The Stranger has lost a LOT of standing with progressives doing actual advocacy work in the area and is fundamentally a private (for profit!) company making decisions behind closed doors. They election board has asserted their independence from Noisy Creek (the new owners as of 2024) but they’ve made some questionable choices.
- The Stanger endorsed Will Dreher, the former Kavanaugh clerk who wrote a letter supporting his supreme court nomination, over actual progressive urbanist Ron Davis (and they spent their entire endorsement space defending that choice instead of actually identifying why Dreher would be a better choice).
- The Stranger endorsed Jamie Pedersen over more progressive challenger Hannah Sabio-Howell, basically arguing that now is not the right time for a change in leadership. Jamie successfully passed the (horribly named) “millionare’s tax” but only after attempting to introduce massive corporate carve-outs into it which were later undone by another amendment before passage.
- The Stranger endorsed Seattle’s most toxic demagogue Kshama Sawant for the 9th Congressional District. (This is admittedly the most cursed race happening right now, and many groups have chosen simply to not endorse in this race).
You can agree or disagree with any of these individual endorsements, but everyone should at least know that the folks closest to actual progressive policy work have lost confidence in The Stranger (I’ll post some receipts below). At the end of the day, they are a private, for-profit media company. Everyone should at least be considering the endorsements from other progressive outlets – especially member-run advocacy groups and local democratic legislative districts (which are open to anyone who lives in them).
(A previous version of this post was taken down, I spoke with mods and got permission to repost an updated version.)
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