Seattle candidate Cary Moon feels sorry for tech workers now

Transplant tech workers are feeling left out and Seattle needs to do a better job at inclusion, a mayoral candidate said after being critical of Amazon earlier in the campaign.

During a debate between Cary Moon and Jenny Durkan Tuesday evening, hosted by KING 5, Moon said she’s spent a “lot of time reaching out to tech workers” to understand “how much they want to be integrated in the city,” and “what it would take for them to feel more welcome.”

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Her comments aren’t unfounded. The tech industry is continually blamed for the city’s problems, including affordability and even traffic. As reported in The Seattle Times, no city came close to single-family home prices, with prices increasing 13.5 percent in 12 months. Though rent hikes may have slowed, the average two-bedroom apartment in Seattle is still $2,000.

Backlash has included everything from the city council passing an income tax (which faces several lawsuits) to Amazon employees being the alleged targets of vandalism.

A state senator called Seattle a “Socialist echo chamber.”

So, Moon says, “…yes we want to be inclusive and affordable and diverse, and creative and committed to shared prosperity for everybody, and that means we have to come together across age and class and race and gender and talk about solutions,” Moon said. “So I really am focused on how do we help the tech workers feel more welcome in our city.

“In the old days, in the small town I grew up in, there was really a literal thing called the welcome wagon, where you went to newcomers in town and introduced them to the town, and showed them around, and introduced them to the coffee shops and the churches and the businesses, and I feel like we do something like that with tech workers, because they’re part of our city, too, and they want to stay here, and they want to be part of our civic culture, and I would love to work more on that as mayor and kind of build more unity.”

But the same people Moon apparently wishes were more welcoming to tech workers are being forced out of their city and King County. As Gene Balk with the Times wrote last year, the number of native Washingtonians in the county decreased by at least 17,000 between 2014 and 2015. Forty-percent of the county’s population were Washington-born.

Perhaps we should take a look back at the candidates’ previous comments to understand Moon’s position on the tech industry now.

When reacting to Amazon’s decision to have a second headquarters outside Seattle, for example, Durkan pointed to providing better training for Seattle residents to fill “high-skilled jobs.” Moon said she’d be willing to work with Amazon “to make Seattle more affordable, improve our transit, and invest in quality public education for everyone, including their employees and their families,” The Stranger reported.

Moon continued, “However, we’ve seen with Boeing how a bidding war over billions in tax breaks for corporations only helped the wealthy few while doing nothing to keep good paying jobs here. I’m not interested in playing that game if Amazon isn’t serious about helping pay for the impacts of their rapid growth on our city.”

She doesn’t sound very inclusive toward Amazon in that statement. And who does Amazon employ in Seattle? Tech workers.

It may also be important to point out that the Civic Alliance for Sound Economy, a political organization of local businesses sponsored by the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, endorsed Jenny Durkan. Amazon, GeekWire reported, has given at least $350,000 to CASE.

So is Moon really worried about the inclusion of tech workers, or is she trying to make up ground in a head-to-head battle with a former U.S. attorney who has the vote of a company that employs more than 25,000 people in Seattle alone?

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