I am a renter, public defender, entrepreneur, father of a student at Arbor Heights Elementary, and longtime West Seattle resident. I am devoted to making our community a better place for all.

I am involved across District 1 serving as the Vice President of the Morgan Community Association, hosting trivia at Talarico's for the past 11 years, and raising money for our local organizations such as Westside Baby, Westside Neighbors Network, and the West Seattle Helpline. Most importantly, I am in our community every day listening to the needs of our neighbors.

I have been a high school physics teacher, co-founded a video game and entertainment company, and for the last 15 years been a public defender and a trial lawyer. Additionally, I served as a Pro Tem Judge in King County District Court. In 2011, I served as a Court Appointed, Special Advocate for children for CASA of King County.

Seattle is at a major crossroads. The public continues to voice concerns about the lack of affordable housing, chronic public safety issues and a shortage of shelter options and services to help those who need assistance the most. City Government has missed opportunities to foster partnerships with businesses and organizations, allowing current problems to escalate.

As your City Council member for District 1, I will work with fellow Council members, City Departments, King County and State Government to improve the City's operations and galvanize efforts to serve the needs of the people to deliver better results to you.

• I will bring accountability, trust, and respect back to our City Council by listening to all voices across our district. We need to get back to the basics of governing and ensure we are delivering effective results.
• My top issues are homelessness, public safety, and transportation. Our City must fund service providers that are proving effective results. We need a Councilmember that is supportive of our police department for them to enforce the laws of our City. The transportation projects in our City are over budget and behind schedule, we must hold our city departments accountable so our residents can move around faster.
• I will listen to all voices while in office, not just a vocal minority. I will be in our community and have a district office so my office is easily accessible.

I am passionate about homelessness and policy areas with which homelessness intersects. Homelessness has been a longstanding issue in Seattle, more so over the last 15 years and especially over the last 5 years. Our policy makers have nudged us more into a housing first model, but addressing this crisis demands more than that. Underfunded mental health and substance abuse services, lacking employment services, ineffective affordable housing production, and the absence of preservation policies and programs for currently affordable housing all play a role in our ongoing, worsening crisis.

We have people on Council now who have been around since the '90s and still continuously fail to address homelessness - the single largest problem we have. Until this year, efforts to shift to a regional approach have been met with resistance despite the recommendations to do so from every expert the City has consulted.

We cannot continue to accept the unacceptable. Of the 370 shelter and housing providers in King County, just 1 meets all 5 of their minimum standards. This is not accountability. This is not compassion. This is not going to solve the problem.

As your Councilmember, I will work with my fellow legislators and the County to transition to a regional approach. I will fight for a customer-centric model that holds ineffective providers accountable and finally treats this crisis with urgency.

I am a 4th generation District 3 resident, a small business owner and advocate, and running to serve the community that has given me a home for over twenty years. As a gay man raised in an era that didn't understand or advocate for me, Capitol Hill was the first place I could truly express myself. Now, I run the largest celebration of the LGBTQ community in our city, PrideFest. I decided to enter this race because I had to fight for minority protection, small business ownership, and compassionate treatment of our homelessness problem, all without the support of my councilmember.

• Shelter is a human right
• Move Seattle forward through more accessible transit options
• A Green New Deal we can fight for

Housing: If we don't increase the supply of affordable housing in Seattle, homelessness is only going to rise, and more people will be displaced. We need more density in all neighborhoods, emergency assistance for those who fall on hard times, and a holistic response to the homelessness crisis that is effective. The Environment: I support a Green New Deal, electrifying our mass transit system by 2025, and incentivizing green building and remodeling. Transportation: Single occupancy vehicles are not sustainable. We need more public transit -- especially in neighborhoods that are currently underserved.

Leaders who lead and inspire with compassion and strong values. Like Elijah Cummings. Brene Brown. Oprah. Harvey Milk. All of these leaders demonstrate that you can create change while being a positive influence on people. Leadership does not have to be won through anger, it can be fought with love and compassion.

The Contender. It's about keeping fast to your values even-or especially-when it's inconvenient.

Collaborative leadership. Someone who is interested in representing their constituents through strong ties to the community and the ability to listen.

I lead collaboratively. I always look at the problem we need to solve and bring together a coalition to get it solved. Some of our region's greatest achievements were as a result of collaborative governing. Housing affordability laws were passed in partnership between tenants and developers. The minimum wage law was passed by working collaboratively with labor and business communities. I also lead with compassion by ensuring that the most marginalized voices have a seat at the table. I am a good listener. I will be accountable to the constituents in District 3, it is their voices that matter most.

To represent the needs of their constituents faithfully. An elected official needs to be accountable and responsive to the people who live and work in their district. They need to show up to City Council and committee meetings, so they can participate in their duties to represent the interests of their constituents.

I had a paper route when I was 10 and 11. Those early mornings taught me the value of work and its influence on other people's lives.

The Power of One because it shows how one person can make a difference.

My Shot (from the musical Hamilton)

1) We need universal rent control, free of corporate loopholes. In cities like San Francisco and New York, rent control has been a lifeline for working people. In addition, we need to tax Amazon and big business to build tens of thousands of high quality, affordable. social owned housing as an alternative to the for-profit market, which has failed us.

2) Seattle should lead nationally on the Green New Deal, becoming 100% renewable by 2030. Tax the rich to expand mass transit, making it free and electric. Create thousands of good union jobs expanding wind and solar, and retrofitting buildings to the highest efficiency standards.

3) Build the movement against sexism, sexual violence, and workplace discrimination. Establish an elected, independent office to investigate workplace sexual and gender harassment, with real teeth. End the gender pay gap, starting with a pay audit of big corporations in Seattle.

As a member of the American Federation of Teachers Local 1789, I am most passionate about being an unapologetic, socialist voice for working class people in Seattle. As a city councilmember, I’ve fought tirelessly over the last five years to represent working people and help bring your voices into Seattle City Hall. I helped build the movement that made Seattle the first major city to win a $15 minimum wage. My office has helped win a series of landmark renters rights victories and millions for affordable housing. Working with indigenous activists, my office ushered in the Indigenous People’s Day, ending Columbus Day. Every year my office organizes the People’s Budget movement, and through grassroots organizing in coalition with other progressive organizations, have won millions in additional funding for social services.

This year’s city elections will be a referendum on who runs Seattle - Amazon and big business or working people. That is why Seattle's biggest businesses have amassed over $1 million so far in corporate PACs ($200,000 from Amazon alone), and are disproportionately focusing that money on our election in Seattle’s District 3. Meanwhile, our campaign is “not for sale” - entirely funded by donations from working people, and as always doesn’t accept a dime in corporate cash. I only take the average wage ($40,000) of District 3 residents and donate the rest of my six-figure City Council salary to social justice movements.

The single biggest challenge for District 3, and for Seattle as a whole, is the acute affordable housing and homelessness crisis. At this point, a majority of working people are being adversely affected, and people of color and the LGBTQ community are dispropotionately impacted. Tens of thousands of renters are extremely rent-burdened (paying more than half their income on rent), and therefore, are vulnerable to being made homeless. We also have chronic underfunding of homeless services, mental health services, youth jobs, public education.

The last decade shows the for-profit housing market has failed us. Seattle has had the nation’s largest number of construction cranes four years running, yet the crisis of affordable housing remains among the worst in the country, with the average one-bedroom rent now over two thousand dollars a month.

Studies show that when the average rent in a metropolitan area increases by $100, homelessness increases by at least 15%, often higher. We need universal rent control to stop Seattle’s skyrocketing rents and hemorrhaging of affordable housing.

We also need a massive expansion of social housing - publicly-owned, high quality, permanently affordable housing. I was a proud fighter for the Amazon Tax in Seattle, and opposed its shameful repeal when Mayor Durkan and seven of the nine councilmembers capitulated to Amazon and big business, and reversed this progressive tax less than a month after it was unanimously passed.

As a member of Socialist Alternative, I wear the badge of socialist with honor, and I’m excited to see candidates identifying as socialists like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez winning elections across the country. This shows that millions of Americans are looking for a different kind of politics, based on the needs of working people and the environment, not the interests of the billionaire class and big business. I think a key part of that process is building a new political party completely independent of corporate money, that fights unapologetically for working people and the oppressed, and is rooted in social movements, community organizations, and labor unions. I hope you will join me in the struggle for a democratic socialist society — a society based on cooperation and solidarity, run democratically by and for working people, where everyone can work and live in dignity.

If elected, our campaign will prioritize creating dense affordable housing and implementing rent control, which includes commercial rent control to support and protect small business owners. We will also propose anti-carceral approaches to the houselessness crisis such as supportive, relocative housing with wraparound services. Another top priority on our agenda is passing a Seattle Green New Deal.

Labor economics, municipal finance, sustainable transportation, healthcare, racial equity justice.

Ann came to Seattle to work for the Seattle SuperSonics. She is now an attorney and mother of two elementary-aged kids who were born in Seattle. She is an avid member of her community. Ann lives in north Seattle with her family where she has volunteered to coach kids' soccer for over four years.

Ann also helped the UN Border Relief Operation to do a survey in the Cambodian refugee camp along the Thai/Cambodian border in Surin, Thailand.

Ann is also a teacher. For a year, she taught conversational English to Thai college students at Yonok College in Lampang, Thailand. Currently, she teaches International Business Law in the Global Business Program to international students at the University of Washington Continuum College.

Ann holds a JD from Willamette University College of Law and a B.A. in Sociology from Baylor University. She's been in private practice since 2005 and also is an arbitrator.

• Emergency response to homelessness like a natural disaster response
• Public safety
• Addiction prevention & treatment

We need a proportional response to the declared state of emergency on homelessness in 2015. Responding similarly to what would occur for a natural disaster causing many to become unsheltered overnight, we need to finally provide enough emergency shelter through repurposed vacant commercial buildings to provide safe and hygienic conditions for people. We then need to enforce our laws so we can all live in close proximity of one another. Then redirecting funds to provide treatment for those needing addiction treatment and housing and mental health treatment and housing.

Born and raised in Ballard in a working class family, I proudly graduated Seattle Public Schools, managed the successful reelection campaign of fmr. City Councilmember Nick Licata, and earned a B.A. from the UW. I went on, having been awarded the Harry S. Truman Scholarship, to earn degrees from the London School of Economics and University of California, Berkeley, Law School. During my time at Berkeley, I worked my first union job as a teaching assistant for fmr. Labor Secretary Robert Reich. Since returning to Seattle and finding an apartment in Lower Queen Anne, I've dedicated my career, having been appointed one of the youngest ever members to serve on Seattle's human rights commission before taking a role as a line prosecutor in the Seattle City Attorney's office trying cases and bringing accountability and justice for the people of Seattle.

When I first moved home, I was struck at the growth my hometown had experienced, and that renters and homeowners were equally rent burdened by regressive property taxes. I was equally frustrated by the lack of commitment to our city's basic charter services - public safety, parks, libraries, transportation infrastructure - and lack of accountability and transparency on what projects the city did take up. The challenges our city faces today, certainly, are unlike those of any previous time. So I decided to run for city council to meet those challenges with the urgency, energy, and boldness they demand. Whether it be creating an equitable and sustainable housing affordability plan, guiding our transportation infrastructure into the new millennium, or combating the greatest existential threat - climate change - my generation will face in our lifetimes, I want to serve my neighbors and the people of Seattle and get our city back on track.

• I will lead the effort to build 5,000 units of affordable housing in 3 years. Yes, we need to invest more into this area, but we can use alternative building products like cross-laminated-timber to lower costs and combat climate change; we can partner with proven non-profits like Plymouth housing and the Pike Place Market Foundation to reach those with mental illness or substance addiction; and we can create a homelessness prevention fund to assist neighbors struggling to avoid economic displacement, the average cost for which would be ~$1,200. These are just a few strategies we can deploy to meet this tremendous challenge ahead.
• We need to build a one-for-one replacement to the Magnolia Bridge. It rests over one of the most important freight corridors in the PNW, delivers over 280 buses into the downtown core every day, and is one of only 3 roads into a community already isolated from the rest of the city. By rebuilding this bridge with a creative funding strategy incorporating the Port, County Metro, BNSF Railroad, State, and even Federal stakeholders, we can set a sustainable model for future transportation infrastructure reinvestment, and secure better access for and into Magnolia, its business district, and Discovery Park.
• Performance auditing allows us to not only verify the efficiency of programs and departments, but their efficacy. As taxpayers and legislators, we have the right and will be better informed to have reliable access to the inputs, outputs, and success metrics of our municipal operations. We need to bolster the auditors office and tie performance auditing to our budget process akin to King County's model, which has found over $127 million in savings in the last three years alone. These savings could allow Seattle, too, to double down on investments to solving our most pressing challenges.

As a prosecutor, my job is to ask tough questions and demand accountability, and I believe this is a central task of our city council as well. Throughout my lifetime, though, and especially in the past four years, I have seen our city council lose sight of this critical oversight function. As your council member, I will be passionate about bringing this aspect of legislating not to any particular issue, but to the approach of all public policy. Whether on housing affordability and homelessness, modernizing our transportation infrastructure, re-prioritizing public safety in a sustainable and equitable way, or simply ensuring we are attaining the intended results from our investments, it is my passion for diving deep into the issues and collaborating with every potential stakeholder, coupled with my ability to translate those lessons into effective policy and continue to evolve those solutions, that will be the greatest driving force to my time in office.

This is my city; the place where I grew up; my home. When your home is on fire, you don't save just one room and call it a day. You get help from your neighbors to put the whole fire out, and you rebuild something new together. It's time for a new sense of urgency in this city to demand real results. I will create that change as your next city council member.