JASON RANTZ

Rantz: CM Teresa Mosqueda defended murder threats against cops. Will Seattle reelect her?

Oct 27, 2021, 6:00 PM

Seattle single family zoning bill sponsor Teresa Mosqueda, JumpStart tax...

Seattle Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda. (Seattle City Council, Flickr Creative Commons)

(Seattle City Council, Flickr Creative Commons)

Seattle City Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda is running for reelection but her polling is not where it should be for a strong incumbent. How much of her inappropriate behavior and fringe beliefs will come back to haunt her?

Mosqueda joined scores of angry radicals at a protest in 2020 in order to push back against Seattle police. But one extremist in the crowd threatened to murder cops right in front of her. Not only did Mosqueda choose not to denounce the man; she defended him. She called the man’s anger “justified.” It was caught on video — her own Facebook Live feed first covered by the Jason Rantz Show on KTTH.

Will this embarrassing and terrifying incident rightly cost her votes in her race against her moderate opponent Ken Wilson? It should.

‘Save us the trouble of tearing you apart’

Last year, Mosqueda helped legitimize the movement that created the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ).

On June 5, 2020, along with some of her council colleagues, the at-large council member attended a rally outside the East Precinct. At times, the protest that night and earlier became violent, with officers facing projectiles activists hurled their way.

Mosqueda was in the crowd to livestream the protest and earn street cred with the city’s most extreme activists. At the time, she was thinking of running for Seattle mayor and needed to build her brand and her base.

While interviewing a rallygoer, an angry man started shouting at cops directly behind her. The rhetoric was violent, and the threats seemed real.

“SPD, I need you to do me a favor. Take your guns, put them onto your chins, and pull the trigger,” the man yelled. “I need you to kill yourselves. That’s your only redemption. Go ahead, save us the trouble of tearing you apart and —-ing kill yourselves. Did I stutter? I said, ‘k-k-k-kill yourselves.’”

As this man shouted, Mosqueda looked at him but didn’t mention the disgusting rhetoric.

“—-ing kill yourselves. It’s the only chance you have left to do something good for the world and that’s remove yourself from it,” he shouted.

Mosqueda then defended the threat to her Facebook viewers.

“The anger that you hear is justified,” she said.

The rhetoric continues, Mosqueda didn’t distance herself

Telling cops to kill themselves before a threat to tear them apart is not justified, as Mosqueda claimed. It was a threat. If you made that same statement to Mosqueda, she’d call the cops she defunded in order to file a police report.

While she was defending the anger, the man continued his attack on cops: “I need you to kill yourself.”

Moments later, Mosqueda spoke with King County Councilmember Girmay Zahilay. While he claimed, “I’ve seen nothing but peaceful people out here,” the protester shouted, “You have declared war on the American people. We do not forgive, we do not forget. Expect us.”

This could have been a moment to call out the unhelpful, hateful, and divisive language, while reminding people of the right to protest. Instead, they excuse or ignore the vitriol. Calling it out wouldn’t please their base of support. That’s a shame.

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Mosqueda polling is not ideal

New polling by the left-wing Northwest Progressive Institute shows Mosqueda with the lead — but her opponent is gaining ground.

According to the poll, 39% of likely Seattle voters supported Mosqueda, while 31% said they backed Wilson. With just an eight-point lead, despite high name recognition and a solid primary performance, there’s a reason for her campaign to be concerned. What’s worse for Mosqueda: 26% said they did not know how they’d vote.

Mosqueda has far outraised Wilson, pouring money into a consulting agency to help restore her image. If voters haven’t decided if they’ll support Mosqueda again, it must mean they’re looking at Wilson to see if he’d do a better job of listening to their concerns. With Mosqueda, you get someone who ignores the average voter and spends time trying to impress socialist and progressive activists that live in Capitol Hill.

Ken Wilson is the better choice

When you talk to Wilson, you know he actually cares. That’s in stark contrast to Mosqueda who sticks with her echo chamber of far-left activists.

“It’s been great canvassing down in South Park where people are just so surprised, ‘you’re the candidate, really, for real?'” Wilson told the Jason Rantz Show on KTTH. “So getting back and giving the people a chance to speak to me or just speak to their council, so many people sent emails that go un-responded or responded back with a strange, … it feels like a strange response that has nothing to do with what [they] were asking.”

Wilson is not partisan. In fact, he’s an independent — he’s particularly liberal on most issues but he’s not rabidly anti-cop or anti-business.

And unlike Mosqueda, he wants to help offer treatment and services to homeless individuals, rather than let them suffer on the streets until federal dollars come to pay for housing projects that don’t address the root causes of why someone lives outside to begin with.

“I’ve lived here 28 years. My wife was born here. We’re all feeling it,” Wilson said. “There’s just something really wrong going on at this council level, and they don’t have a plan. They just don’t have a way to fix things. The people are noticing this.”

Wilson hopes to be able to connect with more voters. Seattleites are clearly looking for some level of change, according to polling. But too often they revert back to the same dangerous candidate pushing policies they complain about.

Will Wilson be able to meet enough voters to close the gap and pull out an upset? I hope so.

Did you like this opinion piece? Then listen to the Jason Rantz Show weekday afternoons from 3-6 p.m. on KTTH 770 AM (HD Radio 97.3 FM HD-Channel 3). Subscribe to the podcast here. Follow @JasonRantz  on  Twitter,  Instagram, and Parler, and like me on Facebook

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Rantz: CM Teresa Mosqueda defended murder threats against cops. Will Seattle reelect her?