The 43rd District Democrats won’t endorse a party fundraiser and leader from the state’s 2012 marriage equality fight, either.
Tuesday night, District 3 challenger Rod Hearne fell well short of the group’s endorsement in his campaign to unseat Socialist Alternative Kshama Sawant from her incumbent position on the City Council.
The vote echoed the results from the May meeting of the 43rd Dems in which none of the rest of the eligible D3 field garnered the 60% of votes needed for endorsement. Only Democrats are eligible for the endorsements leaving Sawant on the sideline for the process.
Hearne was brought up for a vote separately from his fellow candidates after being ruled ineligible for an endorsement in May when his campaign was late to submit a required questionnaire.
. @jseattle @jfeit @ericacbarnett @seattlish @joelconnelly D3 endorsement vote: 103 total: Hearne=32.69%, NoEndorse=67.31%. Result=NE
— 43rd District Dems (@43rdDems) June 17, 2015
The lack of endorsements is a victory of sorts for the popular but polarizing candidate and are a clear blow to the campaign hopes of challengers — especially former Urban League head Pamela Banks who is doing much, much better on the fundraising end of things.
Hearne, meanwhile, is pushing to put his LGBTQ credentials and ideas about transit, Capitol Hill crime, and municipal broadband on the table to compete with the relatively deep Banks and Sawant coffers.
The race for the Council seat to lead the district that includes Capitol Hill and the Central District is pushing toward the August primary in which the top two voter getters will move through to a final vote in November. You can view all CHS D3 coverage here.
UPDATE: Hearne reminded us that, while he didn’t get the nod from the 43rd, the candidate *did* receive the endorsement of the King County Democrats:
@jseattle I did get the sole endorsement for this race from King County Dems in recognition that I fight for social and economic justice.
— Rod Hearne (@rodhearne) June 17, 2015
So glad the voters are above the party politics & are clearly supportive of the most progressive candidate. I am seriously disillusioned and disappointed in the Democratic leadership’s (especially Murray) attempts to displace one of the most effective & progressive members of the council in favor of yet another developer & corporate backed candidate.
Which developers and corporations are backing Hearne, exactly?
These systems of belief are incompatible. She is not a progressive. She is a socialist. There is a MAJOR difference. http://www.differencebetween.net/miscellaneous/politics/difference-between-socialism-and-progressivism/
Hearne’s contributors: http://web6.seattle.gov/ethics/elections/poplist.aspx?cid=414&listtype=contributors
It takes time to figure out who they all are, but a number are clearly connected to developers and large corporations.
We posted rosters of all the individual contributors — including for Sawant — at the end of this post: Campaign contributions spike in District 3 race
BTW, here are contributions organized by employer — you’ll see some big corp action on Sawant’s roster, too https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1l7MOCi4Wpk8cL-sJn7uu-jPL4hyZuGNYlHL2zEnf8AA/pubhtml?gid=1693602268&single=true
Thanks for the very helpful post. If we judge who’s “connected .. to huge corporations” by where they work, it looks like Microsoft and Amazon are clearly trending Sawant’s way! Ridiculous, of course, to conclude that. Likewise, it’s quite McCarthyist to attack Hearne because some of his supporters work for -gasp! – corporations. But don’t expect Sawant, or her campaign, to condemn such tactics anytime soon. That liberal shibboleth, the end doesn’t justify the means, doesn’t seem a part of her campaign plan.
This is a fragmented field, with several good candidates. I actually include Sawant in that classification, due to her great work on the $15 minimum wage. It’s only after the primary that we’ll see a clear choice – assuming it’s Sawant versus someone, we’ll see how deep socialist support runs in a very liberal part of Seattle.