KIRO 7 responds to Jenny Durkan campaign ad that includes reporter Essex Porter

The Jenny Durkan campaign released a new ad that attacks opponent Cary Moon’s experience.

The ad begins with a question from KIRO 7’s Essex Porter: “Here in Seattle, have you had a job managing people?” The ad then cuts to Moon answering, “Uh, no.” The ad then cuts Moon off and an announcer says, “Cary Moon wants to run a city with 12,000 employees and a $5 billion budget.”

In a statement this morning, the Moon campaign said the Durkan ad contains “deceptive edits” and “blatantly mispresents” the interview with Moon. Moon’s communications director, Bre Weider, demanded the Durkan campaign “take down” the ad. See statements from both campaigns below.

The Durkan campaign took the clip from KIRO 7’s much longer interviews with the mayoral candidates. In the full interview, Moon responds to Porter’s question by saying, “In Seattle, no. I've led the People's Waterfront Coalition, but it was a coalition so we had 12-15 different organizational partners all pulling together towards the same goal but without staff. All the people in the People's Waterfront Coalition were volunteers besides me and then partners in other organizations were paid by their organizations.”

The interview goes on with Essex asking, “You understand why people might be hesitant to hire a mayor, to run an 11,000-person entity, who has not managed staff in Seattle?” Moon responds, “Right, yep, I understand that. I think I'm an authentic person, when people meet me and see how high integrity and open and trust worthy I am, I think that goes a long way to people understanding what kind of leader I'd be.”

KIRO 7 is responding to the advertisement.

“Our team of journalists do not endorse candidates or take sides," KIRO 7 news director Jake Milstein said. "We were not consulted before the Durkan campaign decided to use the clip. Essex Porter has a reputation for fairness. People should watch his full interviews before casting their ballots."

You can watch the entire show about the Seattle Mayoral Candidates above. You can watch Essex's interviews with both candidates below.

KIRO 7 is obligated under federal law to air the advertisement produced by the Durkan campaign. The law says TV stations do not have a lot of leeway picking and choosing ads from political candidates.

KIRO 7 has received statements from both campaigns. KIRO-7 takes no position on any of the claims in the statements.

KIRO 7 reached out to the Durkan campaign and received the following response from spokeswoman

"As the fastest growing city in the country, Seattle faces many difficult challenges, and we need a strong, steady, experienced leader like Jenny Durkan as mayor. This is no time for Seattle to be led by an untested novice. As interview after interview show, while Cary Moon is well intentioned, she has zero experience managing people in Seattle, yet still wants voters to hire her to run a city with 12,000 employees and a $5 billion budget. While many voters have questioned her lack of experience in forums and debates, we believe voters should see the clip of Cary Moon admitting that she lacks the experience to serve as mayor before they make their decision who to support in this race.

"The truth is that Moon is a wealthy, unemployed activist whose main claim to fame was a working alongside former Mayor Mike McGinn in a failed effort to oppose the waterfront tunnel. We've been down the path of electing an inexperienced activist as mayor before with McGinn, and that led to a disastrous period of paralysis and divisive infighting at City Hall. With the pressing problems that Seattle faces today, we can't afford another four years of on-the-job training for Cary Moon."

Statement from Moon campaign communications director Bre Weider:

Last night KIRO 7's Essex Porter took the unusual step of calling out an attack ad by the Jenny Durkan campaign that blatantly misrepresents his interview with Cary Moon.

The Durkan attack ad uses footage from the KIRO 7 interview to attack Cary Moon, deliberately misleading voters on Moon's actual statements in the interview with deceptive edits, intentionally taking Moon's words out of context.

"This is yet another desperate and ugly tactic by the Jenny Durkan campaign," said Bre Weider, Communications Director for the campaign. "We call on the Jenny Durkan campaign to take down their false attack ad and run a clean, truthful campaign."

Earlier in the campaign, Jenny Durkan and her campaign made false claims about Cary Moon's proposals to limit real estate speculation, calling her xenophobic. Weeks later Durkan flip flopped, adopting Moon's proposal.  

Durkan is the subject of a viral video, now with 32,000 views, showing her yanking the microphone out of the hands of forum moderator Sharon Maeda, a well respected community leader and director at KVRU.

Durkan's corporate supporters are also attacking Moon, including a half a million ad buy that makes false claims about Moon's policy positions on housing affordability and homelessness.

Moon's extended interview:

Durkan's extended interview:

Cox Media Group