Council Member Cathy Moore To Announce Resignation

District 5 Seattle City Council Member Cathy Moore, who represents North Seattle Neighborhoods including Greenwood, Maple Leaf, Northgate, and others, is expected to announce she will resign from her position effective July 7, insiders told The Burner Monday morning

While the official reason will become clear once she sends out her press statement, the announcement comes just days after she withdrew her universally hated bill to lower the ethical standards, a policy designed to, as a paper trail shows, secure a solid majority for her long awaited assault on tenant protections. The withdrawal marked a huge political embarrassment and the latest episode of the business-backed City Council's incompetence.

Her collegues have also had to walk back over lefty pushback --- Council President Sara Nelson abandoned her bid to repeal the gig delivery driver minimum wage and Council Member Joy Hollingsworth retracted her attempt to permanently enshrine a subminimum wage for tipped workers at small businesses. Even before her depature, it seemed unlikely that the council will reintroduce a more thoughtful version as Moore suggested in her Friday press release.

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The failure of the ethics bill delivered a harsh blow to Moore's long awaited package of renters' rights rollbacks --- at least symbolically. Moore may have been able to secure a majority for some of the landlords lobby's wish list items even if the two landlords had to recuse themselves. Her departure doesn't seem to change the fate of that package. Sources say that lobbyists have already found a new sponsor on the City Council, but interest overall seems to be waning, and they may just pick a few of their less controversial policies to promote.

Moore's departure forces the historically unstable council to appoint a third new member in just a year and a half. The council had to replace former Council Member Teresea Mosqueda after she won her bid for County Council (they picked Tanya Woo, a recent loser, hand-picked by big business) and more recently, they had to fill a hole left by Council Member Tammy Morales after they bullied the lone progressive out of City Hall (they picked another Morales foe and landlord, Mark Solomon). This time around any one of Moore's 2023 rivals could try for the appointment, but rumor has it some politicos are lobbying former Council Member Debra Juarez to apply.