The Lakewood Examiner

In Lakewood the mayor and deputy mayor are not directly elected. They are chosen by the City Council. So when Donald Anderson stood down as mayor, the council chose a replacement, who was Jason Whalen, the deputy mayor.

These council-chosen positions are not just ceremonial and are not special prizes for long service. They carry real power, for example through the chairing of meetings and through influence and patronage. While usually the mayor has most of the influence, the deputy mayor must be ready to temporarily take over.

Also, the deputy mayorship is a pathway to leadership. On January 7 2008 Donald Anderson, as a newly elected council member, was appointed unanimously as deputy mayor. Five years later he became full mayor.

We would therefore expect the new deputy mayor to be a future leader. Or as the Tacoma News Tribune put it in July 2021, when endorsing council member Patti Belle, she “could be a bridge between the accomplished old guard and a well-rounded new generation of leaders”.

Unfortunately Patti Belle has shown very little aptitude for political leadership. Last spring she was appointed to the City Council, following the resignation of John Simpson, and she appears to have been appointed for her ability to mould herself to a pre-existing organizational culture. When commenting on policy she tends to parrot other council members, and it is possible that she feels a debt of gratitude to the people who appointed her.

In terms of a new generation of leaders, it seems that the few realistic candidates for deputy mayor declined to put their names forward. One might have expected Linda Farmer or Paul Bocchi to put their names forward. They are both in their fifties, so have at least another fifteen years of political life. But instead they stood back and allowed Mary Moss to become deputy mayor.

Mary Moss was first elected in 2009, and as a city leader she is ineffective – almost as ineffective as Patti Belle. I would assume that she won’t be standing for re-election when her term runs out at the end of 2025, so it does look as if the deputy mayorship is little more than a long service award.

As for the new mayor, Jason Whalen, whose term also runs out in 2025, one wonders if Lakewood is the summit of his political ambitions. In 2020 he narrowly failed to get elected to Pierce council and I find it difficult to believe that he won’t try again for higher elected office.

So what happens next? As it stands Lakewood is approaching a leadership vacuum. And it almost feels that Mary Moss was given the deputy mayorship as a way of keeping the seat warm for someone else. We then have to look very carefully at the 2023 election, and see who puts themselves forward to replace Donald Anderson on the council.

If I had to speculate, I think it might be Anderson’s daughter, Alyssa Anderson Pearson, the current board president of the Clover Park School District. She might also be Lakewood’s next deputy mayor and then mayor, unless an excellent, well-funded candidate can stop her getting elected in 2023.

British politician Enoch Powell wrote that “All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs”. And with Donald Anderson’s announcement that he is standing down as mayor of Lakewood, yet another political life bites the dust.

Of course Anderson might argue that being mayor of Lakewood was the summit of his political ambitions. He was mayor for eight years, and what more can any man want? He had eight years as a big bully in a small pond, and an enduring part of his legacy will be the permanant destruction of many aspects of Lakewood’s ecosystem.

Yet it is a sad end for someone who boasts that in 1971, as a teenager, he was elected to the Puyallup School Board, and was the youngest school board president in the United States. But I suppose not every child prodigy can do a Michael Jackson, and make the transition to adult stardom.

Lakewood City Council has seven members, and this year, 2021, four of them were up for re-election. Not surprisingly, no one lost their seat.

Deputy mayor Jason Whalen easily beat off a challenge from Siabhon Ayuso, getting 75.28% of the vote. Michael Brandstetter did almost as well against Amelia Escobedo, getting 74.6%. Recently appointed council member Patti Belle did fantastically well against Ria Covington Johnson, getting close to 80%. Then there was Mary Moss, whose only opponents were write-ins.

It is depressing that no one bothered to stand against Mary Moss. I believe she’s a Democrat, in which case she’s a Democrat In Name Only (DINO). She’s utterly patronized by other members of the City Council, and she endorsed Republic Jason Whalen when he stood for Pierce Council in 2020. Though libertarians and progressives should take some solace in the fact that in 2018 she voted against Lakewood’s Ordinance 683, to prohibit the production, processing, and retail sale of marijuana.

So far, Patti Belle has been even less impressive than Mary Moss. In the Spring she was appointed to the Council, after John Simpson’s mid-term resignation. She works for the City of Kent, and she impressed Lakewood’s Council when she interviewed for the vacancy.

The Tacoma New Tribune endorsed Patti Belle, writing that she “could be a bridge between the accomplished old guard and a well-rounded new generation of leaders”. Do the Tribune‘s journalists ever visit City Council meetings? Patti Belle is a follower rather than a leader, who appears beholden to the people who appointed her. Having said that, Ria Covingdon Johnson ran a fairly invisible campaign and the result was never in question.

As for Siabhon Ayuso and Amelia Escobedo, we should credit them for being the almost lone voices of opposition to Lakewood’s monolithic council. At least until this summer, when the Garry oak scandal broke. However, their election campaigns left much to be desired.

In the August primaries, Siabhon Ayuso got 1503 votes compared to David Howarth’s 1170 votes. In some ways it is a shame that David Howard didn’t knock her out of the race. He had some progressive policies and he might have gained valuable political experience running a main challenge to Jason Whalen. And then Siabhon Ayuso, having got through the primary, largely disappeared. This underlines the fact that if you put yourself forward for election you have an obligation to your community to be 100% committed.

Amelia Escobedo ran a better campaign than Siabhon Ayuso, but her apparent advocacy of loud noise, in the Voters’ pamphlet, seemed unwise:

The third reason I am running is because our current City Council members are living in the “Foot Loose” ages. They do not allow night clubs, you are not allowed play loud music on Edgewater Park, and we are losing millions in tax revenue from lack of marijuana dispensaries.

If Amelia and Siabhon are going to stand again in 2023, they need to play to win. They both have strong connections with the community, and they understand that Lakewood is crying out for a vision, which includes both social and environmental justice. Amelia and Siabhon must now rise from their defeats, and start committing themselves to electoral victory.

Many people in Lakewood are are dismayed by the City Council’s relentless unanimity. We see the seven members of the council appearing to act as a mutually-admiring monolithic block.

However, there are times when council members are able to think for themselves. For example May 21 2018, when the Council voted on Ordinance 683, to prohibit the production, processing, and retail sale of marijuana.

Ordinance 683 was a 4-3 votes, with council members Anderson, Whalen, Brandstetter, and Barth supporting it, and council members Moss, Bocchi and Simpson voting against.

The Suburban Times reported that Council Member Branstetter justified Ordinance 683 by point out that “Short term money is not a good trade for long term problems”. I would agree with his broad sentiments. The City should not recklessly pursue additional revenues. And I am particularly thinking about the City’s encouraging of warehouse development. In the short-term warehouses do bring tax revenue, but the environmental devastation they cause can be irreversible, and is likely to last long after their decommissioning. Compare that with marijuana shops. Aside from being secure – more secure than gun or alcohol stores – they tend to be small and reusable – yesterday a nail salon, tomorrow a church.

If Lakewood allowed marijuana shops, few people would notice. Particularly now, as the legalization and decriminalization of marijuana are snowballing across the Western world. Furthermore, marijuana shops, unlike many commercial activities, cause no lasting damage to the environment, and they bring in tax revenue to the City. Also, they make sense for the environment, because Lakewood marijuana users wouldn’t have to drive miles to get their supply.

In 2018 five members of the current council were part of a close vote to prohibit retail sales of marijuana. To my knowledge council members Farmer and Belle have not yet had a chance to publicly express themselves on the issue. I believe that it is now time for the Council to vote again on the issue, and to allow legal marijuana to become part of the City’s diverse economy.

For myself, I don’t use marijuana, and I don’t condone it either. I am also agnostic about its medicinal benefits, and I accept that in rare cases it can be a trigger for schizophrenia. However, the legalization of marijuana is spreading throughout the Western world, and like alcohol and tylenol, it is just another product that needs to be available to adults but also regulated.

Last year, on May 1, Said Joquin was shot dead by Lakewood Police. He had run a stop sign, and Officer Michael Wiley killed him. At this stage I don’t want to go into details, but when I get the information I’ll give my thoughts. The important details are that Said was a young African American, who needlessly lost his life.

The Black Panther Party of Washington took an immediate interest in Said’s case, and organized a demonstration, to coincide with celebrations for the City of Lakewood’s 25th anniverserty, on Saturday, September 25.

I should say that the Black Panthers are not as scary as they sound. Although they fight for social change, they are prepared to work with the system, and the bulk of their activites are charitable – for example feeding and clothing the homeless.

Before the demonstration started, the Panthers set up a tent, and marshalled their supporters. Some of Said’s family from North Carolina were there, and so was a sergeant from Lakewood Police Department, astride his bicycle.

As a foreigner, coming from a country with some of the strictest gun control laws in the world, it was a strange scene. The Panthers, in combat gear, were open carrying rifles and pistols, and were almost treating the thing as a military operation. The police sergeant was discussing politics with them, in a way that was measured and civilized. He even sugggested, if I heard him right, that some of the Panthers could best serve their community by themselves joining the police.

Then the march started – and as the demonstrators left the marshalling ground, the sergeant called after them “Be nice!”.

Unfortunately attendance at the march was disappointing – I would have said no more than 25 people. If the Panthers had been able to get four times that number, they might have been able to seriously disrupt the City’s big day. And no one attending the celebrations wanted to interact with the marchers – except Lakewood’s mayor, Donald Anderson, who suggested to the Panthers that their open carry was a sign of insecurity.

I don’t know the exact reasons why the Panthers had guns. It might have been a good way – perhaps the only way – to get attention to their cause. Or perhaps they were signalling that they, rather than regular law enforcement agencies, are best positioned to defend the community.

On Tuesday August 3 we had primaries in Pierce County, and in Lakewood four out of seven council seats were up for grabs. This reflects the Lakewood election cycle. Council elections happen in odd years, with three seats in the 2015–2019–2023 cycle, and four seats 2017–2021–2025.

The results were unsurprising.

Mary Moss, the incumbent in Position 1, was unopposed. This meant that she wasn’t on the ballot paper, and there wasn’t an opportunity for a write-in. Republican Jason Whalen, on his Facebook page, quoted Mary Moss, regarding his 2020 run for Pierce County Council: “Jason doesn’t have a partisan agenda; he works on behalf of the people – not of special interests or Party ideology. That’s why – though I am a Democrat — I am endorsing Jason…”.

Jason Whalen and Mary Moss have both been council members since 2010, and under their watch parts of the City have witnessed environmental devastation. Someone should be standing against Mary Moss, and we’re now relying on a write-in long-shot.

Looking at the contested primaries, in Position 2 Mike Brandstetter topped the poll, with 5,293 votes, which was 71.09% of the total. Brandstetter, like Mary Moss, has been a council member since 2010, and it looks like he’ll be on the Council another four years… unless Amelia Escobedo, who came second with 22.63% of the vote, can do something special.

Then there’s Position 5. This is interesting, because Patti Belle, the current incumbent, is an appointee. She took over from John Simpson, when he moved out of the City. Patti Belle wasn’t the only person who applied for the vacant seat. Another person who applied was Ria Johnson-Covington, who stood against Simpson in 2017 and got 32.92% of the vote. This year Johnson-Covington came second in the 2021 Primary for Postion 5, so she’s still in the race.

Position 3 is occupied by Jason Whalen. He won the primary convincingly, getting 4802 votes, which was 64.04% of the total. In second place was Siabhom Ayuso, with 1501 votes.

From a statistical point of view, Whalen did signficantly worse than Brandstetter and Belle, who respectively got 71.09% and 69.64% of the vote. The effect was small — if you’re interested, Cramer’s V on the chi-square test was .07. Yet there was *some* effect, and it does seem that there were a few voters that Whalen turned off, that Brandstetter and Belle didn’t. It’s now up to Siabhon Ayuso, between now and November, to leverage the WNE (Whalen Negativity Effect) in her favor.

Lakewood, Washington, is fast becoming a byword for environmental destruction.

It may not be on par with the destruction of the Brazilian rainforests, but the City’s unique natural heritage is being undermined on a daily basis. The City is home to a unique concentration of Garry Oaks, which take over a hundred years to reach maturity. Unlike conifers, they put down deep roots, which make them resistant to drought. Yet the City is allowing Garry Oaks to be torn down, through lax tree preservation codes and large-scale rezoning. It seems that the City’s prime directive is letting business have its way… rather like a computer organized society, in a science-fiction dystopia, that is programmed to put commercial interests first.

To give an example of the City’s messaging, I came across a website they appear to control, buildyourbetterhere.com. This website is pushing Lakewood to investors, and when I last visited had the photo and contact details of Becky Newton, the City’s economic development manager.

The website had the following message:

If you’re looking for better, we’re building better here in Lakewood. Better looks like affordable starter homes in established neighborhoods. Or lakefront living on some of the most luxurious properties in the state. Pick your lake. Lakewood has seven. Better is also a streamlined business climate. With business-friendly policies and development incentives, Lakewood invites investment and bulldozes barriers. How will you build your better here?

On the face of it, the message is that businesses can come to Lakewood and do what they like. Most importantly, Lakewood will facilitate businesses, by “bulldozing barriers.” As was commented at a City Council meeting on July 19 2021, the word bulldoze is very emotive. According to Merriam-Webster, bulldoze as a transitive verb has three possible meanings:

 to coerce or restrain by threats: BULLY

to move, clear, gouge out, or level off by pushing with or as if with a bulldozer

to force insensitively ruthlessly

The implication seems to be that if you’re a business, the City will, if need be, do what ever it takes to clear the barriers. For example, being insensitive to people’s concerns about the environment, bullying people making objections, and ruthlessly using the power at their disposal to allow business interests to get their way.

Hopefully the use of the word “bulldoze” was a mistake, and when you visit the website you won’t see it anymore. It was a week ago that the comment was made, and changing the wording of websites can take a long time. However, as it stands, businesses can be confident that the City of Lakewood will bulldoze whatever barriers they face. The machine knows its priorities, and they aren’t those of the ordinary residents of Lakewood.