Seattle Incumbents Ditch “Queer Out The Vote” Amid Increasingly Anti-Queer Climate

Credit: Melody Summerfield

Mayor Bruce Harrell, City Attorney Ann Davison, and Council President Sara Nelson, incumbents running for reelection this year against credible progressive challengers, didn’t show up to Tuesday’s Queer Out The Vote, a candidate forum hosted by LGBTQ+ organizations in the heart of the gayborhood.

Certainly everyone has a busy calendar, but just after the City’s bungled response to a hate-rally in Cal Anderson, the ongoing battle between the community and prudes over historically queer nude beach Denny Blaine, and considering the national climate around queer and trans people, showing up to LGBTQ+ community events seems like the bare minimum for those seeking elected office. And their competitors cleared that bar: Mayoral candidates Katie Wilson, Ry Armstrong, and Joe Molloy, City Attorney candidates Erika Evans, Rory O’Sullivan, and Nathan Rouse, and City Council Candidates Dionne Foster and Connor Nash as well as incumbent Council Member Alexis Mercedes Rinck all found time to engage with queer voters.

Harrell's campaign told The Burner that Harrell "had an unmovable conflict that prevented his participation in the forum." The campaign said that if reelected, Harrell will "continue to build on his long record of supporting and expanding protections for LGBTQ+ community members." Among those accomplishments, the campaign listed legislation that reaffirmed the State's "Shield Law," a protection for those seeking gender affirming and abortion care and his remarks about the far-right extremist rally at Cal Anderson (He also called the queer and trans people brutalized by cops “anarchists” infiltrators, so not universally lauded in the community by any stretch).

In any case, skipping the event probably saved the incumbents some heat from the progressive audience. For example, the audience booed Mayoral candidate Joe Mallahan for his pro-corporate tax pitch.

Mallahan, not advertised on the event’s digital flyers, hopped onto the stage midway through the mayoral panel. When the moderator, drag queen Harper Bizarre, asked the candidates about what progressive revenue sources they would support, his opponents rattled off a few of the usual ideas (which we they should all thank Wilson for helping to popularize). Most of them placed the tax burden on corporations or the real estate industry. But Mallahan bravely suggested that the City’s next tax should be on the “generous” Seattle individual, not another tax on corporations.

Mallahan lamented that businesses may flee Seattle giving the compounding burden of the JumpStart payroll tax and the more recent social housing payroll tax. The reasoning fails to acknowledge that Seattle’s individuals already feel the compounding burden of several important levies and a high sales tax. And, as I’m sure we’ve all heard by now, Washington boasts the 49th most regressive tax structures in the United States, beating only Florida. That means that the poorest Washingtonians feel the most strain under our current system.

Mallahan filled some of the void left by the business-backed candidates who failed to show, but Nash made up for the rest. Nash, a candidate for the City Council Position 9 seat, dressed in a drag persona version of the incumbent Sara Nelson, which he named “Nara Selson,” complete with a brown wig he chopped in his bathroom, blue eyeshadow, and a pinstripe blazer that Nelson really might like to borrow sometime. Nash’s forum performance may be the closest thing the crowd will ever get to hearing sound progressive policy from Nelson.

To watch some of the highlights from Queer Out The Vote, go to @TheBurnerSeattle on Instagram.