Through the ‘Gateway’ to Bainbridge came a Trojan Horse
Published 1:30 am Friday, May 1, 2026
A deeply blue community, only 12.2% of Bainbridge voters chose President Donald Trump in 2024. But, one year later, on an anti-growth, “Keep Bainbridge Bainbridge” platform, we elected Mike Nelson to City Council — ironically, handing the duty of protecting our specialness to a guy who moved here in 2022. As affordable housing at 625 Winslow became the election’s marquee issue last fall, Nelson painted a grim picture of the City Council’s plan to “massively upzone Winslow and the surrounding areas,” warning voters, “Don’t let Bainbridge become Ballard.”
A galvanizing statement, indeed. Nelson won, and since taking office has spent much of his time opining that the City of Bainbridge Island need not comply with state law requiring we plan for more affordable housing, yet raising concerns “of a legal nature” about the City’s Race Equity Advisory Committee (REAC) — a diverse group of seven council-appointed volunteers with professional and lived experience addressing racism. I am one of them.
From his new seat on the dais and with great regularity on “Nextdoor,” Nelson airs his discomfort with a wide array of REAC activities. Most recently, and most revealingly, he was the sole vote against approving REAC’s 2026 work plan, noting that “new legal precedent” may mean recommendations about equity in hiring are not “consistent with federal and state law.”
The federal law he is talking about? Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, prohibiting employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin — landmark civil rights legislation that activists fought and died for throughout the 50s and 60s. Sixty-two years later, Trump and his loyalists have twisted the original intent of the law to claim that “DEI” is unfair to… white people, straight people, and men. And on April 14, Nelson held his vote in deference to this vision of civil rights — a keystone of Project 2025.
Like many of Trump’s threats, enacting his anti-equity orders requires that we comply in advance. Numerous state attorneys general, and thousands of private companies, nonprofits, universities, and municipalities around the country, including our own, have shown that resistance is not only the right thing to do, it is the smart thing to do. Just last year, our City Council agreed not to capitulate to new federal grant language demanding recipients cooperate with ICE and end all DEI practices. Yet, while Nelson stands ready to sue the state over affordable housing requirements, he appears eager to comply with this funhouse version of civil rights.
This isn’t really about Nelson, though – this is about what he represents, which is, quite literally: us. Because before we knew who Councilmember Nelson was, we voted for candidate Nelson — the one who cited protecting our island’s “special character” or “small town feel” six separate times in his candidate statement. Nelson didn’t coin these terms, which are at once ambiguous and heavy with the weight of history — a history that, in the United States, is always a mix of good, bad, and ugly. I say ambiguous because, while they may carry emotional weight, definitions are elusive. Is Bainbridge special and small when compared to Port Townsend — a town with half as many residents, but many more historic (and much taller) buildings?
And I say heavy with the weight of history because, across the country, the vast majority of our neighborhoods are as segregated today as they were in the 1960s. After white WWII veterans achieved homeownership through the GI Bill (good) while Black veterans could not (bad) and as racial housing covenants and redlining (ugly) were being banned, terms like “special character” and “small town feel” started showing up in planning and zoning: race-neutral on their face, but locking in “character” and “feel” created in large part by centuries of racist housing policies, practices, and racial intimidation. Today, these terms are lifted up at the exact moments when affordable housing is proposed in jurisdictions across the country. And, knowingly or not, Bainbridge fell right in line.
I’ve been on Bainbridge long enough to remember when the BIMA complex was an auto-wrecking yard on the way to Captain K’s (blissfully open past 8 p.m. and full of working-class regulars). But, somehow, I missed knowing the corner of Winslow and 305 was the great “Gateway to our Island” until last year, when it needed to be saved from affordable housing, and in walked Nelson. There has been an incredible amount of misinformation and fear-mongering about who we have room and resources for on Bainbridge Island, and it’s okay to be confused or worried. But fear rarely leads us in the right direction, and – once we see that – it’s usually a good idea to turn around.
Caitlin Lombardi lives on Bainbridge Island with her husband and three children. She works for the nonprofit The Who We Are Project and serves on the city’s Race Equity Advisory Committee.
