Lisa Daugaard of the Public Defenders Association.

For Lisa Daugaard, Director of the Public Defenders Association, the proposed new business tax is a dose of reality — a step toward a funding amount she believes is necessary to actually slow the homelessness crisis. And that truth, she argued, can be hard to swallow.

“[Council members] are not pandering. They’re not invoking the old fake solutions, nor are they particularly participating in new fake solutions. They are being serious about moving the needle and those answers are not what people want to hear.”

Of O'Brien specifically, she said, "There are times when he just explains himself when it might be safer to manipulate public sentiment and he doesn’t do that. I think that that can mean that he makes himself more vulnerable because he doesn’t protect himself as some others who are more committed to their own political future."

City council members negotiate offices according to seniority. After more than 8 years on the council, O’Brien’s corner office looks both west toward the water and north up Third Avenue. His office is bathed in natural light.

It’s been a jarring few weeks for him and his staff as the council zeroes in on a final vote next week on the employee hours tax on large businesses. The opposition has been intense, both Amazon and Zillow threatening to hire elsewhere and slow down some of their own downtown construction projects.

Last week’s town hall, just miles from where he lives, was painful.

“It was pretty rough,” he said in an interview on Tuesday.

O'Brien often jokes in person. During a largely subdued 30-minute interview, he managed one lighthearted moment. Referring to the tense political environment, he said: 'I actually talked to Seattle Public Utilities; it's the water."

“I’ve been in a number of meetings where there's been a lot of angry voices and yet [last] Wednesday still kind of stood out in a way that feels like if someone was measuring these things, it's like, oh yeah, we just moved the bar again,” he said.

Seattle City Council member Teresa Mosqueda speaks at the end of a town hall meeting at Trinity United Methodist Church.

O’Brien is confident he is still basically the man he was when he was first elected. He ran on climate change and social justice and, he pointed out, those are issues he’s worked on while in office.

“I feel pretty comfortable that there was no bait and switch here. I am doing the things I've been saying I wanted to do all along.”

His one-time colleague Tim Burgess agreed.

“He was consistent the whole time,” he said.

So what’s changed?

O’Brien said he’s been mulling this question. “I spend a fair amount of time thinking about what's the dynamic, what's happening and what's my role in this? Did I help create this? How do I respond to this?”

His best answer: poverty is no longer at arm’s length for the homeowners in his district. Alongside the landscapes of wealth in the city are homeless tent encampments. After they’ve left home to go to college, O’Brien figures members of his sons’ generation may not be able to return to start lives here.

And the problems known well among communities of color are creeping north to his district. “I think there's a lot of folks like myself, as a White man, that are starting to feel like, 'Whoa, I'm not sure if I can even hold my own anymore.'”

“I don't think my values have shifted," he added. "I don't think my covenant is shifted. But I think the reality that we're all facing is all of a sudden really different.”

Seattle City Councilmember Mike O'Brien

In facing that new reality, O’Brien said people like him — a White homeowner — are well represented by the virtue of his being on the council. But who’s not represented are the people living on the streets or, as was the case with his opposition to the youth jail, those most likely to end up on the inside. O’Brien feels a particular pull toward bringing those people to the table.

For O’Brien’s supporters, like Dae Shik Kim Hawkins of the Seattle Peoples Party, such self-awareness is rare and appreciated. “I’ve always seen Mike posture himself where he knows at the end of the day he’s a middle-aged White guy in a position of power,” he said.

But it also has the effect of making the homeowners of his district — the people who look a lot like Mike O'Brien — feel unheard. “People criticize him for virtue signaling,” said Wisdom of Speak Out Seattle. “He sort of blows in the wind with what he sees as what he thinks are the most progressive ideas of the day.”

Once upon a time, Mike O’Brien felt there was a way to bring opposite sides together.

“I always felt like there was a place where we can work through the issues and nuance actually kinda matters and we can talk about trade offs and we could figure out a position that's gonna mostly work for everybody,” he said.

But that’s evaporating, he said, replaced by an environment where only the loudest voices are heard. As a result, the quieter, more nuanced voices are being crowded out, he said, and that threatens the mission of City Hall to serve everyone.

“I've always thought, I’m not worried about democracy in Seattle. We're going to be fine. It's the rest of the country that terrifies me,” he said.

“But you know, the things that have happened in the last few weeks, I am worried.”