A Little In, A Lot Out

Story by Doug Collins

The Free Press

But as the 1995 city elections approach, it's necessary for Seattleites, and important for other Washingtonians, to get at least a peek at behind-the-scenes influences on city leadership. A list of the 80 top contributors to candidates in the last Seattle city elections in 1993 (compiled by the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission) reads for the most part like a corporate directory of Seattle-with a smattering of unions and others thrown in. The list is fertile ground for investigative news reporting. Unfortunately, most of this ground is never tilled by the Seattle Times. Carol Van Noy, executive director of Ethics and Elections, who oversaw the compilation of the report, exasperates, "I've given the report to Times and PI reporters many times, but I haven't noticed anything about it."

Of the top ten contributors to candidates in the last Seattle city elections, at least eight can be linked, directly or by relationship, to recent payments from the city, which are usually worth far more than the contribution itself (see Top Ten list, this page). Judged by this money flow, modest campaign contributions to city officials, totalling perhaps $1,000 or $2,000, might be regarded as a darn good investment. Besides interests in city money, many major contributors have other possible motives for self-benefit, such as a freeway off-ramp near their office (for a new Immunex installation on Elliott Bay), or renewed cable rights (Viacom).

Campaign contributions are legal, so you can't call them bribes or kickbacks. Also true is that in many cases city payments and campaign contributions do not coincide (for instance, construction contractors for the city do not tend to be large contributors). Nevertheless, it's clear that rich businesspeople more or less bankroll the political process and reap rewards from it as well. Critics contend this creates warps on the supposedly even playfield of city democracy. One of these warps is...

Downtown Uber Alles
Viewed from neighboring hills, Seattle's downtown skyline seems like a huge crystal garden. It has grown quickly upward, an instant San Francisco overtaking the now-tiny Smith Tower. However, the crystal is somewhat fragile. Feverish real estate development has given way in recent years to abandoned retail stores and largely vacant office buildings, leaving Downtown somewhat hollow. Now some of the same businesspeople who helped overextend Downtown want the city government to help keep Downtown busy, upscale, and looking spiffy.

Charlie Chong, a leader of the Neighborhood Rights Campaign, believes the clamor and clout of Downtown interests are drowning out concern for neighborhoods. Chong, 68, a resident of the Admiral neighborhood of West Seattle, explains how Downtown-bias develops: "If you want to become the mayor or a city council member, you've got to have the support of Downtown. Downtown means campaign contributions, and without that, you're just collecting $100 here and there from your friends and relatives." Although Chong believes a broad base of campaign volunteers can help an underfunded candidate, he concedes that it's difficult to challenge the big Downtown money.

One example of Downtown-bias, Chong says, is the $1.5 billion toll-financed Seattle Transportation Project, which includes a proposal to replace Downtown's Alaskan Way Viaduct with an underground tunnel. Burlington Northern, whose corporate offspring were large contributors to the last city elections, has an interest in the tunnel project (see accompanying list of top contributors). Chong contends, with affidavits from workers that helped build it, that the viaduct is being erroneously billed as unsafe in an earthquake. Chong would rather see more concern for maintenance of traffic systems and school buildings citywide. "This city seems to be obsessed with big Downtown projects. At the same time, there's a two-year-plus waiting period to get a neighborhood traffic light installed."

A more publicized example of obsessive Downtown behavior is the move of retailer Nordstrom into the vacant Frederick & Nelson department store building, aided in part by $24.2 million the city received in federal Housing and Urban Development loans. The city council declared the building a "spot blight" in order to qualify for the HUD money, money which might instead be used for low income housing rather than for the comfort of Nordstrom shoppers. The city will pump an additional $60 million of its own money into building a parking garage adjacent to the new car-friendly Pine Street. What has not been publicized is that Jack McMillan, a Nordstrom executive, has been a large contributor to Seattle political campaigns, as have Jeffrey Brotman, John McCaw, and Herman Sarkowsky, other large investors in the redevelopment plans keyed around Nordstrom's move. As for low-income tenant groups criticizing the use of HUD money for Nordstrom, none were found to be large contributors.

Herman Sarkowsky's interests are not limited to the Nordstrom deal. Like many Downtown real estate moguls, he is currently saddled with large amounts of vacant rental office space. With the failure to convince Seattle voters to support bond measures for construction of new city buildings, the city is increasingly depending on these abundant and currently cheap Downtown rentals. By city council action last December, City Light offices will soon be moved from a city-owned building (most of which was built in 1957) to the reportedly half-empty AT&T Gateway Tower, which is largely owned by Sarkowsky. Sarkowsky's building will receive a shot in the arm: $33 million in rent money from the city over a ten-year lease. As city offices increasingly move into rental space owned by large developers, the developers increasingly become the landlords of the city government. This may give them even greater leverage over city policies.

Another propertied contributor is Martin Smith Inc., which is paid millions by the city to manage three city properties (see accompanying list of top contributors).

To combat Downtown clout, the Neighborhood Rights Campaign in 1995 is calling for the ouster of city council incumbents Jim Street, Martha Choe, and Margaret Pageler because of their support for the Seattle Comprehensive Redevelopment Plan, viewed by Neighborhood Rights as pro-Downtown and damaging to neighborhoods. The group supports councilmembers Sue Donaldson and Sherry Harris for voting no on the plan, which was approved last summer. The group also promotes a district election system for the city government, to replace the current at-large system (see related article on electoral reform).

City councillor Margaret Pageler, one of the targets of the neighborhoodists, sees their disaffection with Downtown interests as a bit unfounded: "I don't know if it's Downtown so much as big business blocs who traditionally give a lot of money to politicians. But there are also some major blocs of liberal Democrats who give to politics." Despite voting for the Comprehensive Redevelopment Plan, Pageler and colleague Jim Street pleased many non-business interests with their two dissenting votes against opening Pine Street to car traffic. Opening Pine to cars is a key demand of Nordstrom.

Boeing, Billboards, Basketball, etc.
Besides goodies for Downtown, many campaign contributors receive various other gifts from Santa Seattle. Across the city many large industrial and real estate contributors, most notably Boeing, have received city-approved subsidies to buy and install energy efficient technology, which will also result in energy savings for the companies (see Top Ten list, opposite page). How would you like to pick the next police chief? In 1993, Nordstrom co-chair Jack McMillan and Unico Properties head Don Covey, both large contributors, each received an appointment from mayor Rice to the search committee which eventually found current chief Norm Stamper.

Billboard mogul Barry Ackerley, of Ackerley Communications, has also donated his share to campaigns. In 1992, a community activist spurred the city to discover that 77 of Ackerley's billboards were illegally placed. Although the city council eventually voted to impose some restrictions on his billboards, mayor Rice recommended guaranteeing Ackerley roughly 600 in-city billboards forever (Seattle Times , Dick Lilly, July 15, 1993). Ackerley scored even bigger when the city council voted to take the risk on $73 million in loans to renovate the Seattle Center Coliseum for Ackerley's Sonics basketball team. Representing Ackerley during city dealings has been Don Stark of Gogerty & Stark Inc., which also lobbies on behalf of Seafirst, Boeing, and Weyerhaeuser. As neighborhood rights activist Charlie Chong puts it, "If you want anything in this city, Gogerty & Stark is the one." The firm has been an even bigger contributor than Ackerley, and the two partners, and at least one family member, have given personal contributions as well.

Overchallenged Challengers
Gogerty & Stark help keep incumbents alive with their campaign contributions. None or little of the money the firm contributed in the 1993 elections went to challengers. Robert Gogerty, former deputy mayor of Seattle and partner in the firm, explains why: "You don't try to defeat people, you try to work with people...In all business there's a tendency to have a momentum." Indeed, the lion's share of all campaign contributions goes either to incumbents or to occasional open seat contenders who are not facing incumbents. Money means controlled publicity for a candidate, which is the key to votes. "$70,000 basically gave you two citywide mailings," recounts city councilmember Margaret Pageler of her first campaign budget in 1987.

Although Gogerty points out that some well-funded Democrats were toppled by dark-horse Republicans in last November's state and federal races, election results usually parallel the money flow to incumbents. Since 1983, there have been elections for 27 city positions in Seattle. In only 4 of these races did a challenger win. Most new councilmembers, including Pageler, have been elected from open seats, not by challenging the councilmembers-that-be.

But from Pageler's point of view, Seattle's actual corruption rating is comparatively low. "What has kept Seattle clean is that there's a limit on how much any one donor can contribute [currently $400 per election]. It's pretty hard to buy a politician for $400. Obviously you owe them the time so that when they call, you're going to answer, but it means you're not beholden to someone." Pageler thinks the best way to improve elections is by limiting campaign spending. "What's gone wrong with the federal system, and to a large extent our state system, is that there are no spending limits. Each candidate has to outdo the other one, and a millionaire can essentially buy the election by flooding the television airwaves." Pageler laments the loss of public matching funds for Seattle candidates, city money given to candidates in exchange for voluntary spending limits. The funds were outlawed in Washington by a trojan horse clause in Initiative 134, a 1992 campaign-reform initiative with right-wing backing.

The big spender locally is Norm Rice, who used $375,000 for his 1993 mayoral campaign, more than twice as much as all other city incumbents combined. Rice could be characterized as a fundraising machine in comparison with his city colleagues. He received some 470 donations of $350 or more leading to his last campaign. His challenger, David Stern, received only 27 such contributions, and the next most endowed incumbent, councilmember Tom Weeks, received only about 110.

"A Government Function"
Dismally, the US Supreme Court ruling Buckley vs. Valeo (1976) found campaign spending to be equivalent to free speech, which cannot be legally limited. So outright caps on spending are out of the question, although caps in exchange for public financing or free air time may be legally defensible federally.

According to Carol Van Noy of Seattle Ethics and Elections, overturning Buckley vs. Valeo is a lost cause until public perception of campaigning is changed. "It's necessary for people to see campaigning as a government function the same as printing ballots. You wouldn't trust the private sector to count ballots because the private sector has vested interests, so why do you trust them to fund campaigns?" Van Noy also is unsatisfied with the term public financing, "It presumes that there is an alternative, private financing. Many people then assume that public financing simply means the government giving money to politicians."

What could we expect from less private financing of the political system? For one, politicians would have more time to consider issues and listen to their constituents rather than to raise campaign funds. Corporations and the wealthy would have less ability to shape debate if politicians were less dependent on them for money. On the downside, any city which, by itself, avidly undertakes capping private financing runs the risk of appearing not "business-friendly". With the ability of modern corporations to pick up and move to less-regulated suburbs with short notice, reformists are probably wiser to aim for geographically wider state legislation.

But in the case of Seattle, can we expect that continued politics-for-hire will really keep Downtwon vital without draining the neighborhoods? Few Seattleites would want to see the Emerald hub become like Downtown Tacoma, which is only now showing signs of recovery after decades of neglect. But allowing moneyed interests to exert influence over the city through a triple-whammy of campaign contributions, landlordship over city offices, and the ever-nagging threats of moving corporate headquarters to Bellevue, may simply lead to spoiled corporations and chic but vacant Downtown shopping areas.

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Contents on this page were published in the February/March, 1995 edition of the Washington Free Press.
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