One thing shined through pretty clearly when the Seattle mayoral candidates debated Tuesday. And no, it wasn’t who would be the best choice to try to manage our ungovernable city.
It was that defunding the police is on the run.
None of the six candidates who appeared at Tuesday’s forum openly endorsed cutting the police budget, let alone by 50%, as a majority of the Seattle City Council had endorsed during the civil rights protests last summer.
A number of candidates campaigned openly that what Seattle really needs right now is more cops — which is quite a political shift from a year ago.
“I think the pendulum has swung against defund the police,” one candidate, Lance Randall, said after the debate had ended. “You can see it in these forums — the people who used to talk about it either don’t talk about it anymore or are now actively backpedaling.”
Randall stole the show a bit at this forum, hosted by the Downtown Seattle Association, when he told about how he’d been shot at by thieves just this past Saturday in his Rainier Beach neighborhood.