There’s a new candidate running for Seattle City Council in our district.
Kate Martin, who has lived and operated a landscape architecture business in the neighborhood for 32 years, is planning to challenge Mike O’Brien for his seat on the council in the 2019 election.
You might remember Martin from her 2013 mayoral campaign — here’s an excerpt from a Seattle Times article during her candidacy:
She’s the stubborn former school-board candidate who did a stand-in at Roosevelt High School to demand her son be transferred to a better math teacher’s class. She’s the guitar-playing mother of two who spent thousands to install a skatepark in her front yard, only to have the city order that she take part of it out. She’s the longtime Greenwood Community Councilwoman who loves taking jabs at former member, Mayor Mike McGinn.
While it’s still early days, Martin is entering what so far looks like a quiet race — Christopher Rufo ended his campaign two weeks ago, which makes Martin the only current challenger for O’Brien’s seat on the council.
“I’ll be rolling out the themes of my campaign over the next few months and I want you to be there discussing them with me,” she writes on her campaign page. “I’m shooting to have 150 likes on my campaign Facebook page and 150 subscribers to my campaign newsletter so we have a ‘quorum’ of sorts for discussion.”
Martin also recently wrote a newsletter about her interest in campaign transparency and a call to change the “status quo” candidate questionnaire system.
From her newsletter:
…behind the scenes, candidates have to answer dozens and dozens of questionnaires from special interest groups and media, but voters don’t get to see most of the questionnaires and the tedious and redundant process takes candidates away from voters.
She calls for a publicly-selected, universal set of questions for candidates. Historically there are just too many questions, especially for campaigns with smaller staffs.
We’ll be following Martin’s campaign as we learn more about her plans for District 6 — stay tuned.