This is the latest article in a series discussing Newcastle MAGA candidates for city council. Newcastle is a suburb near Seattle, WA. Today, we’ll focus on Sarah Goodman, a woman closely tied to the national creationist movement. Her first ever recorded political donation was in in 2024 for Donald Trump’s WinRed. This is in stark contrast to her opponent Andy Jacobs and the 70% of Newcastle voters who supported Harris.
Sarah Goodman’s bio reads a lot like every Hallmark movie ever: Girl from the big city falls in love with small town life and tries to defend it from the evils of modernization. She moved to Newcastle 25 years ago, back when Blockbuster had a location on Coal Creek. That was also around the time the Blockbuster had the chance to buy Netflix for $50 million and laughed, confident that the brick and mortar model of the past would continue to succeed in the future. You might be shocked to learn that the Blockbuster on Coal Creek is no longer around, but not if Sarah Goodman had her way.
Creationists refuse to adapt because they believe that all life was perfectly designed by God 6000 years ago, and any deviation can only result in the corruption of God’s plan. Sarah Goodman wants to believe she can make Newcastle great again by regressing to the past, just like Blockbuster and Trump.
Sarah Goodman is uniquely unqualified for the role
Sarah Goodman promises to keep Newcastle affordable low by blocking affordable housing, the same way that Trump promised to reduce food prices by deporting food workers. As with every other conservative, Sarah Goodman can’t explain how this works, because it makes no sense.
Instead, Sarah Goodman takes the Trumpian route of citing her business experence in lieu of numbers. She is a former Microsoft PM, but that’s an industry where infrastructure gets exponentially cheaper and better over time. This leaves her completely unprepared for city budgets, where the costs to maintain roads and infrastructure are more like medical bills and keeps going up with age.
Sarah Goodman and the promise of a $27 car
Bill Gates famously observed that cars would only cost $27 and cereal would only cost a penny if they followed the same price trends as technology. His point was that tech prices work differently from everything else. But Sarah Goodman seems to actually believe she can deliver a $27 car, by promising that she can make the small town experience affordable in Newcastle.
The main reason tech got cheaper over time is because the industry focused on minitarization and increased density, more transistors per chip. The same concept applies to multi-family housing, as covered in the previous article comparing 100 apartment units to 100 McMansions.
But Sarah Goodman is advocating for the opposite, because she wants density to stay low. It’s the equivalent to forcing AMD and Intel to still use vacuum tubes. A computer built with vacuum tubes will definitely contain “beautiful open spaces” and a have a “small-town feel,” but it will never be fast, efficient, or affordable. I know many people who use them for decorations, but they aren’t exatly practical.
Denying permits to muti-family housing means artificial housing shortages, and therefore articially inflated property values and higher taxes. A typical house in Newcastle today can easily sell for $2 million, which amounts to a $10,000 per month mortgage after a $400,000 down payment. No amount of tax cuts will ever make that affordable for most people. The only way to make housing more affordable is with more affordable housing.
Fixed mindset vs. growth mindset
Sarah Goodman seems to be a product of the “fixed mindset” Steve Ballmer years at Microsoft, focused on inertia rather than innovation. Ballmer wanted natural born geniuses who already had all the answers, and the company became stagnant complacent from the past success of Windows, famously missing out on the smart phone market.
Under Satya Nadella, the company changed to a “growth minset,” based on the work of Carol Dweck. He recognized that “natural born talent” often struggled with learning new challenges because they were spoiled by life on easy mode. Think of the sore loser who immediately rage-quits and calls the game stupid because they don’t win right away. Nadella wanted people who can learn and adapt, and Microsoft is now worth $4 trillion, with Windows only accounting for 10% of annual revenue.
There are parallels between “fixed mindset” and creationism, especially since belief in creationism is in itself an example of fixed mindset. The Discovery Institute argues that complex system can only arise from intelligent design (i.e., God), and not from evolution. Modern AI products prove the total opposite, as with a level of complexity that can only arise from evolution, not design. Sarah Goodman has worked at Microsoft for decades, and yet she still sides with the creationists, because she refuses to learn the fundamentals.
Sarah Goodman makes insincere appeal to inclusion
Sarah Goodman goes out of her way to reassure voters that she’s open minded to new ideas, the same way Amway goes out of their way to deny being a pyramid scheme. It comes across as disingenous and suspiciously specific denial, like a Microsoft employee trying way too hard convince management she practices growth mindset, but who doesn’t actually believe it.
- Sarah Goodman says she believes “strongly in the value of varied perspectives” and “diverse perspectives” and is “committed to ensuring all residents feel heard.” She says “Our city is strongest when we welcome and respect different viewpoints.”
- Sarah Goodman is also campaigning on “Newcastle First: Small, safe, quiet,” which is the polar opposite of being heard. She complains “Newcastle is experiencing tremendous expansion and current residents are in the eye of the storm” because she wants to exclude outsiders from moving in.
- She advocates for a “watching our city grow into the close-knit, vibrant community,” while mandating the type of housing development that forces everyone to live further away.
Case in point: Where exactly does Sarah Goodman stand on the pride flag removal? This is a story that made national news, and all the democratic candidates have defended the LGTB community. If Sarah truly believes in a vibrant community of diverse perspectives, then she should have taken a stand by now. If she’s keeping her position to herself, then it’s because she knows it isn’t popular.
Sarah’s self-paise of narrow-minded diversity reminds me of the Onion article about a white family moving to an all-white suburb: “To be honest, it really doesn’t matter to us what part of Europe you’re originally from. As the Hansons’ experience here shows, there’s room in Glencoe for every shade of Caucasian in God’s white rainbow.”
How exactly does Sarah Goodman intend to hear from all viewpoints if you need a $400,000 down-payment and $10,000 per month just to move in, because Sarah Goodman insists on blocking anything more affordable?
Back in 2023, the local conservative group known as the Newcastle Watchdogs sent out a racist email accusing one of their opponents of being a sleeper agent for the CCP. All four conservative candidates were publicly asked to disavow the email, and all of them refused. I suspect that this year won’t be any different.
Sarah Goodman borrows from the creationist playbook
When Sarah Goodman first moved to Newcastle, the Discovery Institute was promoting the campaign of ”Teach the Controversy.” They wanted to present themselves as curious intellectuals who wanted to encourage open dialogue, but that was just a ploy to force creationism in the classroom as the first step to Christian Nationalism. Just like how Trump was campaigning to end cancel culture when Sarah made her donation, and now Trump is having the Pentagon target anyone who tries to mock him.
Sarah Goodman only lists three personal endorsements on her website, and one of them is from Discovery Institute President Steve Buri. It looks like she’s borrowing the exact same tactics, with the exact same goal. Today, the Steve Buri and the Discovery Institute have shifted a lot of their attention to the fight against affordable housing.
Pro-Family and Anti-Population
This was covered in the previous article on the expensive republican lawn fetish, but it’s incredibly ironic how Sarah Goodman keeps hyping up Newcastle as a place for exclusively raising larger families, but she’s already trying to fight some sort of holy war against the idea of “expansion,” referring to Newcastle as “the eye of the storm” and is terrified that Newcatle will be more like Seattle.
Why does Sarah think it’s great for her own family to have a place to raise kids, but terrible for anyone else to do the same? I think there’s a word for that line of thinking, and it’s not a good one.
Goodman’s apocalyptic description of expansion echoes the views of Thomas Malthus, an incredibly influential cleric cleric who argued that any attempt to help the poor with food and medicine would result in an explosive population catastrophe, and therefore it would be better to simply let them die. This line of reasoning played a big role justifying the Irish potato famine, as England argued Ireland’s growing population was a bigger threat than the famine itself.
The republicans today are trying to do the same for housing that the potato famine did for food. Ironically, Seattle ranks last in the country for number of children, but Goodman also wants to block the 1-2 homes that would be better suited for childless adults.
Why you should support Andy Jacobs instead
Andy Jacob has many of the qualities that Sarah Goodman is only pretending to possess. He is a staunch advocate of actual diversity and inclusion, despite the actual hate and backlash he’s received from anti-LGTB evangelicals. As a Jewish man who had to win over his fiance’s staunchly Christian father, he understands what it’s like to be an outsider.
Whereas Sarah Goodman makes empty promises to make Newcastle more affordable, Andy Jacobs knows how to actually deliver. His background includes 20 years working with Costco, “helping to pioneer the $4.99 rotisserie chicken and managing the $1.50 hot dog.” And he did this despite rising expenses.
This only reason the $1.50 hot dogs stays affordable is because of economies of scale, and because of their ability to bring more people through the door. They might not profitable on their own, but they are profitable in terms of the bigger picture, Likewise, the only way to keep Newcastle affordable is by recruiting more “members,” which means we need more affordable housing. Sarah Goodman’s promise to bring prices down by reducing volume makes no sense whatsoever.
Andy is endorsed by the WA Democratic party, along with fellow sane candidates Chris Villasenor, Paul Charbonneau, and Karin Blakley. I encourage you to check out their campaigns, and also to share this article if you know anyone who lives the greater Seattle area.
Sarah Goodman knows her actual platforms and positions aren’t popular in Newcastle, which is why she has to hide behind coded language and dog whistles. Sarah is running with fellow MAGA candidates Kevin Kirkaldie, Maggie Lo, and Jim Quigg. All of their party endorsement come from republicans, but they refuse to openly admit to being republicans themselves.
