‘Scaremongering’ County Council mailer claims Hitchen wants to ‘defund the police’
The weaponization of the “defund the police” movement — in all its murky and polarizing connotations — is alive and well in Pierce County.
Given the fractured national discourse, that’s of little surprise. While finding an agreed-upon definition of what “defunding the police” actually means is difficult, there’s little question that injecting the phrase into any political debate remains one of the fastest ways to light the suburban electorate’s hair on fire.
That’s why we saw Pierce County Executive Bruce Dammeier clumsily wield it as an accusation against a fired whistleblower — and ostensibly his challenger, Larry Seaquist — earlier this year.
And that’s why we recently saw the three contentious words become a late-breaking wedge driven into the District 6 County Council race between Republican Jason Whalen and Democrat Jani Hitchen.
Like clockwork last week, 6th District voters received a mailer from the Whalen campaign, accusing Hitchen of (you guessed it) working to “defund the police.” The mailer described Hitchen’s view on public safety as “radical” and warned that — if elected — Hitchen’s “plans for Pierce County would mean fewer police on the streets, making our families less safe.”
The mailer from the Whalen campaign was followed by at least one more, paid for by a local political action committee. This ad featured a similar accusation, only cranked to 11, with Hitchen’s mugshot featured over a picture of what appears to be an ominously burning car.
According to Dorian Waller, a managing partner at the Black-owned and operated Archway Consultant Group, neither mailer was particularly shocking.
Waller bluntly described the effort as “scaremongering” but also said it has the potential to be an effective public safety message for Whalen, shoring up his conservative base and perhaps persuading undecided voters in the final days of the race.
Particularly in an important contest that’s expected to decide the partisan balance of power on the Pierce County Council, this is par for the course, Waller said.
At the same time, Waller was left troubled by the ads.
“Politically, I get it. I don’t like it, but I get it,” Waller said.
“Morally?” he continued with a sigh.
“Absolutely not. Don’t do that.”
What does ‘defund the police’ mean?
There are several reasons why Whalen’s mailers raise problematic red flags.
The most complicated is the most important, and also where it becomes crucial not just to weigh what Whalen meant, but how he chose to deliver his message.
Speaking with The News Tribune, Whalen said that the mailer sent out by his campaign — which he sought to distance from the PAC ad — was an attempt to distinguish a clear policy difference between him and his opponent.
He accurately noted that during a recent candidate forum hosted by City Club of Tacoma, Hitchen spoke of the need to reexamine the Pierce County Sheriff’s budget, expressing an openness to reallocating — or shifting — some of the money towards things like housing, mental health crisis response and addiction services.
Doing so, Hitchen argued, might produce better outcomes and make communities safer. She made similar arguments during a September endorsement interview with The News Tribune editorial board and reiterated her stance on Monday, noting that she isn’t advocating for fewer sheriff’s deputies and — in all likelihood — the reforms and additional training she’d like to see would require an increase in funding.
Either way, a potential “shifting” of Pierce County Sheriff’s Department funding is something Whalen strongly disagrees with, which was the point of the mailer, he said.
On Tuesday, the longtime Lakewood City Council member said be believes that any reduction to the Pierce County Sheriff Department’s budget would come at a cost to public safety and the safety of officers.
Whalen expanded on his views in a subsequent blog post defending his mailer. He described his stance to The News Tribune as heavily influenced by the 2009 murder of four Lakewood police officers and his work as an attorney helping to represent the family of Ron Hillstrom, a mentally ill man who died after a run-in with Pierce County sheriff’s deputies.
“There’s no dispute that when (Hitchen) talks about the allocation of resources, she is considering shifting money around to community services,” Whalen said. “That to me, under the general definition … is defunding.”
As noted, Whalen is an attorney, so he knows how to craft an argument. Admittedly, it’s hard for even a liberal columnist like this one to argue that his definition of “defunding the police” is an illegitimate one to use.
The policy point he’s attempting to make is a fair one and worth voter consideration.
Still, there’s another reality that Whalen seems to under-appreciate if not completely ignore.
Fear factor
As Waller accurately suggested, the real message these mailers send is far less nuanced than the policy differences that exist between the two candidates vying for the District 6 County Council seat.
There’s simply no escaping the fact that we live in a world where calls to “defund the police” have become loaded and politicized, oftentimes beyond recognition, and anyone with an ounce of political acumen knows this well, Waller said
For many, any mention of defunding the police instantly brings to mind lawlessness, liberal cities run amok, alleged riots and anarchy in the street. It conjures images of punitive budget slashing and alleged socialism.
That’s the fear Whalen is playing off, whether he meant to or not.
Any intended context or subtlety is lost in the noise.
“The optics are that (Hitchen) hates cops and wants to get rid of them,” Waller said. “It’s to say her actions are filled with hate toward our law enforcement.”
With less than a week left until election day, Hitchen acknowledged that the negative mailer caught her off guard. Prior to receiving them at her home, the teacher-turned-first-time-candidate said her race against Whalen had been cordial and productive, with a fair representation of opposing viewpoints displayed throughout a series of virtual debates and candidate forums.
Now?
Hitchen said she’s just trying to focus on the message and issues that should take center stage.
While she acknowledged that the argument surrounding calls to defund the police is increasingly fraught, she said it’s more important than ever to actually listen to what people advocating for reforms and changes are saying — including those involved in the Black Lives Matter movement.
“I do not want to defund the police. You can quote me on that,” Hitchen said, asserting that “most people she talks to” believe that defunding the police means “you want to fire all the police and go from there,” and that’s “absolutely not what I’m saying.”
“I believe that we need to be looking at how the money is being spent and if it is actually keeping everyone in our community safe,” Hitchen said.
For his part, Whalen said that’s the kind of detailed political policy discourse he’d like to see as well.
Expressing policy nuance can be difficult in political mailers, and the COVID-19 pandemic has made connecting with voters even more difficult, he said.
He hopes voters will take the time go research where the candidates stand, and go beyond the soundbites.
Sincere as Whalen might be, it remains hard to see the recent attack ads get us anywhere closer to where we need to go.
Simply put:
If we ever hope to rise above the partisan nonsense and — more importantly — contend with and correct the racial disparities that continue to plague law enforcement, it’s going to take so much more than last-minute scare tactics.
This story was originally published October 28, 2020 at 5:05 AM.
