NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate provides the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Saturday, February 22nd, 2020

LIVE from Seattle Center: Elizabeth Warren supporters pack the Armory for marquee rally

Good evening from the Emer­ald City!

NPI is live at the Seat­tle Cen­ter Armory for Eliz­a­beth War­ren’s first Wash­ing­ton cam­paign ral­ly of the 2020 cal­en­dar year. Her last appear­ance in Seat­tle, an August 2019 ral­ly, attract­ed 15,000 sup­port­ers and it was report­ed many in the crowd wait­ed in line after­ward for her well-known “self­ies” for over four hours.

The line to enter today’s ral­ly was already packed down the block almost two hours before the adver­tised 6 PM speak­ing pro­gram start time.

Elizabeth Warren supporters at a Seattle rally

Sup­port­ers of Unit­ed States Sen­a­tor and 2020 Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial hope­ful Eliz­a­beth War­ren await her remarks at a ral­ly in the Seat­tle Cen­ter Armory (Pho­to: Andrew Villeneuve/NPI)

Sup­port­ers of all ages and eth­nic­i­ties stand wait­ing, gath­ered in front of a stage dec­o­rat­ed with an Amer­i­can flag back­drop. Oth­ers wait in the back the Armory where some lucky onlook­ers scored the lim­it­ed seating.

Ear­li­er this after­noon, NPI inter­viewed War­ren sup­port­ers on the way to the ral­ly, many of whom voice their enthu­si­asm for the Sen­a­tor’s candidacy.

“We’re all in for women lead­er­ship,” said one supporter.

“She’s got plans. She’s got intel­lect. She knows how to get things done.”

Anoth­er not­ed that it’s shame­ful that the Unit­ed States has not elect­ed a woman pres­i­dent yet, even though women gained the right to vote a hun­dred years ago.

When asked about War­ren’s recent debate per­for­mance, they all agreed the Sen­a­tor had shone more than the oth­er Demo­c­ra­t­ic candidates.

“She killed it,” one said, not­ing that it rein­vig­o­rat­ed her sup­port for War­ren over Bernie Sanders and War­ren’s oth­er rivals for the nomination.

Some sup­port­ers we spoke with are return­ing for the sec­ond time for an Eliz­a­beth War­ren ral­ly, hav­ing been to the August event.

When asked what they believe sets War­ren apart from oth­er can­di­dates, one sup­port­er it says it’s her plans. (War­ren had a viral moment dur­ing the sum­mer after reply­ing “I have a plan” to a ques­tion on Amer­i­ca’s wealth gap. Her cam­paign ran with it and it has become one of her main slogans.)

One sup­port­er fol­lowed that by men­tion­ing War­ren’s work to cre­ate the Con­sumer Pro­tec­tion Bureau after the finan­cial crash. “She cares about mak­ing sure peo­ple aren’t tak­en advan­tage of. Nobody else seems to actu­al­ly do things.”

Anoth­er ral­ly­go­er wait­ing for the bus told NPI that “before pol­i­tics was even on [War­ren’s] mind, she was doing the work.”

“She’s real­ly great about reach­ing out to peo­ple where they are, even if they’re not as left as she is, and edu­cat­ing them in a way that wel­comes them in.”

One sup­port­er said she was still try­ing to decide if she would cast her vote for War­ren in the pri­ma­ry, and she was hop­ing the ral­ly may help her find clarity.

She not­ed that she was most like­ly vot­ing for Warren.

“I’m look­ing for that per­son who says ‘I val­ue you, and your chil­dren and your grand­chil­dren’ as much as them­selves and their fam­i­ly,” she said.

The antic­i­pa­tion is build­ing, made clear by the cho­rus of cheers as a cam­paign staffer walked briefly onto the stage. Clas­sic, like Queen’s “I Want to Break Free” and Nan­cy Sina­tra’s “These Boots Are Made for Walk­ing” are playing.

When Neil Dia­mond’s beloved “Sweet Car­o­line” came on, many in the audi­ence enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly sang along and waved their arms.

More sup­port­ers are fill­ing up the loft as space below in front of the main stage dis­ap­pears. The Armory only has a capac­i­ty of a cou­ple thou­sand peo­ple, so not every­one who wants to see War­ren may get in.

Stay with us as we con­tin­ue to cov­er the War­ren cam­paign’s Feb­ru­ary 22nd Seat­tle Cen­ter ral­ly, live from the Armory under­neath the Space Needle.

Adjacent posts

  • Enjoyed what you just read? Make a donation


    Thank you for read­ing The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate, the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute’s jour­nal of world, nation­al, and local politics.

    Found­ed in March of 2004, The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate has been help­ing peo­ple through­out the Pacif­ic North­west and beyond make sense of cur­rent events with rig­or­ous analy­sis and thought-pro­vok­ing com­men­tary for more than fif­teen years. The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate is fund­ed by read­ers like you and trust­ed spon­sors. We don’t run ads or pub­lish con­tent in exchange for money.

    Help us keep The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate edi­to­ri­al­ly inde­pen­dent and freely avail­able to all by becom­ing a mem­ber of the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute today. Or make a dona­tion to sus­tain our essen­tial research and advo­ca­cy journalism.

    Your con­tri­bu­tion will allow us to con­tin­ue bring­ing you fea­tures like Last Week In Con­gress, live cov­er­age of events like Net­roots Nation or the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion, and reviews of books and doc­u­men­tary films.

    Become an NPI mem­ber Make a one-time donation

  • NPI’s essential research and advocacy is sponsored by: