1. Samantha Bee has invited the “Seattle Seawards”—the five women of the city council whose vote against vacating Occidental Street to enable billionaire Chris Hansen’s basketball arena inspired sportsbros across the city to flood them with a torrent of rape threats and sexist hate speech—to her Not the White House Correspondents Dinner on April 29.
The five women voted against handing over a portion of Occidental Avenue S. to Hansen because of concerns that a new arena in SoDo would exacerbate traffic problems in the area and make it harder for the Port to do business. Bee featured them on her show, “Full Frontal With Samantha Bee,” after the backlash, which featured grown men telling women to kill themselves and “get back in the kitchen,” among many more vulgar taunts and threats. Three of the five—Sally Bagshaw, Lisa Herbold, and Debora Juarez—have reportedly accepted Bee’s invitation to the shadow correspondents’ dinner, a black-tie daytime affair that will raise money for journalism scholarships.
2. UPDATE: Well, at least one of the people on the list of perennial candidates, former mayor Mike McGinn, plans to run; this morning at 10:30, he will formally announce his candidacy. McGinn had one term as mayor before losing to Murray in 2013.
Although there have been many reports about “long lists” of credible candidates lining up to challenge besieged Mayor Ed Murray, most of those lists include people who have already said emphatically that they aren’t running for mayor, like Kshama Sawant, Mike O’Brien, and Tim Burgess. Others include people who haven’t said they aren’t running, but who also tend to show up on lists of potential contenders for council or mayor every two years, then disappear from the political rumorscape until the next campaign cycle—former US attorney Jenny Durkan, Seattle Chamber of Commerce CEO Maud Daudon, ex-mayor Mike McGinn.
But here’s one we haven’t heard before: Downtown tunnel opponent, affordable housing advocate, and anti-neoliberalism writer Cary Moon, who Crank hears may be the “well-resourced” female candidate consulting firm Moxie Media has been working with. No confirmation from either Moon or Moxie yet, but we’ll let you know as soon as we hear yea or nay from either.
3. Operation Nightwatch, the overnight men’s shelter that had to vacate its old digs at the Pearl Warren building in the Little Saigon neighborhood when the city announced it was opening a 24/7 Navigation Center there, has to move again. Earlier this month, the city announced it had found a temporary space for the shelter at the Next 50 Pavilion at Seattle Center, but their time runs out today. Operation Nightwatch Executive Director Rick Reynolds said last week that the group has found a short-term space that will be ready in May, and a longer-term solution beginning in August, but that still leaves a “wretched gap for the next few weeks.” Seattle Human Services Department spokeswoman Meg Olberding said Friday that the city has figured out a way to fill the gap, but did not provide any details about what that solution looks like or when the shelter will relocate.
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