Seattle council president attracts first challenger in quiet race

Dionne Foster, a former policy adviser in the City of Seattle and current director of the liberal nonprofit Progress Alliance of Washington, is running for one of two citywide seats on the Seattle City Council.

She’s the first challenger to council President Sara Nelson, who has served as the face of the backlash to the city’s progressive politics of the early 2020s. Of the three council races this year, this one is likely to go furthest in defining the body for the next two years and serve as the clearest test of voters’ satisfaction with City Hall’s more moderate posture.

Foster enters what, so far, has been a relatively quiet election. She’s the only challenger to Nelson, and Mayor Bruce Harrell has so far not attracted a highly funded challenger. Recently elected Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck has also not yet attracted any challengers. The busiest races so far are those for the open District 2 seat on the council and Seattle city attorney.

Although Foster hesitates to define herself as the progressive in the race, Seattle’s left-leaning elected officials at the state level have lined up early behind her. She comes out of the gates with endorsements from former Speaker of the House Frank Chopp; state Sens. Emily Alvarado and Rebecca Saldaña; state Reps. Joe Fitzgibbon, Nicole Macri and Shaun Scott; and more.

A social worker by training, Foster has recently put her energy behind furthering progressive policies at the state level with the Progress Alliance of Washington. The organization pushed for the new statewide capital gains tax to help fund education programs and helped beat back an initiative to repeal the law last year.

Before that, she worked for the Seattle Foundation, which gives out grants to local organizations, and was a policy adviser in Seattle working on youth and environmental programs.

That work, she said, came with a “clarity that you’re doing it because we’re trying to improve people’s lives through delivering services, delivering improvements that really matter. And I want to keep doing that.”

Foster, a single mother, said she understands what government services can do for a person. She owns her home, which she bought with help from a city-based mortgage assistance program.

Foster says she believes Nelson hasn’t done enough to foster cooperation, collaboration or respect in City Hall.

“I’m really focused right now thinking about how we can have a City Hall that engages multiple constituencies and really respects people’s rights and voices, and create some space to have nuanced conversation on complex topics,” she said.

In recent years, the city’s political fault lines have run along questions of taxation, housing and public safety.

Foster said she’s keenly aware of the state’s tax code, which hits the wealthy relatively lightly. She didn’t commit to new city-level taxes, such as a possible local capital gains or expansion of the current tax on large businesses in the city, but said it’s a conversation she’s willing to have.

On public safety, she said she supports efforts to hire more police officers — as the days of political candidates supporting cuts to the department fade further from view — as well as scaling up alternatives. Her goal is to eliminate people’s confusion about who to call, and when — be it for a stolen car or a person in crisis.

“We can actually make sure that everyone knows what to do in those instances,” she said.

When it comes to housing, Foster backs the mayor’s proposal to upzone 30 neighborhood centers.

Absent political labels, city races are often sorted into battles of moderate vs. progressive or business vs. labor. Considering Nelson’s positions, Foster is likely to be cast as the progressive.

Asked if she agrees with that label, Foster said she pushes for issues with broad support.

“Sometimes we agree, sometimes we disagree, but we focus on getting things done right, and we focus on figuring out how to move forward, figuring out how to make people’s lives better,” she said.