Homelessness, police, Amazon top Seattle mayoral debate

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SEATTLE – The 2 candidates for Seattle politician agreed Thursday that tackling an ongoing homelessness situation was the apical contented facing the the Northwest's largest city, but they differed sharply astir however to wage for that.

Lorena González and Bruce Harrell besides clashed implicit constabulary backing and the relation and work that tech elephantine Amazon has for problems successful the metropolis wherever its office is located.

González, the City Council president and a erstwhile civilian rights attorney, said Amazon and different affluent interests request to wage much taxes.

“I person made it my life’s enactment to basal up and combat for moving families,” she said during a debate, adding she would besides clasp constabulary accountable for the “extraordinary maltreatment of our beingness and liberty.”

During the protests past twelvemonth implicit the execution of George Floyd by constabulary successful Minneapolis, she embraced calls to “defund” the police.

That's a presumption Harrell, a erstwhile City Council president, seized on.

“I don’t subscribe to the defund communicative … I privation an effectual constabulary department,” helium said.

November's mayoral predetermination volition beryllium intimately watched nationally arsenic Seattle is 1 of the nation's ample cities wherever the statement implicit constabulary backing is simply a cardinal issue. Democratic superior voters successful New York’s mayoral contention earlier this twelvemonth chose a erstwhile constabulary serviceman who objected to calls to “defund the police.”

González has called for betterment of the metropolis constabulary section that is nether national supervision aft the U.S. Justice Department recovered a signifier of excessive unit and grounds of biased policing.

Harrell said González's calls to chopped constabulary backing by 50% would exacerbate transgression issues faced by number and low-income neighborhoods.

Harrell besides said the existent City Council hasn't taken factual steps to find lodging for those sleeping connected metropolis streets and successful camps successful nationalist parks successful Seattle, which has among the worst homelessness problems successful the nation.

“We’re getting finger-pointing, excuse-making,” helium said.

Reforming Washington state's regressive taxation codification that relies heavy connected an income taxation is key, Harrell said. He besides said helium wants to enactment with Amazon and different affluent companies to assistance lick homelessness and different issues.

González slammed Harrell, an lawyer who has the enactment of astir of the city's concern community, for being the favored campaigner of monied interests.

“I’m not going to punt to the authorities Legislature to hole our gross problems," she said. And she said Harrell was supported by radical warring attempts to get corporations to wage much taxes successful Seattle and the state.

González has won the endorsements of galore of the region's labour unions. Her parents were migrant farmworkers successful cardinal Washington

As assembly president, she has helped walk a payroll taxation connected large corporations, specified arsenic Amazon, to wage for metropolis services, arsenic good arsenic idiosyncratic protections specified arsenic a secure-scheduling law.

Harrell has called for hiring much constabulary officers to stem a emergence successful shootings.

He grew up successful Seattle’s Central Area, a redlined neighborhood; his begetter was a Black transplant from the Jim Crow South, and his mother’s household was Japanese and interned during World War II.

Incumbent Mayor Jenny Durkan is not moving for re-election. The past 3 mayors elected by Seattle voters person not served much than 1 term.

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