No, We Did Not Endorse Pamela Banks or Tim Burgess

Misleading, and not a quote from our 2015 endorsements.

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If you look at the latest context-free advertisements from Pamela Banks and Tim Burgess, you might get the idea that The Stranger supports them. Readers, don't give them any of our precious SECB election juice by mistake. We actually endorsed their opponents: Kshama Sawant and Jonathan Grant.

The latest mailer from Banks is already under fire for slapping the headline "Kshama Sawant Won't Meet With the People She Represents" above the images of five people—people who don't actually live in Seattle, who happen to be stock photo models. The flip side of the mailer buttresses the claim with a quote below a Stranger logo, making it appear as if we might be opposed to Sawant's re-election.

Here's the deliberately-omitted context: The sentence comes from Stranger reporter Anna Minard's very last article for the paper. It's a year old, and the two preceding sentences about Sawant are, "She won and she's successful because she's ridiculously, mind-blowingly smart and fearless" and "Her ability to magnetically draw the conversation leftward and to call her colleagues on their bullshit in public is great."

It's also worth noting that Sawant was elected on a citywide basis. She represents all of Seattle, not just constituents from District 3, until November 3, when we switch over to district elections.

We're glowing about Sawant in our endorsements. Banks, on the other hand, "lacks anything close to Sawant's sense of urgency about the problems that continue to haunt this fast-changing city," we said. Banks campaign manager Joanna Paul said she couldn't comment on the mailer.

The Tim Burgess campaign did something similar in a recent TV ad:

YouTube

In this case, the rest of that very same sentence criticizes Burgess for clashing, rather than collaborating with, unions over the preschool program: "His signature project, a universal prekindergarten program for kids, is a huge achievement—but it would have been easier to celebrate if Burgess had managed to tamp down his condescend-o-meter and collaborate with local daycare workers' unions instead of ending up in an epic fight with them."

What does the SECB actually think of Burgess? We compared him to Tywin Lannister, the tyrannical villain from Game of Thrones.

To repeat: No, we did not endorse either of these clowns, as much as Christian Sinderman, an influential consultant for both the Banks campaign and the Burgess campaign, might want you to think we did. Sinderman consulted on the Ed Murray mayoral campaign in 2013, too, and that campaign did the same goddamn thing. Sinderman didn't respond to a request for comment.