(Image: goodwinforseattle.com)

A public defender with a healthy skepticism of the police and justice system wants to be a voice for voters tired of disorder and crime in District 3’s neighborhoods.

Bobby Goodwin tells CHS he also wants to bring his lived experience with mental illness into the race for the district’s seat on the Seattle City Council.

“It’s a focus on providing these services, on making sure we have available beds, that we are doing more to, to eliminate the stigma,” Goodwin said. “There’s so many people in this city that don’t even know NAMI, they don’t even know the resources that are available to support families and folks going through with and dealing with this stuff.”

Goodwin’s efforts have included traveling to Olympia to call for more support for mental health resources and the National Alliance on Mental Illness. He says his work as a busy public defender in Pierce County has kept him from doing more.

But Goodwin says his reasons for running in D3 are not about being some sort of “token” candidate. He believes you can be a progressive Seattle voter who supports social investment and changes to policing and still have higher expectations when it comes to crime and disorder on Seattle’s streets.

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Thieves recently stole a pressure washer from his Central District yard. They also ripped off a decorative ukulele from his fence, Goodwin says. The Seattle Police Department’s statistics don’t tell the whole story, according to Goodwin.

“The last three times someone stole something coming into my backyard… I’m not reporting that, you know? Why bother? And people aren’t.”

“What never ceases to amazing me is that it’s a pandemic so you’ve never had better reason to be using a mask. It’s not even unusual to wear a mask. And yet people come into my backyard to steal and don’t even bother.”

Goodwin cites countless similar stories he has heard on the Nextdoor social media platform used by SPD to distribute public relations bulletins and updates.

His proposed strategies include reinvigorating SPD’s efforts around responding to property crime, providing more community diversion programs beyond jail, and increasing community oversight over police and the legal system.

The first-time candidate also envisions a campaign more focused on neighborhood issues like potholes and better bike lanes with a dash of big thinking like a city income tax on earners above $200,000. A smaller, simpler idea would be a tax on all spray paint that, he says, would “tackle the problem of graffiti in the city.”

Boosted by the open seat from Kshama Sawant’s decision to step aside and the hopes of the city’s Democracy Voucher program, there are currently nine official candidates registered for the D3 election with plenty of time before the May deadline leading up to the August primary that will determine which two candidates go through to November.

Goodwin emerges as a longshot candidate in the field but he has hopes of bringing a unique and spirited voice to the debate.

“I’ve been a man without a country plenty of times throughout my life,” Goodwin says. “It’s part of the irony for me and the idea that I’m one of the more conservative, perhaps, of the folks running in this race when the majority of my life I’ve spent arguing with my conservative father or my libertarian friends.”

Learn more at goodwinforseattle.com.

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