By Aaron Allen, The Seattle Medium
The race for Seattle City Mayor between Bruce Harrell and M. Lorena Gonzalez has taken a turn towards for the worst as attacks ads are beginning to heat up.
Gonzalez’ campaign recently placed a tv ad that attempted to portray Harrell as being unsympathetic towards the victims of sexual harassment. The ad advocates that Harrell “has repeatedly sided with abusers.”
The ad continues by aligning Harrell with former Seattle Mayor Ed Murray’s sexual abuse scandal. The ad portrays a sexual assault victim who accuses Harrell of supporting Murray stating, “it is horrifying to me to hear that Bruce Harrell defended Ed Murray…”
On Saturday, flanked by supporters and other members of the community who were outraged by the attacks, Harrell held a press conference to defend his candidacy and integrity.
“It is with great anger and sadness that I am here with you today,” says Monisha Harrell, campaign manager for Bruce Harrell. “Having worked and run a number of campaigns the ad released by the Lorena For Seattle campaign a few days ago is one of the most egregious that I have seen in Seattle politics. This ad is not just racially insensitive but racially charged, it is racist and it is harmful to the Black community.”
The Harrell campaign and some leaders in the community who advocate for sexual violence and harassment victims, believe that due to the nature of the ad the Gonzalez campaign is politicizing victims of sexual violence.
“What’s probably the most important voice is not mine in this hour,” said Bruce Harrell. “The most important voice is the leaders in our community who have fought to support victims and survivors of sexual violence, who have fought for the Black community, it is crystal clear with an election in just ten or eleven days from now, my opponent is politicizing the victims of sexual violence, that is just wrong.”
Unfortunately, discrediting your opponent, either falsely or truthfully in the eyes of the public, is a strategy used quite frequently in political campaigns and the Harrell campaign has taken offense to the accusations of the Gonzalez campaign, which they say are blatantly false.
“Everyone will see that ad differently, but I will tell you as a Black man the first thing that I saw was the impression and the imagery to falsely portray Bruce Harrell and to use inflammatory rhetoric when doing so,” says Lincoln Beauregard, a founding partner of Connelly Law Offices. “The other thing is the representation in relation to the Ed Murray litigation are unfair and certainly incomplete.”
Elma Horton, a retired board member of C.A.M.P. for more than 20 years, says that she is saddened by the unwarranted attacks against Harrell and his integrity.
“I’m happy to be here but I am very sad that I have to be here to fight for someone running of office because of the things being said that are not true,” says Horton. “It is sad that in 10 days we will have a mayor, but honest, dignity and integrity is not being upheld and that is hard for me.”
“I have known Mr. Harrell since he was in the fifth grade, his mother was the president of the PTS in elementary school, I know how he was brought up,” adds Horton. “He’s not perfect, he is a man of integrity, he is a man who stands by his word, and I believe he will be good for Seattle. I know he is not dishonest. I am really saddened that somebody would put a commercial on tv to goes to thousands of people that they know is false.”
Paula Sardinas, who’s family experienced the hardships of someone being sexually assaulted and who works with the victims and families of sexual assault, says that the issue of sexual assault is not something that should be trivialized or taken lightly.
“We take sexual assault very seriously,” said Sardinas. “When I saw her (M. Lorena Gonzalez) video, the more than 50 families that we work with reached out to me with a strong message they wanted me to deliver. Sexual assault shouldn’t be trivialized, should not be politicized. It has no place in this election. To have it trivialized and trafficked as a trop by someone that my daughter looks like, somebody that she thought should advocate for her, has been deeply hurtful.”
“When my family went through an extremely difficult time, there were many people that reached out to our family, many people that advocated for our family — one of those people was Bruce Harrell. So, we want the public to understand that this is the worst type of political advertisement, the worst type of trop. It sets back all of the work victims go through,” said Sardinas.
Harriett Walden, a longtime activist with Mothers for Police Accountability, working on behalf of Mothers who have lost their children through police violence, says the decision of the Gonzalez campaign to run the ads calls into question, in her mind, the leadership ability of Gonzalez.
“Let’s call Lorena out,” says Walden. “What she has done she has really crossed the line and shows a lack of leadership. The same lack of leadership [she had] when she last year defunded the police department.”
“As being Council President, she damaged Seattle and now she is damaging Seattle again,” continued Walden. “She is retraumatizing our victims of sexual assault and then bringing up race, actually trying to make Bruce Harrell look like someone the people should be afraid of. We are tired of this. We have survived this for centuries, for generations and now here you [Gonzalez] come, a new kid on the block that does not have enough dignity to run a decent campaign, we are asking [Gonzalez] to give an apology, number one, and also take the ad down. It’s time to stand up and do the right thing.”
The Gonzalez campaign did remove the ad earlier this week after pushback from the community.
