With a possible fourth political victory in the city lined up, CHS asked Sawant if it was time to take her movement to a higher office (Image: CHS)
Time to party? (Image: CHS)
Kshama Sawant did not declare outright victory Friday morning. But the campaign to defend the socialist leader against the District 3 recall is throwing a “Victory Party” at Capitol Hill club Chop Suey next week.
In addition to the December 19th party, Kshama Solidarity announced it was also launching an effort to connect with voters of the some 500 or so remaining ballots challenged over issues like missing or mis-matched signatures.
Thursday, CHS reported on the third day of vote counts in the December 7th recall election as “no” is now leading by just over 200 votes with the hundreds of challenged ballots still to cure and count.
“Yesterday afternoon’s ballot count showed our socialist campaign in Seattle taking a lead of 232 votes,” Sawant said Friday morning during a press conference in front of 21st Ave’s New Hope Baptist Church in the Central District. “It appears we have defeated the combined efforts of big business, the right wing, the corporate media, the courts, and the political establishment who sought to remove our socialist council office by any means necessary.”
“In other words,” Sawant said, “the wealthy and their representatives in politics and the media took their best shot at us, and we beat them. Again.”
The campaign is referring to the results as an “apparent victory.”
UPDATE 12/10/21 3:40 PM: King County Elections added another 87 to the counted pile Friday afternoon with 52 “no” votes in the mix pushing the anti-recall total percentage up by a few decimals. The recall is now being defeated by 249 votes. The total of challenged ballots is now down to 573. Meanwhile, the elections turnout report shows nearly 170 of those challenged ballots arrived too late to be counted making it even more unlikely the curing process will put “yes” back on top.
The margin represents what would be a razor thin victory — 249 out of 40,716 votes, or 0.61%.
UPDATE 4 PM: In a statement from campaign manager Henry Bridger, the Recall Sawant campaign said it would continue to make sure every challenged ballot was counted but admitted its effort “will likely fall short of removing Sawant from office.”
“The Recall Sawant campaign set out 18 months ago to restore accountability in the District 3 City Council seat. While the ultimate outcome will likely fall short of removing Sawant from office, the results of this election ought to ring out like an alarm to Councilmember Sawant and those dealing in her style of divisive politics.
Our upstart, all volunteer-led campaign, mounted an effort that should make District 3 proud. By collecting thousands of petitions to qualify for the ballot, logging endless volunteer hours, and prioritizing fundraising from District 3 residents, our grassroots effort just delivered the closest margin Sawant has ever seen — a result equivalent of a 17-point city-wide loss.
While this election may not end with removing Sawant from office, let her narrow escape send a clear message: Seattle voters will not tolerate slash-and-burn politicians who shirk accountability and divide the city.
We are grateful to our volunteers and supporters who worked hard to get us this far. With the calls for accountability so clear, the Recall Campaign will continue working to cure every contested ballot and ensure everyone who voted in this election has their voice heard.”
The Sawant campaign said Friday it hasn’t heard anything specific yet about a possible recount. Recall Sawant and managerBridger have not responded to inquiries about the status of the campaign. King County Elections says any recount would need to be triggered — and paid for — by the campaign.
It has already been an extremely costly battle. Kshama Solidarity reports expenditures of more than $917,000 and has more than $20,000 in debt, while Recall Sawant reports it has spent $734,000 and owe another $36,000 more. The pro-recall A Better Seattle PAC is on the hook for about $161,000, mostly in expenditures on expensive television ads with Comcast.
While announcing the effort to address challenged ballots and plans for the December 19th event, Sawant and supporters said this “apparent” win and addition to her record of political victories would further empower their movement to pursue the third plank of the three major priorities she has carried forward since first taking office in 2013. The first was the $15 minimum wage. Second was a tax on Amazon. And third, they said Friday as they did at the start of the recall fight, will be bringing rent control to Seattle.
“We now have in front of us a real opportunity to win rent control,” Sawant said Friday. “This victory speaks to the huge support for rent control in this district, in Seattle, and beyond.”
If the “no on recall” win sticks, it will mark the fourth time the Socialist Alternative political group leader has emerged victorious at the polls in Seattle.
After the press conference, CHS asked Sawant if being on the brink of this fourth victory at the polls might mark an opportunity for the socialist leader to take her movement to a higher office beyond District 3.
“We need this kind of socialist politics at every level, not just on the Seattle City Council,” Sawant said. “This is an example we’ve shown we need this in other cities. We need it in the U.S. Congress. But whether or not I personally do it. That’s a question for Socialist Alternative and for our larger movement.”
Sawant said her supporters need to recognize the victories they have won happened because she “did not take an individualistic or career based or personality based approach” to running for office.
“We took a movement based approach and that is what we will need if we are to win such victories nationally,” Sawant said.
But first, the focus will be on 500 or so voters in District 3.
“Our grassroots, socialist campaign will be carrying out a systematic, all-out effort to make sure every working person’s vote counts in this election, just as we fought for in the past weeks,” a campaign representative said. “We will begin this voter protection campaign today, right after this press conference.”
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I’m so incredibly happy Sawant beat all these rich right wingers taking over our city. Nextdoor Karens. KOMO watchers. All these groups are way more divisive than Kshama Sawant is.
With you. Critics don’t seem to understand how a true Socialist is expected to behave in an antagonistic political environment. A compromise vote on the yearly paperclip expenditure is not what this is all about. Be loud, be caring, make change.
Go play fantasy Revolution games someplace else. And stop ruining local politics with this nonsense. You achieved nothing but frightening a tiny majority. You still have a failed Revolution outside of D3, and violent left wing politics like Sawant’s are scaring America away from police reform in the process. Because as long as you folks are around threatening property, a majority of Americans wants a funded police. Inconvenient for your Trotskyite goals.
I’m not a republican, don’t use next door nor do I watch KOMO. Same goes for 50% of people in D3, we’re just tired of her socialism-lite that has done nothing remotely positive in our city.
you can keep her
It really isn’t helpful, or frankly very mature, to write off 49.8% of D3 voters in this election as you just did. Why not listen to some of what they said and temper your enthusiasm just a bit? And at the very least, try to show them some respect. Our political system needs more of it locally and elsewhere. And congrats on your candidates apparent victory. I don’t support most of her policies and I think she is incredibly dismissive and divisive, but she won, so on we go.
I view Sawant supporters much like I view Trump supporters. Both of these figures are extremists. Both rely on bully tactics. Both utilize unconventional and dangerous methods to the praise of their supporters, which, of course, feeds right into their egos. Both represent the fringes of society, the radical and the extreme – not the majority who have a desire for respect, integrity and reasonableness. Both of these individuals are highly divisive and seem to enjoy the disfunction they help to create. Seattle was once one of the cleanest and safest large cities in the country. Gun violence was hardly heard of twenty years ago and today is a daily occurrence. Today, Seattle is a filthy and dangerous place thanks largely to the disfunction of City Council. Unfortunately, the new generation of Seattleites who have been imported for tech jobs and such accept the city as it is rather than recognize how good it once was or could be under practical, responsible and intelligent leadership. It’s time to wake up.
If you take a good look at the range and depth of social injustice in this country; if you objectively reckon with the grave and worsening consequences of economic inequality, which has worsened for fifty years straight; then you may wish to reconsider the importance of “respect, integrity, and reasonableness.” If these are the qualities that define the center of American political sentiment, then you can keep them. Also, divisiveness in itself is not wrong or bad. When there is a pathological unity or consensus of vice, the only thing you need is some kind of division. Was anyone more divisive in American history than Abraham Lincoln?
Economic inequality, as we learned after the fall of the Soviet Bloc, was rampant in Communist nations and even more polarizing. The vast majority of citizens lived like impoverished hungry lepers or slot-pounding zombies while a tiny leadership crust of Communist Party people and their stooges lived like gods.
However, this does not excuse the economic slide of the lower classes in the U.S. This must be addressed, but the Marxist inclinations of progressives will not solve it. A state run economy relying on bureaucrats without stake or knowledge to push the buttons at the right time doesn’t work, never has, never will.
And by the way, “anyone more divisive” than Lincoln? As a historian since college I’ve read a lot about Lincoln and his times. I ask you to stop reading Marxist revisionist text, if that’s what you’re doing, and read several comprehensive books about those times and about Lincoln himself. The times were divisive, the country was violently divided. You almost sound as if you’re coming at Lincoln from a pro-slavery or pro-secession viewpoint cause criticism of Lincoln in this regard was always part of their ranting.
Sounds like you want to Make Seattle Great Again. You’re looking in a mirror, pal.
This idea that “Seattle is a filthy and dangerous place thanks largely to the disfunction [sic] of City Council” is such a common talking point, but I’ve never heard anyone outline specifically what it is City Council has or hasn’t done that has led to that outcome. Anything I’ve heard either sounds like fear mongering and blatant mischaracterization.
Also, isn’t it funny how we only see this talking point about “City Council” come up in reference to Sawant? You know there are 8 other council members, right?
I’ll assert that the massively speculative real estate market here probably has made a significantly greater contribution to the “filth” and “danger” that pearl clutchers like you reference. But we don’t hear you folks piping up about that too much–I wonder why?
A policy of abolishing the police and supporting the release of violent felons from prison is part of Sawant’s overall new Marxist vision, yes? Hasn’t she proclaimed these things? She supports the Breathe Act which was sponsored by the Squad, does she not?
Why would any sane person on either end of the political spectrum want a city wherein former arsonists, rapists, and violent murderous felons are turned loose to rampage without a single policeman to be found?
As for Seattle currently, how has the real estate market led to an uptick in violent crime? Are realtors hiring out-of-town thugs? Well, of course not, but rhetoric solves nothing. Seattle needs renter protection and rent control policies that don’t leave the poor behind, not Marxist hate rhetoric that only clouds the issues and creates animosity.
“Why would any sane person on either end of the political spectrum want a city wherein former arsonists, rapists, and violent murderous felons are turned loose to rampage without a single policeman to be found?”
Lol, thanks for proving my point that your type will always fall back on baseless fear mongering. Your side is talking in circles.
Clearly the original commenter was referring to the homelessness epidemic when they mentioned “filth” and “danger”. People lose access to housing when they can’t afford it. The real estate and rental market is pricing people out—it doesn’t explain the whole problem, but it certainly adds fuel to the fire.
Interesting that you mention the need for rent control but find it necessary to swing at the council member that wants to enact just that.
You can’t expect them to “recognize how good it once was” when they weren’t here. For a lot of them, that’s all they know. I’m sure a lot of them think, “well, it’s better than where I came from”. They don’t know any better.
the majority voted for Kshama though
I registered for an account on this WordPress-based electronic medium just to respond to your comment. There are some truths of which you seem blissfully unaware, and some which those of your ilk refuse to accept.
There were serious bouts of gun violence as far back as the mid-eighties, in the late-nineties, and as recently as the Great Recession. Let’s look at 1990 state-wide for example:
1990
Population: 4,866,692
Violent Crime 24,410
Forcible Rape 3,115
Murder 238
Aggravated Assault 14,731
Much of the gun violence came in the form of turf warfare between rivals in organized crime. Even in this wannabe city, there are those vying for control for the trade of illicit substances and human trafficking… or aren’t you familiar with “Strippergate”?
Also, real problems come with wanting to become a real city. For the entirety of its modern existence, this town has longed to be just like Los Angeles and San Francisco, and it’s now getting its wish. Seattle will never return to being “one of the cleanest and safest large cities” because not only does it want to be able to compete with the larger markets in the country, but also because IT NEVER WAS “CLEAN AND SAFE” IN THE FIRST PLACE. Where have you been? Do you even live in town, or do you just drive around it because you think this is a real city, and too scared of it?
All of you should spend a month in Detroit to get some perspective.
Publish all the 2010 to 2017 stats. Thanks.
Lets not use the 1990s, or other cities, as a basis for what’s acceptable, please. Don’t so casually disregard the experiences of people who have lived here for the past few decades.
“Hey, income inequality was worse in 1920, stop complaining!”
Tents on sidewalks and in parks is new, last 2-3 years for most of it. Did not exist in the 1990s. Homeless yes; public large scale camping on sidewalks and in parks no.
This analysis is a good example of corporate media mind capture. Thinkers like this display the common American mental infirmity of being unable to focus on systemic problems and solutions. Instead, they waste time talking, and writing, about personalities and values. Systemic inequality is the cause of the present democratic deficit and nostalgic discourses that want to “Make Seattle great again” distract us from the fundamental crime at the heart of the dysfunction everyone feels: the creation of a class of super-rich who suck resources away from the poor and middle classes. Marx’s analysis of the inequalities of the first liberal phase of capitalism in the 19th century is also, not surprisingly, the best analysis of the current neoliberal phase. If this writer had read contemporary Marxist thinkers like David Harvey and Richard Wolf, he would understand how silly his equivalence of Trump and Sawant supporters is.
Translation: we who question Sawant or the progressives’ views are too stupid to understand what we see, and need progressives to explain it for us. Got it.
Sawant is a raving demagogue. So is Trump. It’s obvious to anyone not a member of either’s base.
The root of the nation’s descent into inequality is the Clintons’ destruction of the Democratic Party as a labor party fighting for the economic well being of the poor and middle classes. Progressives in the Democratic Party are thus the biggest problem in our politics today because they distract us with identity issues instead of leading us to focus on devising programs like Medicare for all and free public universities that transfer wealth from the rich to the poor. Sawant is a socialist, not a progressive, and she is working for a more just society by refusing to make the compromises with wealthy corporations that corporate and progressive Democrats too often make. She is not a demagogue. She is what Democratic Party politicians should be if they still worked for the middle classes. I would argue that BelowBroadway’s centrist discourse is the demagogic one. Trump is obviously a demagogue, but he was very useful because he articulated real problems that useless neoliberal centrists like Obama and his ilk ignored for decades. I see no similar salutary effect in BB’s angry comments, just insults and misunderstanding.
Honestly can all the right-wing and centrist Kshama haters just let it go already? You lost. The majority of the district voted fair and square NUMEROUS times to keep Kshama in office. You are all old men yelling at clouds, with onions on your belt, clogging up the comments section with the same drivel over and over again. It’s sad. Why can’t you go complain on Reddit or NextDoor or in the Seattle Times comment section or something.
And why can’t you stop making age-ist, misandrist comments that serve no purpose other than to satisfy your own hatreds and egoism? And of course, anyone who disagrees with you needs to be labeled in the most negative way possible. This is the action of a crude primate, not a wise and compassionate human being who actually wants the world to be a better place.
Um Sawant supporters are constantly called nasty things in the comments…you just called me a crude primate, for example. lol. Owww my poor feelings. Bummer you didn’t get the Simpsons reference. This primate suggests you lighten the heck up and stop taking yourself so seriously.
I’m a Trump supporting member of the Ruling Class. Just ask a Sawant supporter.
Our home D3 lost.
A working theory, a conjecture with bias:
The Yes PR rose to the level of ridiculous. If they had made a case (which they couldn’t) and left it alone they might have squeaked by (not a statistically viable conclusion but, …). Instead, they kept throwing money and wildness at it, attracting so much attention they shot themselves in the Tom Fords. Enough people saw and understood the joke that the propaganda could not gain traction. No matter how they tried, the decision was still local. We read here in Seattle.
BTW, HoldingOutHopeforDemocracy (I wonder if you even live here), You can’t make a case for where you lay the blame. Are you maybe laying the groundwork for a more virulent case of Socialist bigotry because you don’t seem to understand what it represents.
The sad thing is, I agree with the bulk of progressive socialist viewpoints regarding housing, rents, wages, and the like, however, I solidly reject communism as the ultimate nirvana to achieve, and after living in crime-ridden cities I reject the notion that the presence of law enforcement creates crime–a notion that AOC has pushed around.
Abolishing law enforcement in a big American city is suicide. Reform is necessary, no question, but just booting the cops and washing hands is baby out with the malicious bathwater.
Looks obvious it will be more of the same gibberish from her for the rest of her term, when she and her supporters still believe all these “yes” votes were from “big business” and right-wingers. They just can’t seem to get it that plenty of those votes were from liberal democrats who just don’t buy her divisive bullshit. But then, nobody ever would expect her to learn anything— even with a razor-thin margin like it seems she has pulled off.
. . . “In other words – the wealthy socialists all over the country sent their out of state donations to force their socialist mantra down the throats of Seattle citizens”.
Socialists are the wealthy ones….lmao okay. That goes against the word.
As I’ve noted here before, the recall campaign made at least one huge mistake — namely, letting Sawant’s “right-wing recall” charge go unchallenged. Recall supporters tended to scoff at this phrase, apparently regarding it as yet another example of Sawantian rhetorical excess unworthy of response. In a city full of self-regarding progressives with carefully cultivated political identities, discounting the power of this slogan (whether one agrees with it or not) was a bad move.
What Bridger should have done, several weeks back when the true extent of Trump-adjacent money underwriting the recall campaign became widely reported, was to call a press conference, get up on a stage somewhere with all the people of color he could muster around him, and say something like this: “If you support Donald Trump, or if you are in agreement with any of the white supremacist and other extreme groups that support him, you are not welcome in this campaign. We don’t need your money, we don’t need your votes, and we especially don’t need or want you volunteering for us. I hope I have made my position clear.” Imagine the laudatory news coverage that would have gotten! (Sure, the Stranger and the smaller serious left-wing media would have been unimpressed, but the Seattle Times and TV would have positively eaten it up. People would still be talking about it.) Such a forthright, unequivocal statement, coupled with an announcement that contributions from identifiable Trump supporters would be immediately returned, would almost surely have garnered the recall effort several thousand votes, more than enough to win. I think there were probably some strategists who urged them to do this, but for some reason they just couldn’t. Perhaps they were afraid of the reaction on right-wing talk radio and Fox News, even though those media have little influence in District 3. In other words they may have been more concerned about their national image than their local one. If so, they’re far from the first to make this mistake. Plenty of liberals have done the same.
One more observation: Throughout the entire campaign I never met a single recall supporter in person. Sawant’s supporters owned the street every day, and this is a crucial part of a winning campaign. You have to let voters know they aren’t alone — that there are real people behind a cause. The recall campaign always seemed to come at voters from a distance (direct mail pieces, TV, airplane, etc.). Sawant concentrated instead on the ground game, and that emphasis on direct voter engagement, annoying as it might have been at times, undoubtedly made a difference.
I know this Republican M to F Transsexual who says she is independent but sure does always seem to favor Republican way of thinking . She says that Kshama and President Biden are Socialist which in her mind she says is basically Communist . This person lives on Capitol Hill and is also on disability ? Any clarification as to why this person thinks the way they do would be helpful because as a gay person that also lives on Capitol Hill I find them a conundrum because I know our LGBTQ community comes in many political ways of thinking as well although when I was a teen and then early twenty year old I thought all LGBTQ people would want to be Democratic because that is the party that I thought always seemed more for LGBTQ rights . My real conundrum is this person and other people I know like this will complain about socialism all along while they get food stamps , are on SSI and live in Government Low Income Housing .
As we just saw with Henry Bridger II, “selfish” and “I got mine, fuck you” can come from all walks of life. Sometimes self-centeredness drives you to makes changes that also benefit other people. Other times, it’s a destructive behavior to prevent other people from getting what you have.
Rich people sure know how to waste incredible amounts of money on selfish garbage, don’t they?
Yep. Always have.
Kshama instead spends other rich people’s money, from clear across the country.
So did her opponents and Recall cult. More of it. Got any more brain busters?
I can understand not liking Sawant. I can appreciate some of her accomplishments, while also understanding she is a “divisive” figure. Though who isn’t these days?
That said, it amazes me that the anti-Sawant people never seem to grasp that she’s a formidable political opponent. They always seem convinced that everyone is on their side, and it’s just some fluke that she’s won up until this point.
Even if you don’t like her, at some point you have to realize that she has enough support to win elections.
Also, she is just ONE member on a local city council. Most Sawant haters don’t even seem to live on capital hill (obviously, since she keeps winning there). Many don’t even live in Seattle. Just let it go. It has no real effect on you.
Socialism is scary to upper class people because their comfortable life is built on the labor of others. And the laborers who allow them to live in such comfort may be soon rising up against them. That is scary so they love trying to smash socialism even at a microscopic hyper local level. Sawant has more news stories than any of the ACTUAL corrupt Washington state politicians, corerupt police forces, corrupt rural Washington sheriffs, etc. Capitalists are threatened because labor that created all this tech and comfort for them are now getting class consciousness.
You spelled Capitol Hill incorrectly. I know, because I live here.
Lost in a lot of the rhetoric we’ve seen around the recall in later days are those of us who believed that the recall itself was inappropriate and voted accordingly. Yes, the state supreme court allowed it to move forward with some of the counts intact and upheld that it met the legal threshold, and yes Sawant has been found guilty of ethics violations. But there are voters who don’t support the way Sawant operates generally that don’t agree with this use of the recall process in this case, or found that for them personally the counts outlined by the recall campaign didn’t meet a standard of recall for them.
If you look at the breakdown of D3 and how we voted in the November election–compared to the rest of the city they mayors race here was significantly closer than overall. It’s clear in the fact that we continue to send Sawant back to the council as long as the candidates that oppose her tend to be more centrist or perceived as aligned with corporate/business interests.
Centrists need to find a to candidate to run that will appeal to further left demographics if they want to unseat Sawant in D3. The reality thus far is that many of our strong progressive leaders in this district are already doing great work where they are in various non-profits or other roles–as evidenced by some of the reaction the council got when they started doing some initial outreach to potential nominees for Sawant’s position if the recall had been successful.
I also hope progressives spend some time in the next four years working to educate their neighbors on the fact that we are a city where the majority of power to enact policy lies with the executive and hold our MAYOR accountable. The council gets a lot of the attention for the failures in this city because their work is highly visible due to the function of public meetings laws and how they set the budget. But what they mayor does with that budget in the executive is what actually makes the difference in the impact of what you see every day on our city streets.
Harrell has made a lot of promises about how he’ll collaborate with council, community and city departments to improve things–if we actually all want to see the change we say we do, help your neighbors hold our mayor accountable to those promises.