Expect another season of winter Sawant rallies (Image: CHS)
It’s a cold, hard fact. The Recall Sawant campaign has run out the clock on submitting the required signatures to place a vote on the District 3 city councilmember’s removal on the November 2nd General Election ballot.
A winter special election vote on Kshama Sawant is coming.
“The Recall Campaign has until October 19th to turn in signatures,” Henry Bridger said in a statement sent this week after CHS asked if the anti-Sawant campaign manager would try to meet standard deadlines for submitting the signatures in time for the required validation process and the printing of ballots.
“The Campaign will continue to diligently collect signatures and follow the rules set out by the State Constitution and King County Elections as we seek to qualify the Recall Sawant petitions for the ballot,” Bridger told CHS. “When and how we choose to submit our signatures for verification will be in compliance with the law and based on our confidence in the number of valid signatures we are able to collect — Not based on another Sawant protest. We will not be bullied by Sawant and her supporters.”
The Kshama Solidarity group says the delay has the campaign shifting gears from a fight to force a November vote with higher turnout as it did the unthinkable and helped to gather signatures for the recall petition.
Now, Solidarity spokesperson Bryan Koulouris says, the pro-Sawant camp is readying for both a defensive and offensive strategy headed into the likely winter vote when voter turnout will be a much bigger challenge.
“We need to explain to people what’s happened,” Koulouris said. “We’re going to need a get out of the vote effort to overcome this voter suppression the likes that Seattle has never seen before.”
That’s the defense. The offense? Rent control.
Koulouris promised Thursday the political threat to the socialist councilmember will only strengthen Sawant’s push to bring forward legislation that would tie a cap on rent increases in Seattle to the rate of inflation. Earlier this year, CHS reported on Sawant’s renewed push on the legislation as her office said she would fight to complete the big three initiatives that first pushed her into office in 2014 — the $15 minimum wage, a tax on Amazon, and rent control.
Sawant’s rent control would link the maximum rent increase to the inflation rate, which was above 3% as recent as 2018 but fell below 2% during the pandemic, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The effort also requires help in Olympia where the state’s ban on residential rent control needs to be undone. The legislation dates back to 1981. State legislators will have to repeal that ban. Sawant’s draft legislation would go into effect in Seattle as soon as the state-wide ban is lifted.
Koulouris says the call is to “take back from the landlords what they’ve taken.” A rally is planned for September 18th in Cal Anderson Park.
In the meantime, Recall Sawant controls the playing field on the signatures. King County Elections says state law “only allows for the person, committee, or organization demanding the recall to submit the signature pages to our office.”
Koulouris says he estimates with his campaign’s contributions, Recall has around 14,000 signatures ready to submit, and he personally vouched for the quality of the signatures collected by the Solidarity campaign. That batch, he said, will likely have a “higher verification” rate thanks to be collected only “in district.”
Organizers need nearly 11,000 verified signatures from District 3 residents to put the recall on the ballot. Only D3 voters will participate in the yes/no recall vote when it finally happens. If the majority of D3 voters choose yes on the recall, the council would select a temporary replacement until the next general election in the city. The winner in that vote would finish Sawant’s current term through the end of 2023.
The Kshama Solidarity camp continues to plan for an Election Day they know is coming — eventually. “We don’t even know the election date yet but we’re preparing,” Koulouris said.
“The most likely thing it appears, unfortunately, is it will be a winter special election.”
The campaigns will be well-funded for the protracted political fight. But Koulouris said the threat has him asking for more than donations and volunteer time. “We need more than just voting, more donating. Talk to friends,” he said, “especially in apartment buildings.”
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The $15 min wage changed my life and lives of many others.
Sawant didn’t have anything to do with that. A whole bunch of other people did all the hard work, and then at the 11th hour Sawant started doing a bunch of protests so she could take all the credit. The protests accomplished nothing, the folks doing the actual work were already hashing out the final details of the legislation and ignoring her.
If she was actually effective enough to singlehandedly get you the $15 minimum wage, she would have done literally anything over the last 8 years in office. But she hasn’t. All she does is grandstand, take credit for other people’s work, and theatrically deliver pre-written speeches e-mailed to her by Socialist Alternative HQ.
Do you live in District 3? I do. If you ever call Sawant’s office and try to get help on an issue you instead get treated to a college student telling you why actually your issue isn’t important and the real important thing is the global war on capitalism. Sorry, I may not be Lenin but I do in fact care about trying to get the city to look at this tree that’s on the verge of falling down.
And on top of that, she broke the law. Again and again. And she’s gotten away with it. The only way we have to hold her accountable is this recall. If this recall fails, she will be emboldened to continue breaking the law in perpetuity, because the wonderful residents of D3 will have sent her the message that they think it’s OK.
I would love to know more about who did the actual work on the $15 minimum wage. I voted for Sawant three times & the $15 minimum wage was a big part of why. Then I attended the George Floyd protests last summer and watched her try to co-opt that movement for her own purposes. She centered herself over Black voices, and that did not sit well with me at all. I started paying more attention to some of her ideas and well, I’ve lived in two different social democratic countries and I’ve seen some of the negative unintended consequences of her proposed policies (and I am a big supporter of European style socialist democracies, don’t get me wrong!) You can’t take a policy/law from that system/culture and apply it here in isolation, it won’t work. Oh, and I agree that if you’re not on the DSA train, you won’t get any help or support as one of her constituents on any other issue. I signed the recall petition. She has to go.
can you explain how councilmember sawant “centered herself over Black voices” when there were black activists and workers who volunteered to speak at her events, like katrina johnson and reverend jeffrey? not sure i understand how that works unless you’re implying that those people were duped.
also, how did she try to co-opt the movement? if i remember correctly, she was always talking about justice for george floyd and the greater blm movement (and still is), and the inclusion of the amazon tax fit into one of the demands to invest in the black community, in this case by providing housing. appreciate it, thanks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight_for_$15
Ctrl+F Sawant: 0/0
are you actually saying councilmember sawant has done nothing for people in district 3? just want to confirm.
also, you don’t need to call councilmember sawant’s office for a damaged tree in your district. seattle has an urban forestry division and a trees and landscaping program. if there’s a tree potentially endangering people, they’re the ones you should contact. hope that helps.
She doesn’t respond on issues. I’ve asked about how we’re going to get financial assistance for small business on Broadway to survive pandemic. The response was a cut and paste job about late-stage capitalism and fighting for workers’ rights against the “ruling classes.”
She’s a performance artist and a fundraiser for The Socialist Alternative, she’s not a representative of D3, or even aware of what a representative should do. All grandstanding and performance. No substance or results that matter to anyone unless you’re a card-carrying Socialist fighting the social media war against everyone that isn’t you.
I vote Sawant to troll your colonialist values. It’s simple.
Lots of folks worked to make that happen. The narrative that council member Sawant was the sole driver on minimum wage is incorrect and self aggrandizing.
Memories are short. Our Rep. Pramila Jayapal was one of the early players on the minimum wage battle, as were a number of labor groups (like SEIU) and community organizations. Also, the first city to go to a $15 minimum wage was SeaTac back in 2013. My understanding is that much of the organizing and heavy lifting there was done by members of the city’s immigrant communities who worked for companies serving the airport. Sawant played a role in the Seattle fight but not as much as she and her supporters claim.
Pretty sure SEIU L2015 did a lot of heavy lifting on the $15 minimum wage. And they aren’t really fans of her, so, take that as you will.
I can’t wait for the Republicans to lose again.
LOL. Which republicans? You mean liberal democrats.
Leaving aside the merits (or lack thereof) of the recall campaign itself, it’s not a point in their favor that they deliberately blew the deadline for the November ballot for some perceived political advantage. Now, King County will have to gear up separately for a February election where most likely nothing else will be on the ballot. Kind of a waste of tax dollars, which seems to undermine the case against Sawant, no? It’s certainly a factor worth considering.
If the recall folks think they get an advantage by delaying their signature submissions, including ability to collect more and more signatures, and it’s allowed by law, why shouldn’t they do that?
Sawant’s camp does everything they can to win as well, why shouldn’t Recall too?
If she is unfit for office and abusing her powers then should she not be removed at the first possible opportunity? If the Recall campaign wants us to believe the charges against her are serious, then they should themselves act accordingly.
They didn’t deliberately blow the deadline. They are still collecting and verifying signatures. They don’t trust the Sawant campaign’s signatures because Sawant is a liar and rather obviously trying to pull some sort of dirty trick. Much more understandable that they would rather collect and verify their own signatures.
Rent free.
They didn’t deliberately blow the deadline…. they used the amount of time they were legally allotted to collect signatures… and why has that allowed time ended with the issue not getting on the November ballot (or the August one for that matter) – because the Sawant campaign challenged it several times in court and drew out the process. In the end it had nothing to do with the recall campaign’s planning and everything to do with when the recall cleared the court system as to which ballot it would appear on.
Sawant supporters need to stop whining and misrepresenting the truth. The recall campaign simply *used their legally allotted time*…. they didn’t drag their feet, they didn’t draw out the process – they just used the time they were given – by the courts – by the process.
The Recall Campaign didn’t make the deadline for the November ballot because the cult of Sawant sabotaged the signature collection efforts, which was against the law. Sawant is a false prophet. Unfortunately her grift of making homelessness worse and using it to convince newcomers and college students that it is the “right wing’s” fault not her own as the longest serving elected official in the most progressive city in the country is working. She wants to make Seattle worse to spark an old-fashioned communist revolution. She is not a Bernie socialist, but rather a dangerous demagogue like Trump. Wake up.
Lives a wealthy life yet represents the underserved? Either a shill or a saint.
She is a limousine socialist like Pete Holmes, Tamie Morales, and Lorena Gonzalez. They use “socialism” as a tool to grab and maintain power and privelege but the rules and consequences don’t apply to them in their multimillion dollar single family homes. F**king hypocrites.
There are many well-to-do “socialists” in Scandinavian countries. Are they hypocrites?
It is pretty amazing how she does not share the spotlight with any of the contributors that helped make $15 Minimum Wage a reality. But she also campaigned and promoted the Green Party candidate over Hillary at the DNC in 2016, so go figure.
Yes, the latter is what I find unforgivable: that Sawant spent all of 2016 in Washington D.C., actively campaigning against Hillary, and fundraising for her own promotional purposes. (And then comes home after Trump is elected and has the gall to show up for the woman’s march). Now she is far more famous outside of Seattle and most of her fundraising dollars come from strangers who fall for her rhetoric and don’t have to live in her district.
AND she takes all the glory for the $15 minimum wage without crediting any of the people who actually got it off the ground. She’s a total con artist.
My only disappointment is that Sawant will be in office a couple of months longer. She can’t be gone fast enough in my view. Her marketing BS calling this a “right wing recall” is amusing.
Anyone ever tried to contact her about an issue she’s been elected to resolve? Her voicemail has been full for years. She flat out doesn’t respond to emails. It’s a joke. All she does is “rah rah rah!” and sow division. She’s basically Donald Trump but a medalist at woke Olympics and not a cis white male. I was all for her at first, but yeesh … enough already. We need somebody that’s working for their constituents and not just a cult of personality.
The Sawant solidarity campaign’s labelling the Recall Sawant campaign as “voter suppression” is laughable. It is anything but, because a recall effort is democracy at its best. Anyone who wants to can vote in the recall election. No one is being “suppressed.”
Not saying I love Sawant or anything, but the idea of a recall is just disgustingly undemocratic. A majority voted her in, and if a majority doesn’t think she should be in office, they will vote her out. There should be a very, very high bar to end a term prematurely, and frankly I don’t see that here. I have no respect for the recall supporters.
The Washington Supreme Court considered your point of view, and ruled that the bar was met.
Also, losing respect for the VOTERS simply because they differ with you (nevermind that the state Supreme Court also disagrees with you), instead of the ARGUMENT, is wrong-headed, disappointing and well, anti-democratic. This is one of the primary reasons I’ve begun to loath Kshama Sawant as a Seattle leader. She normalizes the demonization of anyone that disagrees with her. This is the kind of move you see from tyrants and dictators. Seattle needs more level-headed discussion and less disrespect and hate.
Yeah, maybe I worded that a little strongly. I definitely understand why people really don’t like her. Even so, the right thing to do when you disagree with an elected official is to vote them out after their term. Recalls are inherently undemocratic because they invalidate the term election.
Does Sawant warrant being recalled? The Supreme Court said we can vote on it, which seems like a safe bet. I still don’t see how this is anything but just trying to remove a candidate you happen to not like.
I get that, and I’ve had reservations about recalls in the past, but when you expose the protected location of your mayor’s home during a time when people are violently divided and you rally the rabid masses on her doorstep, failing to even clear your damn inbox once in a blue moon and ignore the needs of your constituency, you are doing more damage to democracy than a recall would. I think recalls should have a high bar, but Sawant’s is one that deserves a vote, IMHO. I wouldn’t say the same about Newsom’s, which seems predicated on some pretty flimsy concern.
Recalls are allowed in our constitution not for cases where voters simply disagree with an elected representative, but for when the elected representative has done something illegal or not upheld his/her oath of office. The WA Supreme Court rules that Sawant’s case is the latter, and thus eligible for recall.
If it were a matter of simply disagreeing with her policies or actions, I agree with you that the right course of action is to vote her out in the next election.
Sawant’s pushing Rent Control which would be a disaster in Seattle.
In Berlin: “After a year, Berlin’s experiment with rent control is a failure,” The Economist declared last month. Rents were down, the magazine observed, but so was the supply of available units.
“The number of classified ads for rentals has fallen by more than half,”
Can you imagine if 50% of rentals disappeared from Seattle?