From White Center Now: Last major pre-primary forum for 34th District State Senate

If you haven’t seen the coverage we published this morning on partner site White Center Now: The White Center Chamber of Commerce hosted the last major pre-primary forum in the 34th District State Senate race. Six of the 11 candidates participated in last night’s forum in a forum presented by the White Center Chamber of Commerce, held outdoors at TommySound studios in South Delridge.

Aaron Garcia moderated; our video above includes the forum in its entirety. Participating, left to right, were:

Sofia Aragon
Shannon Braddock
Joe Nguyen
Lois Schipper
Lem Charleston
Hillary Shaw

Schipper lives in White Center; Aragon lives in Burien; the other four live in West Seattle. All are on your ballot as Democrats except for Shaw, who filed with “no preference” regarding party. They are running to succeed Sen. Sharon Nelson, the Maury Island-residing Democrat who decided not to seek re-election. If you don’t have time to watch the video, see our full report on WCN for toplines of their replies to the questions. And be sure to get your ballot into a mailbox (postage is now prepaid!) or dropbox by the evening of Tuesday, August 7th.

JulNJer July 26, 2018 (6:44 am)

Thanks WSB, your thorough, unbiased summary gave me just the info I needed to finish my ballot!

Mike Gilmore July 26, 2018 (10:37 am)

Excited to vote for the candidate of change, Joe Nguyen!!

Mike Gilmore July 26, 2018 (10:40 am)

I find Shannon Braddock’s answer to how she would support native people particularly uninspiring:”First, each candidate was challenged to include in their opening statement how they would support the Duwamish and Coast Salish people.Braddock – who ran for Seattle City Council three years ago and lost to Lisa Herbold by a handful of votes – talked about her status as a mother of three and longtime community advocate, including work with WC-headquartered WestSide Baby. She has worked in recent years for County Executive Dow Constantine and County Councilmember Joe McDermott. She mentioned support for “reasonable gun laws.” And she voiced concern about the hate-crime attack against Burien’s Mayor Jimmy Matta. She did not address the question about supporting Native people.”

Question Authority July 26, 2018 (11:19 am)

That’s because she’s just a spoke in the Progressives wheel, and talking points is all they collectively have to offer. We need to break the cycle of entrenched inaction and quit voting in party favorites who will just perpetuate what’s wrong around here.

anonyme July 26, 2018 (11:51 am)

Blah, blah, blah. None of the above. Not a new idea between the lot of them, just the same drivel. Guess I’ll just have to pick the one with no chance of winning and vote for them – what’s the difference? People get so bent out of shape if you say you’re not voting, but when there’s not a single reasonable option what else is there to do?

Question Authority July 26, 2018 (2:29 pm)

Vote for Non Democratic candidates, it’s the only way to break the continuing downward spiral.

MJ July 26, 2018 (2:42 pm)

I thank the WSB for the candidate summaries. I’m with anonyme none of the above. It’s also disappointing that none of the questions regarded fiscal prudence!

WSB July 26, 2018 (2:45 pm)

Again, as noted, these are six of the *eleven* candidates running. The other candidates include two Republicans. The others declined invitations to the nonpartisan forums including the one the West Seattle Chamber had last week.

anonyme July 26, 2018 (3:27 pm)

It’s also extremely telling that when these candidates were asked a specific question about issues pertaining to our local Native population, NONE of them answered. Instead, they diverted by spewing out prepared bios and talking points, as QA pointed out. Even worse, at least one of them lumped Native people in with immigrants from other continents. The irony of that is galling, the ignorance unsurprising. Shame on all of them.

Ferryander July 27, 2018 (3:25 pm)

Pretty incredible campaign video from Joe Nguyen that came out today, easily the best campaign video in Washington https://tinyurl.com/y6vfrtmh

KoolHand July 30, 2018 (7:57 am)

The reason NONE of the
candidates answered and a couple did later on answered about the Native American
is because the moderator combined their intro’s with the question, he later
apologized for it. Take a look at the whole video Hilary Shaw and Lem
Charleston did later answer that question.

WSB July 30, 2018 (12:19 pm)

As noted in our full story on WCN, three of the candidates DID include the Native support issue in their opening statement as requested by the moderator (Schipper, Nguyen, Shaw).

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