2021 Election: What to know about the two candidates running for mayor of Tacoma
As the Nov. 2, 2021 general election looms on the horizon, voters have an important choice to make: who will lead the city as Tacoma’s mayor?
Two candidates, Steve Haverly and Victoria Woodards, are vying for the seat.
Whoever is voted in will have the task of leading the city through a housing affordability and homelessness crisis, navigate plans for police reform and respond to climate change impacting the city.
Both Haverly and Woodards are longtime Tacoma residents, but their views on how to tackle those major issues vary.
Ballots are due 8 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 2 at a drop box location. Mailed in ballots must be postmarked Nov. 2.
Candidate backgrounds
Woodards is seeking re-election for her second term as mayor. She was first elected as mayor in 2017 and served on Tacoma City Council from 2009 to 2016.
Woodards is a three-year U.S. Army veteran who’s lived in Tacoma for more than 50 years. She graduated from Lincoln High School and currently resides in the South End.
Haverly works in construction management and previously owned a video production company. If elected, it would be his first time holding public office. Haverly grew up in Tacoma and now lives near Tacoma Community College with his wife and 2-year-old daughter.
A News Tribune search on both candidates yielded various court records.
In 2009, an ex-girlfriend of Haverly’s filed a court protection order against him in Superior Court, but the petition was dropped when she did not appear in court. A Tacoma Police Department report obtained by The News Tribune filed by the ex-girlfriend in December 2009 stated that Haverly slapped her across the cheek when she went to pick up photos of her daughter that he had taken. When asked about the protection order earlier this year, Haverly told The News Tribune that it was the first he had heard of the details of the protection order. He said no police had ever showed up to his home and that no slapping had occurred.
In 2010, the court ordered a boat owned by Haverly to be repossessed for lack of payment. The boat was never found, according to court records. Haverly said it was returned from where he bought the boat.
In 2014, Haverly was charged with driving under the influence when he was pulled over by a police officer after a call came in about a car driving recklessly matching the description of Haverly’s car, and a test found his blood-alcohol content above the legal limit, according to Pierce County District Court records. He pleaded guilty to DUI and had to pay a $1,141 fine.
Haverly explained that he had been coming home from a late video shoot and had had some drinks. He said he had been up for a long time and also was trying to lose weight at the time.
Woodards is named in multiple lawsuits against the city, along with her fellow Council members, including a 2014 lawsuit filed by Allenmore Medical Investors, which claimed that the city was wrong to apply a moratorium to permit applications for Tacoma’s Walmart. The city was ordered to pay more than $2 million. Other lawsuits specifically naming Woodards include a suit filed by The News Tribune in 2010 regarding the state’s Open Public Meetings Act and a 2014 suit by former Tacoma mayors regarding wording of the city’s charter amendments.
Woodards also reportedly caused a collision in Lakewood in 2019 for failing to yield to the traffic right of way, leading to a $187 fine, according to records from Lakewood Municipal Court.
So far, Woodards has raised $178,942 for her campaign, according to the Public Disclosure Commission. Haverly has raised $6,728.
Affordable housing
Woodards and Haverly both recognize the city faces a housing affordability crisis. Rents in Tacoma have been increasing for 15 straight months, according to an October apartment list report.
The city’s Home in Tacoma project aims to create a housing growth strategy amid a hot market. Supporters say the project will create more housing options to help ease market pressures that are pushing rents skyward. Opponents of the plan say it will cause more expensive development and risk the character of Tacoma’s neighborhoods.
Woodards previously told The News Tribune that Home in Tacoma, in its current state, might go too far in altering single-family zoning but agrees with the plan’s intent.
“Do I think that we need to increase density in our corridors and in our mixed use centers? Absolutely,” she said during an interview with the Tacoma-Pierce County Housing Consortium and League of Women Voters in October. “If we’re going to talk about addressing the climate crisis, we have to do that by building more compact, more safe and more accessible communities, accessible to transit, accessible to grocery stores, accessible to community meetings.”
Haverly thinks the Home in Tacoma project “needs a lot of work” and says he wants to avoid “valleys of concrete” like in Seattle. He suggested turning to undeveloped land first.
“My biggest issue with Home in Tacoma is not so much the idea, but it’s the existing neighborhoods that would be affected by over-development too soon,” Haverly said during the Housing Consortium forum. “I think we need to go into the neighborhoods that are boarded up first.”
When later asked by The News Tribune which neighborhoods he was referring to, Haverly pointed to areas like Highland Hill Shopping Center on Sixth Avenue, where the Safeway recently closed, and along Pacific Avenue in Tacoma’s South End.
Homelessness
The number of people without homes in Tacoma has increased from 6,664 people in 2017 to 10,858 in 2020, according to data from the Pierce County Homeless Management Information System (HMIS). That numbers have grown during the COVID-19 pandemic as shelters have lowered the number of individuals they can serve due to social distancing.
Both Woodards and Haverly have said they want to see more shelters in the city, including shelters that cater to all needs and are accessible to all.
Woodards has said that she believes a camping ban will need to be a part of the city’s plan to address homelessness but not until there is accessible shelter to all, in order to comply with a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that says cities cannot enforce anti-camping ordinances if they do not have enough homeless shelter beds available for their homeless population.
Haverly again mentioned Seattle in questions about homelessness posed by The News Tribune in June, saying Tacoma’s situation isn’t as bad. He said more services and shelters are needed and that he would support a camping ban, saying he doesn’t think it’s very humane to let people live in tents on the streets.
“It’s not a solution, but a camping ban would at least help. In everything, there’s balance, and you have to find that happy medium,” he said in June.
At a mayor candidate debate hosted by Tacoma City Club, Equitable Future, Pacific Lutheran University and the Washington Debate Coalition on Oct. 6, Haverly said he’s talked to people at encampments who do not want the services offered to them or abide by rules at shelters.
“They’re kind of taking advantage of the ruling — well, that’s not fair to the people who pay their taxes and live in those neighborhoods that are being overrun,” he said.
Police reform
Earlier this year, three Tacoma Police Department officers were charged with murder and manslaughter in the killing of Manuel Ellis, a Black man who died of oxygen deprivation while being restrained by police.
Ellis’ death and the resulting charges rocked Tacoma, leading to calls for reform and police accountability. It also comes at a time when the city’s violent crime rates are rising.
Haverly supports the city’s efforts to address police reform but previously told The News Tribune that he doesn’t “buy into ‘defund the police.’”
Haverly said police shouldn’t have to act as social workers and that he supports looking at ways to change how police respond to calls. A report conducted this year by the city recommended a crisis response team that could respond to calls involving mental health crises and homelessness-related issues.
“The police department can’t be the cure-all for everything,” Haverly said in June. “It’s not fair to them, and it’s not fair to the public. The public’s not getting the best help if all we can do is send an officer who may or may not be equipped to handle that particular problem.”
Haverly said during the Oct. 6 debate that laws passed by the state Legislature earlier this year that put restraints on when use of force can be employed by law enforcement need to be better defined.
“There’s a lot of ambiguity there,” Haverly said.
Some law enforcement officers have complained the new laws hurt their ability to do their jobs, while civil rights groups and others say they are necessary to protect people from police abuses.
Woodards previously told The News Tribune that the city has taken bold steps to transform the Police Department, including hiring a firm to review use-of-force policies and recommend changes, allowing two people from community groups — Tisha Marie Wosencroft, founder of Tacoma’s LegallyBLACK, and Will Hausa, a member of the Tacoma Pierce County Black Collective — to sit in on police union bargaining for a community perspective, and conducting a study that identifies which calls for service can be diverted from police and to a civilian response team or mental health professionals.
“We have great people who are in our Police Department who want to do a good job, but they are working in a system that is designed to do exactly what it does, and we need to redesign it, as opposed to just trying to change it,” she said.
Climate change
At the Oct. 6 debate, both candidates were pressed for vision for the future of Tacoma’s industrial area. Tacoma is considering a proposal that would permanently ban new and expanded fossil-fuel facilities on the Tideflats.
Haverly said he doesn’t think fossil-fuel facilities should be allowed to expand in the Port of Tacoma but added he did not know enough about the issue to say whether he supported an outright ban. He said that he would like Tacoma to implement more filtration for its stormwater systems and mandate green rooftops.
Woodards said she does not support the expansion of any new fossil-fuel facilities but said she does support bio-fuels and renewable fuels, which do require some use of fossil fuels. Climate activists and environmentalists have spoken frequently at City Council meetings about their opposition to any use of fossil fuels.
“I hear and understand that,” Woodards said when asked by The News Tribune about the concerns of climate activists. “But we’ve got to make the transition, and in the transition there are going to be interim steps.”
