This Week On PubliCola: January 4, 2025
PubliCola meets the candidates, and answers your questions.
By Erica C. Barnett
Sunday, December 29: Seattle Nice: Your Questions Answered!
On the latest edition of Seattle Nice, we answered listeners’ questions about how much new housing the city plans to allow over the next 20 years, the upcoming mayoral and city council elections, our wishes for local politics in 2025, and more.
Monday, December 30: PubliCola Questions: King County Executive Candidate Claudia Balducci
King County Councilmember and former Bellevue mayor Claudia Balducci sat down with PubliCola to talk about her campaign for King County Executive. Pull quote: “Encampment resolutions are not sweeps. They are not, ‘post a date, show up with a team, and move everybody who’s there.’ It’s an application of services. You work with the residents of an encampment over a period of time, some weeks, and eventually people are offered housing.”
Tuesday, December 31: PubliCola Questions: King County Executive Candidate Girmay Zahilay
Girmay Zahilay, who represents South King County on the county council, also spoke with PubliCola about his campaign for county executive. Pull quote: “What I hear from my constituents is not just, ‘We’re tapped to our economic limit, and we can’t deal with any more levies.’ They also are saying that they don’t feel like they’re seeing problems being solved.”
Thursday, January 2: PubliCola Questions: Seattle City Attorney Candidate Rory O’Sullivan
In our final interview this week, we sat down with Rory O’Sullivan, a longtime legal aid attorney and onetime Democratic candidate for a state House seat who’s running against Seattle’s Republican city attorney, Ann Davison. Pull quote: “Right now, the city attorney’s office is way behind on DUI prosecutions. So we are being put in danger, our public safety is worse off, because the current city attorney is prosecuting protesters and spending resources on other things that don’t improve public safety.”
