… enough grownups decide to make it happen. That’s a big if.
If Seattle can do it, why not Portland? Common sense can win. People are looking for stability, joy and hope. Maybe Seattle will rise again. But what about creepy, dirty, crime-ridden, angry Portland? People will flaunt the rules of society as long as they are allowed to do so. We need actual grownups in government who understand it is their job to keep the city running, maintain order, and not try to social engineer us. Keep it simple.
And then if Portland wises up and grows up, maybe there is hope for the state legislature to get back to the business of running things, not people. So grow up quickly, before it’s lost forever.
How Seattle Stepped Back From the Leftist Abyss
After a mob occupied the Capitol Hill area in 2020, voters rejected the city’s left-wing leadership.
After six years of increasingly progressive governance, Seattle voters finally had enough. In November they elected Democrat Bruce Harrell, a moderate former City Council president, to be the city’s next mayor. Mr. Harrell’s more liberal opponent in the nonpartisan mayoral election had campaigned on preventing the city from clearing away Seattle’s drug-infested homeless encampments and cutting the city’s police budget by half.
Mr. Harrell, on the other hand, pledged to make public safety a priority and to ensure that city spending on homeless programs followed firm rules for moving people “off of sidewalks and out of parks.” He pledged to restore civility to the city’s increasingly angry political discourse. “I never had to deviate from that message,” he told me in an interview this week.
Mr. Harrell’s election wasn’t the only victory for common sense. Sara Nelson, a self-described “lifelong Democrat,” defeated Nikkita Oliver, a well-known radical activist, for a seat on the City Council. And in the race for city attorney, former public defender Nicole Thomas-Kennedy, who had vowed to stop prosecuting misdemeanors, lost to a Republican, Ann Davison, who promised to increase prosecution.
Mr. Harrell’s election wasn’t the only victory for common sense. Sara Nelson, a self-described “lifelong Democrat,” defeated Nikkita Oliver, a well-known radical activist, for a seat on the City Council. And in the race for city attorney, former public defender Nicole Thomas-Kennedy, who had vowed to stop prosecuting misdemeanors, lost to a Republican, Ann Davison, who promised to increase prosecution.
Seattle’s turnaround will take time. The city’s political culture has been wounded by decades of terrible public policy, and not just by the mayor and City Council. Judges are still letting armed drug dealers with long rap sheets out of jail on low or no bail.
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