[caption id="attachment_11415" align="alignnone" width="434" caption="Bobby Forch"] [/caption]

The eleventh in a series of Q&As with the candidates for city council.  (Previously on PubliQ&A: Position 6 incumbent Nick Licata and challengers Jessie Israel and Martin Kaplan , Position 4 candidates David Bloom and Sally Bagshaw , Position 2 incumbent Richard Conlin and challenger David Ginsberg , and Position 8 candidates David Miller , Jordan Royer , and Mike O'Brien .)

Our election endorsements were last week, but we're still rolling out the PubliQ&As. Today, we talk to Bobby Forch, a manager in the Seattle Department of Transportation who's running for Position 8.

Forch, a youthful-looking 53, is the only African American candidate in any city council race—a biographical fact that could help him stand out in his crowded (six-man) field. Although he's likeable and clearly passionate about advocating for small businesses, Forch can be maddeningly unspecific when pressed to come up with actual proposals—responding to a (frankly softball) question about why he's running, for example, by saying, "It's the economy. It's businesses, unemployment. And I didn't hear anyone talking about it. No one was talking about the economy. No one was talking about unemployment."

We sat down at the Uptown Espresso in Belltown.

PubliCola : I know you've been getting a lot of endorsements from the Democratic distrcits [dual endorsements from the 11th LD, the 46th LD, and the King County Democrats, and a sole endorsement in the 36th], but I don't know a lot about you. Tell me what qualifies you for City Council.

Bobby Forch : I like to call myself the person of 100 jobs, because people don't know how old I am. I taught school for a minute—very briefly. I went to work for the schools at a time when there was a glut of teachers, and I thought, "You know what I've been in Tacoma all my life, I went to school in Ellensberg, I had never seen anything. It was like, How can I see the world and not carry a gun?" So I became a flight attendant. My motto was, "A foot on every continent and a toe in every sea," and I managed to make it happen.

I call that my graduate degree in life. And then I decided to move to Seattle and settle down and see if I can make a difference.



I started work at the city as a laborer in the transportation department. ... Within a few years, I was the city's safety and environment manager... [Later] I worked in purchasing and contracting, doing procurement around managing construction contracts. It's very data-driven, highly audited, and very regulated. Basically, we're responsible for allocating specific business contracts that that go out to ad[vertise], and we monitor them for social equity, to make sure things like equal benefits and prevailing wages are being implemented. ... It doesn't make me an expert [on transportation], but it does make me familiar with transportation issues.

PubliCola: You don't have any political experience. How does your experience as a flight attendant and a city employee qualify you to serve on the Seattle City Council?

Forch: I've been to every city in America, big and small. You see good things and bad things. You see this city and how great it is, but you also see things that we could be doing differently. Traveling does something for your values. When you see poverty up close, it changes you really dramatically.

PubliCola: You got into the race very late. What made you decide to run?

Forch: [As noted above, he says he's running because of the economy, and then adds:] No one was talking about youth or gang violence. We've had, like, 11 shootings in the last three weeks. I don't profess to have all the answers, but no one is even talking about this stuff.

If you're a small business, you're struggling to make payroll. You're struggling to keep the lights on. If I get on the city council, I can be that voice for small businesses. I understand government inside and out.

PubliCola: And what is your plan to deal with gangs and youth violence?

Forch: You've got to walk back upstream [from gangs] and look at things like health care, day care, schools nutrition. Creating healthy families is the most important thing. I was on the board of a trades career training program where kids spend one or two days a week doing work with trades folks. What we find in the trades is that there's a lot of people there who aren't on the college track, but they bounce around for a while in the service industry and it isn't until their mid-to-late 20s before they realize, "I can make some money as a welder." And this gets kids focused on that earlier. I told kids, "When you drive around the city and you see one of those cranes up there, you know that there are hundreds of jobs paying $50,000 $60,000, $80,000 a year.

PubliCola: From the way you've described your work at SDOT, it sounds very technical. Do you have any direct experience working in the community?

Forch: My job allows me to create programs that incubate small businesses with the hope that they'll be competitive with other companies as they grow. We work with community partners too. Our efforts have been pretty successful. A couple of years ago, I was recognized by the Seattle Urban League, a mainstream civil-rights group, for being a leader in economic development. It is very technical, but you're also embedded in the community. There's a people side of it.

PubliCola: Does the city council need another Seattle government insider?

Forch: Familiarity can breed ease. Seeing and being around the transportation budget, I understand the challenges of departments in trying to create a budget. When you watch [city council] briefings on [the Seattle Channel], it's like they're trying to learn instead of knowing what they're doing. I didn't start as a politician. I am an advocate.

PubliCola: Do you feel that being the only African American in this race helps you stand out? Does it give you an advantage?

Forch: I'm not sure that it helps me or not. I'm first and foremost a candidate. I'm less fixated on it than maybe my opponents are. ... I'm always cautious to talk about race, but there are issues affecting Southeast Seattle communities that, as a person of color, I have seen the impact of those issues issues. Life is about your experience and the things you care about. I'm sure there are a lot of things you see as a woman that I don't.

PubliCola: You're in a very crowded race. If you don't make it through, who will you vote for?

Forch: I like myself, myself and myself. I would also do a write-in ballot for me. I think that at this point in my career, the city council's a really good place for me.