Kshama Sawant’s dramatic victory in the race to retain her District 3 seat on the Seattle City Council was formalized Tuesday as King County Elections certified its November 2019 results.
In the end, it was not close. Sawant tallied a solid 4.13-percentage point win over challenger Egan Orion. Turnout across District 3’s nearly 75,000 registered voters ticked in at just under 60%, only a smidge below turnout in Ballard’s District 6. Across King County, voters produced a 49% turnout, well above predictions.
CHS reported here on the Socialist Alternative incumbent’s victory as Sawant overcame historic spending by the business community and large companies like Amazon and Expedia to unseat progressive candidates in Seattle. “Our movement has won our socialist office for working people,” she said. “The election results are a repudiation of the billionaire class…and the relentless attacks and lies…and working people have stood up and said Seattle is not for sale!,” Sawant said in her victory speech the Saturday following the election.
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Though the votes cast by that Tuesday night would fall fully in her favor, the process for King County Elections to get there was a bit excruciating. Washington’s “by mail” ballots meant late voters — younger, more likely to be renters, and more likely to swing left — were counted late and their influence only slowly emerged under current tallying procedures.
But when the numbers turned, they turned sharply with Sawant grabbing more than 60% of late counts following the initial Election Night eight-point lead turned in by Orion.
For Orion, the Broadway Business Improvement Area’s head and director of Pridefest said the big money boosts to his campaign including an expensive mailer effort ultimately backfired. “Unfortunately, when Amazon dropped over a million dollars into the city council races just as ballots were sent out, our closing arguments were completely subsumed by national media attention with candidates like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren chiming in on local city council races,” Orion said as he conceded the race a week after Election Night. “What had been a clear lead for my campaign became a much closer race than anyone expected.”
Sawant, now set to begin her third term, will become the senior member on the council with Bruce Harrell, Mike O’Brien, and Sally Bagshaw opting not to run for reelection. The backlash to the Amazon cash also helped Sawant secure key new allies in her fellow council members. The council’s two citywide representatives, Teresa Mosqueda and Lorena González, moved beyond past criticism and distancing from Sawant to embrace the Socialist Alternative leader and a slate of progressive candidates facing chamber and pro-business opposition — Lisa Herbold in D1, Tammy Morales in D2, Shaun Scott in D4, Dan Strauss in D6, and Andrew Lewis in D7.
Herbold, Morales, Strauss, and Lewis will also join Sawant when the new council convenes in January. Alex Pedersen, who downed Scott in District 4 representing the University District area of the city, was sworn in Tuesday to fill the seat left vacant by the early exit of Rob Johnson.
Sawant’s strengthened position will also have City Hall impacts outside of council chambers where she seems likely to remain an adversary to Mayor Jenny Durkan’s more moderate and business friendly approach.
Meanwhile, despite her new allyship and the expensive, hard fought battle to retain her seat, Sawant doesn’t appear to have changed her strategy or tactics when it comes to City Hall business.
Monday as the full council sat down to vote on its last major act with its current leadership to approve a 2020 budget package notable for a significant injection of homelessness and restorative justice spending, Sawant struck a familiar tone.
As she has in every council budget vote since she joined the body in 2014, Sawant Monday voted against the final $6.5 billion package saying the spending did not adequately address issues of racism and inequality.
With Sawant again standing alone, Monday’s vote approving the 2020 budget went 8-1.
“We are in a very wealthy city but which is also deeply unequal,” Sawant said in an interview with Africatown Seattle after the vote. “Especially when you look at the living standards and the situation that is faced by our communities of color, look at the massive gentrification, the school to prison and deportation pipeline — there his so much oppression and racism that we need to be organized against.”
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