It had been about two months since Rep. Brady Walkinshaw announced he would leave the Washington state Legislature in an attempt to represent the 7th Congressional District.
But as the field to replace longtime incumbent Jim McDermott swelled, the race to replace Walkinshaw remained curiously empty — that is, until Feb. 4, when Nicole Macri officially declared her candidacy.
The Downtown Emergency Services Center (DESC) housing director and longtime Capitol Hill resident said several people strongly encouraged her to enter the race, and she ultimately decided she didn’t want to leave it to chance that other candidates would prioritize the issues she cares most about.
“After many weeks of contemplation, I decided the stakes are too high at this time in our community not to get involved,” she said.
Those key issues include expanding access to affordable housing, along with addressing behavioral health care issues. She said the social safety net has been “decimated” in recent years, and the state’s mental health system is in shambles.
“That has caused us to see people really living out their disabilities and despair on the streets of our city,” she said, “and it doesn’t have to be this way.”
And in the last couple of years, Macri said, the affordable housing crisis has impacted a greater number of people across the state.
“It’s not just extremely low-income people who have fallen into homelessness,” she said, “but a lot of people are being displaced from neighborhoods where they’ve lived for a long time.”
‘Eliminating the chaos’
At DESC, Macri has been one of the leaders in the implementation of the “housing first” approach, which she described as an effort grounded in “eliminating the chaos of homelessness” by offering housing with few barriers to entry and ensuring that services are robust, but voluntary.
“You see when the chaos of homelessness is eliminated that a lot of things come together for people,” she said.
Her role in building that movement in the Pacific Northwest, she said, would be helpful in the state Legislature.
To that end, it has been vexing for Macri to see a state like Utah — where policymakers were intrigued by the work of DESC — take more action in boosting the housing first approach to meet their needs than Washington state.
“The thing that makes me most frustrated is that we helped to inform them about the strategy, the intervention, and that the state government just heard the call in Utah and took action to scale up the intervention to meet the need,” she said.
Macri, a Brooklyn native who moved to Seattle in 1999 with her partner, Deb Cayz, also lists transportation as a core issue. Macri said sustainable and accessible transit options go hand-in-hand with issues of affordability.
In comparison to the state representative she’s aiming to replace, Macri said she shares many of the same core issues that Walkinshaw has led on. She praised his work on the state’s approach to harm reduction — and improving access to the overdose-reversal drug naloxone — and on his adjustments to the Good Samaritan law to make that drug more widely available for use in emergencies.
“I have great respect for Rep. Walkinshaw and the work that he’s done,” Macri said. “He’s actually been quite a champion on these issues that I care quite a lot about.”
As for differences, Macri cited her years of experience in seeing how state policy works on the ground as a new perspective that she would bring to Olympia.
Early endorsements
Macri has already announced the endorsements of Seattle City Councilmembers Sally Bagshaw, Lisa Herbold and Mike O’Brien, along with Real Change founder Tim Harris and several other housing and human service leaders. Also endorsing Macri in her bid is former City Councilmember Nick Licata.
“Nicole takes a pragmatic approach to solving complex problems,” Licata said in a press release. “She can bring together stakeholders with varying perspectives, hear them and craft solutions that benefit everyone.”
In all, Macri said she brings “some unique experience and passion around building a more affordable a just community” and that there’s plenty that can be accomplished at the state level to make that happen.
“I love Seattle,” she said, “and I feel like there are a lot of great things happening, but a lot of great things not happening in part because our state Legislature isn’t taking the action that we need them to take.”
For more information on her campaign, visit www.votenicole.org.
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