Letter to the Editor: Bellevue Elected Leaders Decry Negative Ads Against Stokes

An Open Letter to the People of Bellevue,

As civic, business, and neighborhood leaders representing a wide spectrum of community and political interests, we are writing to urge voters to reject the unprecedented efforts by a well-financed special interest political action committee financed by Kemper Freeman and other developers attacking City Council candidate John Stokes.

We have worked with John for many years–as a community and school levy volunteer, an advocate for parks, an official with the state PTSA and attorney with SSA working on behalf of seniors.

John is a man with the experience, commitment and integrity we need to help unify Bellevue around shared goals of transportation mobility and a strong, diverse economy.

Unfortunately, a narrow group of wealthy individuals have decided that they want to control how the Bellevue City Council approaches these issues, and are spending record amounts of money on negative campaign mailers and advertising attacking John and another council member.

We reject these cynical tactics, and hope you will as well.

Regardless of how you feel about voter approved light rail, redevelopment of certain parcels of urban land, and other hot button issues, you should be deeply concerned about the use of nasty, negative campaign tactics by so-called independent groups to influence our local elections.

We support John Stokes and trust that he will be an open minded, thoughtful and engaged council member. We hope you will join us in saying NO to the politics of personal destruction, and YES to a council that truly represents all of us–the families, businesses and neighborhoods of our great city.

Sincerely,

Terry Luekens, Former Bellevue Mayor
Grant Degginger, Bellevue City Councilmember
Ross Hunter, State Representative, 48th District
Chris Marks, School Board President
Margot Blacker, Former Bellevue City Councilmember
John Su, Business Leader
Merle Keeney, Former Parks Board Chair

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