City Hall
Meet Lee Rabie, the Tunnel Opponents' Best Friend
Lee Rabie, a Seattle businessman who owns a car alarm manufacturing company in Seattle, has contributed $55,230 to one of two campaigns to kill the tunnel, Seattle Citizens Against the Tunnel . (As Josh noted this morning, SCAT's recent merger with the other anti-tunnel group, Move Seattle Smarter, is a bit of an unholy alliance between right-wing viaduct supporters like Rabie and Elizabeth Campbell, the Magnolia activist who headed a group called Viaduct Now! and ran for mayor in 2009, and lefty environmentalists who support the surface/transit option. Both groups are now supporting a referendum on three city agreements with the state on the tunnel, although SCAT's anti-tunnel initiative will likely still be on the ballot as well).
Calls to Rabie's office were met with a busy signal. In an email, Campbell said said Rabie currently "has not plans to contribute to the referendum campaign" but has been "understandably committed to the [SCAT anti-tunnel] campaign.
We decided to find out a little about the guy who's pouring so much money into the effort to kill the tunnel.
• Some notable recipients of other Rabie contributions include: Help Us Help Taxpayers, Tim Eyman's personal compensation fund; Republican state supreme court justice Charles Johnson; ousted Libertarian supreme court justice Richard Sanders; and Republican King County Council member Pete Von Reichbauer.
• Back in 2004, Rabie sued his neighbors over property he owns in Federal Way, arguing that he should be allowed to fill in two wetlands to stabilize the land, which was subject to runoff from his neighbors' property.
Although he lost that battle, as of 2009, Rabie had spent nearly 20 years fighting the city of Federal Way for an exemption to environmental laws to fill in the wetlands to build a retirement home.
That year, Rabie contributed $16,500 to the campaign to change the way Federal Way's mayor is elected by installing a strong mayor who would oversee the day-to-day operations of the city. Opponents argued that Rabie wanted to elect a mayor he could then pressure to change the city's land use laws to benefit him.
(Rabie was also a plaintiff in a land use lawsuit against the city of Burien over a proposed downzone, but was removed from that case because he failed to file a brief.)
• After the strong-mayor campaign succeeded, Federal Way held its first mayoral election. Rabie supported city council member Jim Ferrell, who led the efforts to institute the strong-mayor system, giving him $2,900 (apparently there are no contribution limits in Federal Way). Ferrell lost to former state Rep. Skip Priest, a Republican.
Yeah, I get it---sometimes you have to get in bed with people who don't exactly share your values to get things done (see: the Kemper-Freeman-funded anti-Roads and Transit campaign of 2007, which Josh and I supported at the Stranger). But most voters in 2007 knew exactly what Kemper Freeman stood for (no light rail, no buses, keeping poor people out of Bellevue). Lee Rabie remains, in contrast, a relative mystery among the citizens whose votes he's trying to influence.
Calls to Rabie's office were met with a busy signal. In an email, Campbell said said Rabie currently "has not plans to contribute to the referendum campaign" but has been "understandably committed to the [SCAT anti-tunnel] campaign.
We decided to find out a little about the guy who's pouring so much money into the effort to kill the tunnel.
• Some notable recipients of other Rabie contributions include: Help Us Help Taxpayers, Tim Eyman's personal compensation fund; Republican state supreme court justice Charles Johnson; ousted Libertarian supreme court justice Richard Sanders; and Republican King County Council member Pete Von Reichbauer.
• Back in 2004, Rabie sued his neighbors over property he owns in Federal Way, arguing that he should be allowed to fill in two wetlands to stabilize the land, which was subject to runoff from his neighbors' property.
Although he lost that battle, as of 2009, Rabie had spent nearly 20 years fighting the city of Federal Way for an exemption to environmental laws to fill in the wetlands to build a retirement home.
That year, Rabie contributed $16,500 to the campaign to change the way Federal Way's mayor is elected by installing a strong mayor who would oversee the day-to-day operations of the city. Opponents argued that Rabie wanted to elect a mayor he could then pressure to change the city's land use laws to benefit him.
(Rabie was also a plaintiff in a land use lawsuit against the city of Burien over a proposed downzone, but was removed from that case because he failed to file a brief.)
• After the strong-mayor campaign succeeded, Federal Way held its first mayoral election. Rabie supported city council member Jim Ferrell, who led the efforts to institute the strong-mayor system, giving him $2,900 (apparently there are no contribution limits in Federal Way). Ferrell lost to former state Rep. Skip Priest, a Republican.
Yeah, I get it---sometimes you have to get in bed with people who don't exactly share your values to get things done (see: the Kemper-Freeman-funded anti-Roads and Transit campaign of 2007, which Josh and I supported at the Stranger). But most voters in 2007 knew exactly what Kemper Freeman stood for (no light rail, no buses, keeping poor people out of Bellevue). Lee Rabie remains, in contrast, a relative mystery among the citizens whose votes he's trying to influence.
