[ad_1]
SEATTLE – Paula Harper-Christensen, a retired teacher, smiles waving her sign under the sign of the upset siren. "Let's not lose our chance," says the text under the logo. Susan Glicksberg's protest sign was more direct: "Do not run!"
Howard Schultz, former Starbucks CEO, returned to his hometown, Seattle, and the reception was not uniformly warm.
Schultz, 65, was strongly criticized by many Democratic colleagues for being a possible spoiler for 2020 after revealing his interest in running as an independent presidential candidate. He said that he would ask himself if he should not run in the next few months while he embarks on a national tour of the book outlining his vision for mending America's ills .
[Check out the Democratic field with our new candidate tracker.]
Thursday night was his first major appearance in Seattle since his political announcement. . About forty protesters gathered to greet him before his planned event to promote the book and his eventual candidacy. Some, like Mary Hanke, were openly hostile to Mr. Schultz and his past business man.
"He looks like Trump, and the last thing we need is another spoiled and egocentric billionaire," said Ms. Hanke, 69, retired technical director.
But many others, like Ms. Harper-Christensen, are more concerned about the impact of Schultz's independent candidacy in 2020: a third party could split the vote and -elect President Trump, who is much more unpopular in Seattle than Mr. Schultz.
"I do not even like to say her name," said Harper-Christensen, referring to the president.
Seattle. This is where Mr. Schultz made his fortune as a businessman. He organized a group of investors to buy in 1987 what was at the time a modest coffee retailer called Starbucks, with its 17 branches, and made it a hitacino behemoth with nearly 30,000 stores in the world.
Schultz left the company as a billionaire last year and remains relatively unknown to many Seattle residents, compared to other Seattle-based business leaders becoming famous, including Jeff. Bezos from Amazon and Bill Gates from Microsoft.
But the Starbucks The brand, with which many Seattle residents have a complex love / hate relationship, is present everywhere. The historic non-profit theater that Mr. Schultz rented on Thursday night is only a few blocks from the Starbucks store in the early 1970s at the Pike Place market, preserved as a museum or shrine and attracting tens of thousands of tourists a year. The headquarters, with the logo of the blue and green siren rising from the roof, is located a few kilometers to the south.
In riots that struck the city at the World Trade Organization rally in 1999, the broken shop windows of Starbucks stores became one of the symbols of destruction by anarchists and other groups that swept the city denouncing the power of business.
At least one other billionaire with the means to self-finance his candidacy for White House, Michael R. Bloomberg, former mayor of New York, is considering a race for the presidency – in the case of Mr. Bloomberg, as as a democrat.
But that's the possible course of Mr. Schultz as a "moderate independent outside party system that has attracted the most attention – and some critics of some Democrats who have said fear that a candidacy for Schultz could siphon more Democratic voters than Republicans.
Washington Governor Jay Inslee, a Democrat who is also considering a presidential candidacy, said this week that he feared that a candidacy for Schultz might help re-elect President Trump.
"Anyone who would run as an independent and clearly split the Democratic vote, and clearly help Donald Trump – it would be a terrible decision," Inslee said.
But Mr. Schultz, in an interview with The Times and an appearance on the show "60 Minutes," stated that he thought the two-party system was plunged into a war of revenge and of, has been broken and that the leaders of the Democratic Party have gone too far left on some policy issues.
"The two parties do not systematically do what is necessary for the American people," he said.
Some people who came to greet Mr. Schultz during his speech stated that they at least agreed with him on this point. Jeff Jared, 55, a lawyer and so-called libertarian, wore a sign saying "Run, Howard, Run".
"People are starving for a third party," said Jared.
Source link
