattleites’ concerns about public safety, homelessness and housing affordability, both candidates had similar answers for the work they’d want to prioritize if elected. Woo said her top issues are affordable housing, small-business support and public safety. Rinck said hers are the housing crisis and affordability, public safety and the “fiscal health of the city.”  

Affordable housing 

On housing, Woo wants to incentivize private developers to build more middle-income housing. Next year the City Council plans to explore changes to the Multifamily Tax Exemption Program that offers private developers a tax break in exchange for including some below-market affordable housing in their projects. Woo wants to use that process to increase incentives and potentially expand the income range of people served by the program.  

In addition, she said she wants to find ways to speed permitting for housing projects as well as small businesses, and said she’s concerned about Mayor Bruce Harrell’s proposed layoffs of permit review staff at the Department of Construction and Inspections.  

Rinck said Seattle needs to work on building far more low-income subsidized housing, including affordable homeownership units as well as market-rate housing to meet the demands of the growing population. She said the highest priority should be building housing for people exiting homelessness with onsite services and support.  

Public safety 

On public safety, Rinck takes an all-of-the-above approach. First and foremost, she said, the city needs to improve first-responder staffing, including law enforcement, behavioral health specialists, alternative responders, emergency medical and fire. But she also wants the city to invest more in community-based violence interruption programs and to continue supporting the Legislature’s “common sense” gun reform efforts. 

Woo said she’s proud of the investments the Council has made to support police hiring, including voting to raise police salaries and increase hiring bonuses. Though the Seattle Police Department still has a deficit of about 400 officers, Woo said these are important steps to rebuilding a force “demoralized” by the George Floyd movement and the past Council’s discussions of defunding.  

Woo also wants to expand street-level de-escalation programs like LEAD, We Deliver Care and the city’s new CARE alternative responders, who connect with people engaged in low-level street crime, drug use or having public mental health crises. In particular, she wants to see the city doing that sort of outreach and intervention at 12th Avenue and Jackson Street’s drug market.  

At a glance, the candidates take a very similar tack on public safety, but there are key differences. For example, this year Woo voted with her colleagues to pass the controversial Stay Out of Drug Areas (SODA) bill that creates zones Downtown and in other neighborhoods where a person charged with misdemeanor drug crimes such as possession or use, or related crimes like property destruction, harassment or theft, can be banned.  

Rinck said she would not have voted for the bill because the banishment zones only shuffle problems elsewhere in the city, and because service providers say the law will just harm vulnerable people with substance-use disorders without moving the needle on the larger issues. “It just feels like a false promise to the public that this is going to solve problems,” Rinck said.  

Woo, on the other hand, said the zones are necessary to disrupt entrenched places where drug dealers and buyers congregate. “When you talk to the businesses there, you talk to the residents there, people are just so desperate they want to try anything,” she said.  

Woo also said she voted for the bill because “We’re only going after drug dealers as a pre-trial conditional release for drug offenses. And also being at 12th and Jackson, you know who the drug dealers are. You know who the people are who need help and who are addicted.” 

The SODA law does not target drug dealing. The law gives Seattle Municipal Court judges authority to ban people from zones, but the Municipal Court deals only with misdemeanors. Drug dealing is a felony, so someone charged with drug-dealing crimes would not appear in that court.  

Asked for clarification on the issue, Woo said, “[Councilmember] Bob Kettle has a good answer to that. I forgot what he said, but I believe it does go as a misdemeanor from the drug ordinance.” She promised to follow up to provide his explanation but did not.  

A Seattle Municipal Court spokesperson confirmed that someone charged with drug dealing would not appear before a Municipal Court Judge and therefore could not be banished from a SODA zone, but said that someone dealing drugs in a SODA zone could be charged with a lesser misdemeanor drug crime or related crime and therefore still receive a banishment.  

Paying for programs 

As the city grapples with a significant budget deficit, implementing new policy ideas will be a challenge. Rinck wants Seattle to levy new progressive taxes to ensure the city can continue providing basic services while also expanding the programs and policies it needs to address big problems.  

“We know that our community wants to see increased investments in affordable housing, in our young people, in our green spaces, to make sure we’re taking care of our elders, expanding our transit system, none of those things are free,” said Rinck.  

Woo, by contrast, said Seattle needs to rein in its current city budget and find places to cut before it considers any new taxes.  

The candidates’ cases for themselves 

Both candidates highlighted personal experience when making the case for why voters should pick them.  

Woo said it’s her experiences converting the Louisa Hotel into middle-income housing, with community outreach and in office thus far that make her the ideal candidate. “I’ve gotten things done and I push back against governments and bureaucracies and institutions,” she said.  

Woo criticized Rinck’s experience working in agencies and bureaucracies, especially the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, which has struggled with high profile controversies in its first few years.   

Rinck, however, said her job experience makes her more qualified than Woo for city office. She highlighted work she did getting cities in north King County to sign on to the Regional Homelessness Authority’s plan and experience working on UW’s $9 billion state budget.   

“That’s complicated work and akin in many ways to the work of City of Seattle and working on a public budget,” said Rinck. “Having worked almost my entire career in local government, I am able to bring that experience to the table.”  

Endorsements and fundraising  

Woo has been endorsed by all her Council colleagues except Morales, along with state Reps. Sharon Tomiko Santos and Cindy Ryu, former Gov. Gary Locke, former Councilmembers Debora Juarez and Alex Pedersen, the Seattle Firefighters Union and more.  

Rinck has received endorsements from King County Executive Dow Constantine, Mosqueda, Morales, state Sens. Noel Frame and Rebecca Saldaña, State Reps. Nicole Macri and Frank Chopp, 10 local Democratic organizations, 14 unions and more.  

The candidates are nearly tied in fundraising. As of Oct. 18, Rinck has raised $421,873 and Woo has raised $413,581. Both also have PACs fundraising and spending on their behalf.

The Progressive People Power PAC has raised over $186,000 since launching in September, including a $100,000 donation from long-term care worker union SEIU 775. Friends of Seattle has raised more than $93,000 from many of the same business and real estate leaders who spent more than $1 million on last year’s City Council races.