Seattle City Councilman Dan Strauss will seek re-election when his seat comes up for election in November, making him one among three incumbents running for a recent termhe announced on Wednesday.
Strauss said it was his deep love for Ballard and the remainder of District 6, which incorporates the Greenlake and now Magnolia neighborhoods, that prompted him to hunt one other term — though his first 4 years were disrupted by the economic protests of 2020 were downturn and the COVID-19 pandemic that began just weeks after he took office.
“If I hadn’t learned to read at Ballard [Branch] Library, I could not compete without seeing the vision for the longer term of the community,” Strauss said in an interview on Tuesday. “It’s being raised by the community, which supplies me the facility to do it.”
Together with District 2 councilor Tammy Morales and District 7 councilor Andrew Lewis, Strauss is one among three current councilors in search of re-election when all seven district positions are up for election in November. Each are also of their first terms.
To this point, Strauss’ District 6 seat has been challenged by Jace Donnelly, a communications specialist at Boeing and an advocate for FairVote Washington, a company that has championed Seattle’s ranked voting. Strauss voted to place it on the ballot as a substitute for the consent vote.
During this tenure, Strauss has often found himself caught somewhere between his progressive and more centrist peers, which he says resulted in a few of his subtleties being lost within the struggle over more controversial issues.
“Through all of this, I actually have approached my work as a realistic leader with a balanced approach,” said Strauss. “So when people were most trained, I believe the more nuanced parts of my conversations weren’t being heard.”
An example, Strauss said, is when a majority of council members said they might support a plan to alleviate the Seattle Police Department by 50%, one which was quickly abandoned, amid protests in 2020 following the murder of George Floyd. He was often counted as a “yes” to the proposal. But when interviewed last 12 months concerning the council’s reversal on the difficulty, Strauss noted his ambiguous support and called for more information on how the cuts could be made through the debate.
In a second term, Strauss’ priorities would still be homelessness, housing, and public safety, but he would spend a second term specializing in expanding projects and policies from his first term to cover a bigger a part of the town apply.
“After I have a look at my next semester, the query is not necessarily, ‘What do I would like to do?’ It’s, “How do I do what was successful? [in neighborhoods] at district and city level?’ ‘ said Strauss.
Its laws too allow everlasting street cafeslike what emerged on Ballard Avenue through the pandemic, is an example of a project he believes may very well be replicated in some form within the Brewery District.
The transformation of Ballard Commons Park, which is sort of complete greater than a 12 months after it closed to the general public following the eviction of a homeless encampment, could also serve for example of how poorly maintained parks will be breathed recent life into the town.
“We’ve got to take the most effective of what we have now, drop the worst and scale it to the scale of the town we have grown to be,” he added.
Latest ideas that Strauss would deal with in his district centered on public safety and walkability “from Leary Solution to Fremont,” although he noted that different parts of his district would have specific needs.
Kicking off his campaign, Strauss said he’ll be doing an “audio tour” of Magnolia, newly admitted to his district, to get a feel for the world, noting that he helped Magnolia when he met former councilor Sally Bagshaw worked on the District 7 office.
