Harger: One listener says I’m a closet liberal. The next says I’m a right-wing mouthpiece. Same mailbag, same morning

Listeners to “Seattle’s Morning News” on KIRO Newsradio, viewers on our YouTube Live, and readers at MyNorthwest all like to sound off on my daily commentaries, and they don’t hold back. We hear from a bunch of them every day.

This week the chairman of the state Republican Party wrote in. So did an Olympia swim coach, a guy crunching pool numbers on a vote he doesn’t even get, and two listeners who agree I’m biased but can’t agree which way. I’ll get to those two. The rest of the mail first.

Monday: the World Cup handshake, and a note from the state GOP chairman

I wrote about the 68,000 who packed Lumen Field for USA-Australia, the handshake photo between conservative Brian Heywood and King County Executive Girmay Zahilay that both tribes lost their minds over, and former House Republican Leader JT Wilcox telling his own team that campaigning on “we hate Seattle” has an unbroken record of failure between Tacoma and Everett.

That one came straight from the top. State Republican Party Chairman Jim Walsh, on X: “False premise, Charlie. WA Republicans don’t hate Seattle. We love Seattle. We’re going to save it.”

From the other direction, a reader named Yolanda, who tells me she’s an Independent. “We used not to have to think about the other person leaning left or right before we spoke,” she wrote. She pushed back too, said my piece pointed blame mostly at the right, and argued it’s the left that more often cuts people off over politics.

The chairman thinks I went after his side. Yolanda thinks I let hers off easy. One column, both flanks, and that was before the fans chimed in.

Then the people who were actually in the building. A reader went to the match with friends and didn’t care where anybody at the table stood politically.

“I will never vote MAGA,” he wrote. “But I’ll sit with any of them and listen.”

Another came at it from the opposite chair, calling himself a “Trump hating hard core conservative who’s lived here forever,” and figured the Seattle left were probably the majority at Lumen, because around here the left loves its soccer.

A state GOP chairman, an Independent, a guy who’ll never vote MAGA, and a conservative who can’t stand Trump. They didn’t line up on much, but they all weighed in.

Tuesday: Shoreline’s $100 million pool, and a warning from an Olympia swim coach

I wrote about Shoreline’s $100 million ask for one swimming pool, how it stacks up against the Sumner YMCA that built twice the building for a fraction of the price, and a taxing district that keeps collecting long after the pool’s paid off.

Tyson doesn’t live in Shoreline, so he doesn’t get a vote, but he filled in math I left out. The gap, he writes, comes down to ten years of inflation, the cost of the land, and prevailing wage, which a city has to pay, and a private YMCA does not. Then he landed where I did: “I could not vote for a forever tax just to get one.”

One more, from the other end of the pool. Henry Valz is the head swim and dive coach at Olympia High School. He writes that Evergreen State College closed its pool on June 6, which leaves Olympia as the only state capital in America without a single public pool.

Keeping the Evergreen pool open runs about $100,000 a year.

He’s trying to get the decision-makers to reconsider. He’s built a bipartisan coalition through the Regional Aquatics Alliance for Thurston County; nearly 5,000 people have signed on, and the site is RAAFT.org.

Wednesday: I admitted I was wrong about downtown Seattle, and a reader brought receipts

On Wednesday, I admitted I was wrong. Downtown Seattle got company-is-coming-over clean for the World Cup, and I asked what it would take to keep it that way.

That one came with receipts. A commenter put real numbers on a point I’d made. By his count, Seattle’s cleanup ran about $32 million, with another $46.6 million for prep, against roughly $96 million coming back in tax revenue.

His read tracks with mine: “It’s proof Seattle can spend tens of millions on a three-week event.”

Sustaining it is the hard part, funding fights, enforcement nobody agrees on, treatment nobody wants next door. I said the city’s staring at a $500 million hole and can’t sprint forever. He put the price tag on the sprint. Others weren’t sold.

“They didn’t clean up Seattle, they simply relocated the mess for a while,” Tami wrote.

Paul came around from the other side.

“I went into this cynically, having seen things fall through after the All-Star game,” he wrote. “But your piece made me ‘choose joy’ and think that we actually CAN fix this, we just need enough people to want to. Fingers crossed!”

Karen went further. For years, she wrote, the city said it couldn’t get downtown clean for the taxpayers and the local businesses, and what it really meant was it didn’t want to. Now everyone’s watched it happen.

Her ask: residents and businesses demand the same once the company goes home. “We know now you can do it!”

Thursday: King County Democrats passed over Jamie Pedersen, and a Reaganite weighed in

Yesterday I wrote about King County Democrats passing over Jamie Pedersen, the Senate Majority Leader, and endorsing Hannah Sabio-Howell, a 30-year-old socialist organizer who’s never held office.

One commenter, a self-described Reaganite moderate: “I think back to when the Tea Party pulled the rug out from us moderates. I’d feel a little schadenfreude for the progressives if it wasn’t killing my wallet and my city.”

A Reagan Republican watching the Democratic Socialists do to Pedersen what the Tea Party once did to his own kind, savoring it right up until he remembered he pays taxes here too.

And from the KIRO text line, in stereo

One listener wasn’t happy with how I covered the White House this week, and figures I lean left.

“I’ll give you this, Charlie. You have honed your craft. You are very good at sounding like you are impartial and want to hear both sides of the argument while simultaneously funneling the conversation into your agenda,” they said.

I read that on the air this morning. Before it could cool off, Kevin texted from the other direction.

“Charlie, regarding the ‘honed your craft’ commenter, for longtime KIRO radio P1’s like me, the shift to the right since the departure of Dave Ross in nearly every daypart is unmistakable. Gee and Ursula’s show is a welcome respite,” he said.

So one of you has me with a leftist agenda. The next has me pulling the station to the right. Same morning. Same microphone.

I’ll pass both notes along to my fan clubs in the Seattle Mayor’s Office, the Washington Governor’s Office, and the White House. They love my commentaries.

Keep them coming. Text the Muckleshoot Casino and Resort Text Line at 888-973-5476, join our YouTube Live @KIRONewsradio, or leave a comment on MyNorthwest.

Charlie Harger is the host of “Seattle’s Morning News” on KIRO Newsradio. You can read more of his stories and commentaries here. Follow Charlie on X and email him here. 

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