Photoshopped Seattle Campaign Ad Linked To Moms For Seattle Group

SEATTLE, WA — A new, well-funded political action committee involved in the 2019 Seattle City Council race is sending a mailer to voters that shows homeless people camping in the middle of a U-District playground — but the image appears to have been faked, created with stock photos that can be purchased for about $30 online.

The Moms For Seattle mailer shows two tents set up near swings at Cowen Park in the U-District. Behind the tents, a park building is covered in yellow graffiti. The image is a clear play on Seattle's homelessness crisis in the vein of Safe Seattle or the KOMO docudrama "Seattle Is Dying."

"This isn't how people should be living, or where children should be playing... " the mailer says.

When Wallingford resident Doug Nellis — who works as a graphic designer — got the mailer recently, he thought the image looked wrong.

"The bedding on the blue tent seemed weird to me. It was sticking out of an open tent. Not something you really see on the streets of Seattle," he told Patch.

Nellis searched the stock image site iStock for the keywords "homeless" and "tent." The first image that popped up was the blue tent in the Moms For Seattle mailer. Farther down the page, he found the image of the green tent.

Moms For Seattle is relatively new on the scene, having only registered as a committee on June 25, according to state records. But the group has already raised close to $200,000, and has made endorsements in every City Council race, according to the state Public Disclosure Commission (PDC).

Patch has reached out to Moms For Seattle treasurer Kevin Topping for comment. We will update this story if we hear back.

"We are a group of concerned Seattle moms who joined together to launch a new Political Action Committee (PAC) called Moms for Seattle. We have grown frustrated with the current City Council’s ineffectiveness in addressing the growing problems that now reach into every neighborhood of the city." — from the Moms For Seattle website

The top donor to the group is Katherine Binder, who was chair of Exotic Metals Forming Company Holdings. She gave $35,000 in two donations. Binder, who lives in Bellevue, has contributed to scores of Republican and Democrat campaigns over the years. State records show she's given to everything from PACs supporting charter schools, to the 2012 gay marriage legalization effort, to the campaign of Republican Jinyoung Lee Englund, who lost a bid for the 2017 45th Legislative District seat.

MCM Insurance chairman John Meisenbach gave the second-highest amount at $8,000. In the past, he's given money to everything from a 2010 PAC opposing a state income tax ($35,000) to the campaigns of former attorney general Rob McKenna, Dino Rossi, King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg, and former Seattle Councilman Tim Burgess.

The mailer Nellis got had information endorsing District 4 candidate Alex Pedersen. But other voters have received the same mailer in the District 3 race, where Moms For Seattle has endorsed Pat Murakami.

The group has spent over $17,000 to support Pedersen's campaign, including $12,000 in Facebook advertisements, according to the PDC. Murakami, District 6 candidate Heidi Wills, and District 7 candidate Michael George have all received about the same amount of support from Moms For Seattle. The group has also endorsed District 1 candidate Phillip Tavel.

In a recent essay for Civic Skunkworks, former Seattle state representative Jessyn Farrell called Moms For Seattle a "front group for a conservative, anti-government agenda." Farrell pointed out that the group uses a stock image of two children blowing bubbles on its Facebook page.

"The rest of the organization is just as phony as the photo," she wrote.