TACOMA, Wash. — Three of Tacoma's eight districts could vote in new representatives to the city council.
Sarah Rumbaugh will replace Robert Thoms to represent District 2, and Kiara Daniels will take over for Lillian Hunter to represent District 6. Joe Bushnell will represent District 5 after receiving 52% of the vote by Nov. 8.
The reasons why the new council members got into politics vary.
Rumbaugh says she first became interested in public service when she attended a political rally for former Gov. Christine Gregoire and couldn’t find someone to speak on her behalf.
“I didn’t see any moms. There was no one that looked like me,” Rumbaugh recalled. “My demographic wasn’t there at all. And I thought, 'What about the issues affecting families and children?' And I thought, 'I need to get involved.'”
Daniels has been involved in community work for over 15 years but hopes that having a seat at the table will allow her to create more substantial change.
“When you’re working at the bottom, and you’re with people, you get that feeling of, if I could make some decisions at the top level, or if I could make some decisions in a different place, if folks really understood what was going on, then we could push the needle a little further,” Daniels said. “I’d been sitting with that feeling for years.”
Meanwhile, Bushnell, who could become a trailblazer by being the first Cambodian American elected to the city council, hopes to serve the city that helped his family when they needed it most.
“My mother fled Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge Genocide by the '80s, and Tacoma was one of those places where refugees were welcomed,” Bushnell said. “When I see that, when I recognize that, to me, it’s how do I give back?”
The newcomers will be tasked with addressing multiple issues such as public safety, homelessness and job security.
But the new council members say those are all priorities they share, especially in regard to housing.
“A lot of my community members are worried about the lack of affordable housing. A lot of them feel like they were pushed out of their homes,” Bushnell said. “We have a homeless crisis here and it’s been an issue even before the pandemic.”
“We have displacement happening. We have people who can’t afford to live in Tacoma, so they have to leave our city. That’s troubling to me,” Rumbaugh said.
Now, the new members say they’re ready to get to work to address the needs of their communities.
“The city spends a lot of money just studying things. We have an affordable housing action plan already. We have a climate action plan already,” Daniels said. “It takes the work of folks that are leading to take those plans and suggestions and recommendations, and push them forward and ask the community, how do we do this? How do we implement this? Is this right? Did we get this right? And if we think we did, let’s just do it."
