Fact: Council President Sara Nelson’s "Fact Check" Flops

In the death rattle of her doomed re-election campaign, Seattle Council Sara Nelson is scrambling to set the record straight on the attacks an Independent Expenditure supporting her opponent Dionne Foster is sending to mailboxes across Seattle. In a social media post and a blog entry, Nelson calls many of the arguments against her “laughable” and “gross misrepresentation” of her record in her “Fact vs. Fiction." But she doesn’t actually disprove much at all.  

MAILER: "Permits for new housing have sunk 81% and Sara Nelson is part of the problem."

NELSON: Housing permits have dropped everywhere – Seattle, Bellevue, across the nation – because of high interest rates and regulatory delays. The fact is that since taking office, I’ve been fighting to eliminate barriers that impede housing construction and I just transmitted two Council Bills to fix onerous permitting problems. Learn more here. 

I’ll give you this one, Nelson. This is a pretty vague claim. Still, Nelson cannot dispute the fact that permits for new housing have dropped sharply, so instead, she deflects. And her best examples of her not being part of the problem come from two months ago and have not passed yet. Remember: She’s had four years to advance permit reform, to prove she’s not “part of the problem.”

MAILER "Failed to renew Seattle's Comprehensive Plan"

NELSON: The Comprehensive Plan was delivered to Council a year behind schedule and Council’s deliberating on it now, led by Councilmember Hollingsworth, Chair of the Select Committee on the Comprehensive Plan. This has to be done right, and yes, that takes time. The fact is, I’ve been engaged in extensive outreach with constituents because this plan will shape our city's future for decades and I’m doing the due diligence needed to add capacity for desperately needed housing. We’ll begin voting on the Comp Plan renewal in the third week of September and we’ll finish in early 2026.

Again, Nelson can’t dispute the actual claim. It is just true that under her leadership as Council President, the City has failed to renew Seattle’s Comprehensive Plan. Yes, Mayor Bruce Harrell got the council his draft a year late (feel free to boo). However, the council is now behind on their own accord. The original timeline had Harrell handing down his draft Spring of 2023 and the council passing the final version by the end of 2024. A year delay would mean the council would pass it by the end of 2025, but now Nelson estimates the council will be finished in early 2026 (not that she’ll see it happen). Maybe the council could have moved quicker if Nelson and her conservative goons hadn’t bullied the one council member with urban planning experience off the body just as they were supposed to dive in!

MAILER: "Fought to block new corporate taxes that fund tens of millions of dollars for affordable housing."

NELSON: The article cited makes no such claim. It contains a link to a piece on social housing and the fact is that I supported an alternative social housing measure with required accountability measures.* While voters chose a different approach, my record shows where I stand – I helped deliver record investments in affordable housing and I fought entrenched interests to allow the construction of workforce housing in the Stadium District (which my opponent opposes). 

What's outrageous is that we have $600 million in existing housing funds sitting in the Office of Housing’s cash balance while people are living in tents. Since last year I've been pushing OH to get that money out the door faster to actually get affordable housing built. 

*This article indicates why requiring accountability is a good thing and what can happen without it.

To be frank, the IE writing the mailer could have finessed this one better. What Nelson did was actually much worse. Nelson opposed the popular tax on corporations to fund social housing, which is different from affordable housing. She promoted an alternative that would both steal dollars away from the City’s existing pot of money for affordable housing projects and completely undermine social housing as a concept, previously approved by voters. On top of that, the alternative she supported would generate much, much less money for housing of any kind. So yes, she was on the side of less housing, higher profits for big business. 

MAILER: "Rolled back the minimum wage for delivery drivers."

NELSON: When the previous Council’s “PayUp” law went into effect in January 2024, delivery workers came to Council demanding that we repeal it because PayUp made deliveries so expensive that people stopped ordering, resulting in workers’ wages plummeting. 

Rather than repeal the law, I tried to fix it. My reform legislation did not “roll back” the minimum wage, it required that workers be paid it – plus tips. While this complex issue ultimately wasn't resolved, my commitment to workers is why I'm endorsed by unions across the city.

Nelson’s only argument in this case is that she was not successful. She did attempt to roll back the minimum wage for gig workers in that it would have lowered their wage. If she wants to make a semantic argument teasing out the difference between “roll back” and “lower,” she’s welcome to send me a Google Calendar invite. At the end of the day, her proposal would have cut gig worker wages by a whopping $6 an hour. 

She’s also wrong that the issue was not resolved. It’s been dead for a year now. It’s over, she lost, workers won. And not to kick her while she’s down (even though that’s what this post is doing start to finish), but Foster is endorsed by more than twice as many unions as Nelson, as well as the MLK Labor Council and Working Washington, the advocacy group that organized gig workers to defend their minimum wage.

MAILER:"Giving tax breaks to big businesses at the expense of affordable housing."

NELSON: Again, this is a gross misrepresentation of the article cited. I stand by my vote to use JumpStart revenues to maintain essential city services rather than laying off city workers and cutting services. Fact is, the choice was between using existing tax revenue or making deep cuts that would hurt working families and I chose the former. 

More broadly, I have never voted to reduce existing taxes with the very recent exception of raising the B&O threshold for small businesses.

Nelson knows that the vote to bastardize affordable housing funding wasn’t a choice between only using that existing pot of money or making cuts. She could have raised new revenue by taxing big business or the wealthy, an option she rejected. It is perhaps a little round-a-bout to call the rejection of new taxation a “tax break,” but spiritually, it is true that she chose the option that lowers the tax burden on corporations at the expense of affordable housing. 

MAILER: "Weakening ethics rules for council members."

NELSON: This never happened. My job as Council President is to refer legislation to the proper committee for consideration and that’s what I did. This proposal was withdrawn by the sponsor before any vote.

Nelson and I have long-standing beef over this one. I uncovered that she was the council member who first floated the idea of weakening the ethics rules after they foiled her plan to lower the minimum wage for gig workers. Plus, sources close to the situation reported that you convinced Council Member Cathy Moore to take on the bill for you. And even if none of that was true, you never said a word against the ethics rules to indicate that you did not support its passage even though two of your council colleagues came out against it publicly.