Sawant’s rent control plan DOA in Olympia
So, after the cadres have gone home and the dark money from SEIU has receded into the ocean, Seattle’s Trotskyite Radical shows the effects of antagonizing the city’s other leaders.
According to Crosscut, even the city’s own lobbyists have let her idea of rent control die of its own weight. Legislators from Seattle delegation say they were never approached about rent control.
Sen. Pramila Jayapal, D-Seattle, Sawant’s ally in her election for the City Council and announced candidate (with Sawant rumored to be a rival) for Jim McDermott’s congressional seat says that she has written a bill but is leaving it aside because Seattle city lobbyists have not shown their support.
So why is this? The answer is obvious. Sawant, a declared Troskyite Socialist candidate with somewhat bizarre national ambitions, got huge levels of external funding from SEIU and other unnamed sources of dark money to undermine Pamela Banks, a Democrat, running in a nominally non-partisan election. Worse, Sawant ran as if she headed a a sixties style revolutionary movement aiming to unseat the Mayor along with the other City Councilors and (eventually) lead the workers to overthrow Amazon and Boeing. This step and her fanatasmic proposals to spend multi billions of dollars to recreate housing projects, won her excommunication from the political community.
CROSSCUT’s Tom James reports that “Councilor Sawant pressed Nick Harper, head of the city’s lobbying arm, on why the conversations weren’t even being started with legislators. Harper pushed back a bit, saying that legislation hadn’t been put out because the bill didn’t have a chance.
“My understanding is that your job is also to have informal conversations with legislators,” Sawant said. Later she added, even if the lobbyists couldn’t get a bill, it was their responsibility to press the issue.
“I would ask you,” said Sawant, “to argue with legislators.”
Without replying, Harper moved on to a question from another city council member.”