Rantz: Shame on Seattle voters who fall for this Andrew Lewis scam

City councilmember Andrew Lewis is trying to pull a fast one on Seattle voters. And shame on anyone in District 7 who is ignorant enough to fall for it for a second time.

Knowing that public safety, homelessness, and drug use are top issues voters care about, Lewis is doing an about-face. He’s not changing his views, he’s just changing what he tells you. In re-election campaign literature, Lewis paints himself as a fighter for public safety.

But the reality is quite the opposite. Lewis is a big reason why our city is so broken. He has a long track record of telling voters one thing, then quickly turning on them. He’s a radical with a soft-spoken demeanor meant to convince you he’s reasonable and logical. He’s neither.

More from Rantz: Seattle councilmember Andrew Lewis keeps claiming false campaign endorsement

Andrew Lewis is the enemy of public safety

When he ran for office, Lewis claimed to support police, vowing to hire more of them. At the time, he rightly noted that a lack of police presence allows for crime to flourish.

“We need to hire more police officers in the city,” candidate Lewis declared. “I see on a daily basis that there are parts of our city where we don’t have the staffing numbers to have effective community policing strategies and deter the kinds of crimes of opportunity that are prolific.”

After he was elected, he fought hard to successfully defund the police by 50%. As bad, he helped establish the deadly Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ), showing up to a rally to help push the police out of the East Precinct. He got his wish, though stayed out of CHAZ after armed radicals took over six city blocks because he knew it was dangerous. Indeed, black teens were murdered there.

Lewis’s campaign mailer says he has a plan to make Seattle safe. But he doesn’t mention that plan. Instead, he points to an old idea to have unarmed social workers respond to some 911 calls instead of police. While it makes sense that the police defunder wants to remove officers from public safety roles, all Lewis is doing is sending social workers to get hurt or killed.

Meanwhile, he claims “we are turning the corner on [police] hiring,” bragging that “over half of our most recent recruiting class are people of color.” Both statements are false.

The city didn’t turn the corner on hiring. The department only brought in 41 recruits while losing 61 officers. And 23 of the recruits are white, so even his superficial virtual signaling about hiring “people of color” is wrong.

Seattle homelessness and drug use worse because of Andrew Lewis

Lewis lobbied against homeless sweeps, despite encampments being responsible for a disproportionate number of violent crimes. Only after public opinion started to turn did Lewis change his tune and start to walk back his position on encampments.

The councilmember spends much of his time pushing funding to his allies in the homeless industrial complex. Lewis is the council’s biggest proponent of the hands-off approach to homelessness. When they’re ready for help, he says we’ll be there for them. Meanwhile, his allies get larger budgets to do little to improve homelessness.

And as fatal overdoses skyrocket, putting the county on pace to exceed last year’s record high of 1,000 deaths, Lewis was the deciding vote to kill an ordinance to criminalize public drug use and possession. His district has been hit the hardest by the deadly drug epidemic, which is why he said he would support the ordinance. But when radicals showed up to a council meeting to yell at him, he cowered and voted the way they demanded. Andrew Lewis will always be beholden to the Radical Left, not his Seattle constituents.

Seattle City Council Candidate: Lewis voted out ‘would be a fantastic consolation prize’

We get the Seattle we deserve

Voters get the government and city they deserve. And if they re-elect Lewis, the crime, homelessness, and drug overdoses are precisely what we deserve.

We all know why the crises have worsened. Democrats may not want to admit that the policies that they backed helped create this mess, but they should at least try to course correct. Lewis cannot be part of righting this sinking ship. He’s one of the city officials who caused it. Mayor Bruce Harrell isn’t a fan, either. When he lets his guard down and speaks candidly, he lets us know what he thinks of Lewis.

“A couple of them [councilmembers]… their resumes are quite thin. I say that as a nice way to say they’re inexperienced,” Harrell told Seattle police of Lewis and his council ally Dan Strauss. (Strauss has benefited from attention placed on Lewis but is just as disastrous).

Seattle councilmember Andrew Lewis defunded police, stopped homeless encampment sweeps when they were nothing but drug dens, & killed an ordinance to criminalize drugs.

He claims to be leading the charge on public safety. He’s been as effective a leader as he is a speller. pic.twitter.com/1IjWiNGOnB

— Jason Rantz on KTTH Radio (@jasonrantz) July 30, 2023

More from Rantz: Democrats shocked to learn their drug legalization plan is deadly

Seattle has options

There are two candidates in District 7 worth your time.

Olga Sagan is the owner of the bakery Piroshky Piroshky. As a small business owner, she knows the impact Lewis’ policies had on the city. It prompted her to run. Did she always take politics seriously? No. Then she realized the tragic results of not being engaged. She was forced to close her business because crime was rampant. And now, she wants to use her experience to help craft policy to make the city safe again.

Aaron Marshall is a Seattle police officer with first-hand experience dealing with the crises Lewis helped create. He sees the inhumane conditions Lewis keeps homeless addicts to live in. And his life is on the line thanks to the criminals Lewis emboldened. At a time when public safety is a top issue, Marshall comes with years of experience that Lewis resents.

It certainly would send a message to replace Lewis with a businesswoman he tried to put out of business or a cop he tried to defund. In a perfect world, both would advance, and Lewis would become a distant memory, someone we refer to as “that councilmember who ruined this city… what’s his name? I finally managed to block him from my memory.”

Let’s not forget his name just yet. He is Andrew Lewis, and he is a radical helping to destroy this city. We deserve better.

Listen to The Jason Rantz Show on weekday afternoons from 3:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. on KTTH 770 AM (HD Radio 97.3 FM HD-Channel 3). He is the author of the book What’s Killing America: Inside the Radical Left’s Tragic Destruction of Our Cities. Subscribe to the podcast. Follow @JasonRantz on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Check back frequently for more news and analysis.

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