UPDATE 11/10/2023 9:00 PM: In a statement, Joy Hollingsworth thanked voters Friday night. “I am humbled and honored to be chosen by District 3 voters to represent our communities on the Seattle City Council,” Hollingsworth said. “As someone whose family has called this neighborhood home for three generations – raised in our district and grew up in its schools, community centers, and parks – I cannot wait to start serving you.”
In her declaration of victory, Hollingsworth said every neighborhood of D3 will have her ear at City Hall.
“From Capitol Hill, First Hill, Central District, Madrona, Eastlake, Montlake, North Capitol Hill, Madison Park, Madison Valley, Judkins, Leschi, Mt. Baker and Portage Bay — Everyone will have a voice,” she said.
With turnout reaching 45% in Friday’s count, Hollingsworth is set to finish with around 53% of the vote. Hudson appears to have done best with very late and Election Day voters — she tallied around 57% of the 6,600 or so ballots counted in Friday’s update.
The Friday 11/10 update
Candidate Hudson meeting the residents of D3 earlier in the campaign (Image: CHS)
UPDATE 11/10/2023 11:00 AM: Alex Hudson has conceded the race to Joy Hollingsworth.
“This morning, Seattle City Council District 3 candidate Alex Hudson called opponent Joy Hollingsworth to formally concede the race in Seattle City Council District 3, which includes Capitol Hill, First Hill and the Central District,” an update sent by the Hudson campaign reads.
“They had a short but friendly conversation during which Hudson congratulated Hollingsworth on her victory and offered her support and assistance going forward as Hollingsworth joins the City Council. Hollingsworth was gracious in accepting the concession and thanked Hudson for running a classy and substantive race.”
“This was a hard fought campaign, but also a civil and substantive one, and I want to publicly congratulate Joy on her victory,” Hudson said in the statement. “Of course it hurts to lose, but Joy ran a stellar campaign, and I have no doubt she will be a strong and effective representative for the people of District 3.”
ORIGINAL REPORT:
It’s not clear if Wednesday’s interrupted count was an anomaly but Thursday’s tally from King County Elections appears pretty definitive. Joy Hollingsworth is on her way to victory in the race for the District 3 seat on the Seattle City Council.
After Thursday’s third day of ballot counting, Hollingsworth has maintained a 13-point lead over challenger Alex Hudson with the gap increasing Thursday to more than 3,200 votes. At nearly 36% turnout counted, there are likely fewer than 5,000 ballots left to process unless more voters turned out in the district than elections officials were predicting in Seattle.
In Thursday’s count, Hollingsworth gained ground with 52% of the more than 3,000 ballots processed going to the Central District candidate. Hudson’s camp turned in a faded 45% mark on the day.
Hundreds of challenged ballots with issues like missing or mismatched signatures will be added to the totals but seem unlikely to sway the results.
The latest marks put a swift end to what looked like a stronger turnaround among later voters by Hudson in Wednesday’s count. Less than 1,500 ballots were counted for D3 Wednesday after envelopes containing threats and white powder were sent to county elections facilities in the region. The FBI is investigating.
CHS reported here on the Election Night triumph for the Hollingsworth campaign that saw the Mayor Bruce Harrell-endorsed candidate post a 17-point lead after running a campaign that went hard on public safety while also appealing to voters seeking a more moderate approach to the city’s issues around housing, affordability, and homelessness.
“We did this,” Hollingsworth said on Election NIght. “We’re going to build Seattle to be our home again. For taking care of folks, we’re safe, we’re healthy. Our kids are protected, y’all. Our kids, our babies.”
“We’re gonna do that job. So look, when you’re from a community you’re accountable to the community, right and no one’s more accountable,” Hollingsworth continued at her campaign’s Election Night gathering at 14th Ave’s First AME Church.
“We’re going to build Seattle to be our home again.”
D3’s longtime representative Kshama Sawant was on the sidelines of Tuesday’s Election Day as she prepares to step down from the council and shift her focus to the creation of a new national political party. The veteran council member found herself standing alone in City Hall on the afternoon in a failed attempt to convince her counterparts on the council to join her in a symbolic resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. She will have served the city for nearly a decade since her 2014 election to the council.
In a CHS survey of voluntary respondents, more than 96% of those who said they supported Hollingsworth in the race said public safety was an important factor in their decision. Just under 30% of Hudson supporters said the same. Instead, Hudson supporters were more likely to be driven by priorities around streets and transit, affordability, and homelessness. 60% of those who supported Hollingsworth also said homelessness was a priority issue in their choice. Overall in in the unscientific, self-selected survey, public safety ranked as the number one priority at 70% of respondents, followed by homelessness (57%), and streets and public transportation (30%).
Corporate money flooded into the race — though nowhere near the spending seen in 2019 in the unsuccessful bid to unseat Sawant. CHS reported here on the massive boost in contributions to Hollingsworth supported by independent expenditure committees including a committee from the National Association of Realtors and labor-associated groups. Hudson’s campaign also benefited from the spending.
Hollingsworth and Hudson leapt forward from the August primary, emerging from an eight-way District 3 race for the Seattle City Council.
On her way to victory, Hollingsworth led her campaign messages with public safety and has said she believes SPD’s staffing needs to be fully restored. Her priorities include reducing 911 response times “for all priority calls,” addressing Fire, EMT, Police and CARE team staffing shortages, spending more on Health One funding and treatment resources for the Seattle Fire Department, expanding the community resource officer program. She has also said she will “prioritize police accountability, upholding high standards, and providing transparent oversight” but has not offered specific plans.
Hollingsworth joined the D3 race in January with “cannabis justice,” hunger advocacy, and three generations in the Central District on her side on MLK Day before any other candidate when it was still not clear if Sawant might seek reelection. The basketball standout and former coach at Seattle University earned a masters at the University of Washington and co-founded Hollingsworth Farms, Washington’s only major Black-owned cannabis farm. Hollingsworth is the granddaughter of civil rights leader Dorothy Hollingsworth who died last year at the age of 101.
Hollingsworth will be the first Black councilmember in Seattle since Harrell left office in 2019. She will join the rest of the council in being sworn into office in January.
Her victory comes amid a surge in support for more moderate, less progressive candidates in the races for the city council that has also seen incumbents trailing in the races to keep their seats. Not all is lost for the progressives — yet. Late voter counts are helping at least one progressive incumbent make a race of it in South Seattle’s District 2 where Tammy Morales is headed for a neck finish with challenger Tanya Woo. UPDATE: D2’s Morales has won as has her fellow incumbent Dan Strauss representing Ballard and District 6. Downtown District 7 incumbent Andrew Lewis has fallen and will be replaced by business-backed Bob Kettle on the council.
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So the plan is to double down on bold strategies like these… https://www.kuow.org/stories/the-seattle-police-chief-his-cooking-events-and-an-overspent-department
let’s give the new council time to clean up the mess Sawant left. I’m hopeful they are successful, as I would hope we all are.
we all deserve to live in a thriving Seattle again.
One person did not create this…are you kidding?
Did I miss something or does this have absolutely nothing to do with Joy Hollingsworth, who doesn’t yet hold office? Maybe you should direct your ire at Sawant, who is still in office, instead.
This is part of mayor Harrel’s efforts to increase staffing, the same person pictured above at Hollingsworth election night rally and whom endorsed her campaign from the very early days. I hope I’m wrong, but I see more of this approach, approving overtime for things like this but not community meetings and use of force investigations, as furthering the divide between the city and SPD.
This vote evidences city voters and SPD moving closer together.
Matt, you’re complaining about a mess that occurred under Sawant’s watch, under Sawant’s policies. Is it possible that bridge building — the type of governance we had before she blew up local governance — can be more effective than attack, scorch, and burn? Be kind, and give Hollingsworth a chance.
The plan is to fund police and sweep parks. Run a normal city and not a Socialist experiment in drug and crime tolerance. Perhaps this bothers you. But a strong majority of Seattle’s voters wants a course-correction from the Progressive mistakes of 2019-2023.
Why did the margin narrow if she won a majority of the votes for this count? any math wizs?
Becase 52% is lower than 57%
ahhhh thank you 🤣
Congratulations Seattle on handing the keys back to corporate.
Progress to be measured in small appeasements.
As is will ever be.
Oh yes. How I wish we still had a completely non-responsive representative, as we have for the last fucking ten years. Wasn’t that great?
Sore looser.
And how is it that progress was measured during our Progressive reign? Increasing homelessness, closing businesses, escalating deadly violence, epidemic property crime, and discarded societal norms? And a Council representative who took no interest in any of it. Time to give other people a chance to move things in a better direction.
50 years flat wages and covid did a numbe rfor sure. Then Fentanyl on top of that hit big.
This has been coming since Reagan
The Copium must flow. Seattle’s Progressive minority will never accept that your ideas and your abrasive disruptive style, as practiced by Sawant and her cabal, were terrible and the voters rejected you. A majority of the voters wants normal sane governance back. What we lost during Sawant’s reign of terror. Literal terror at times. Good riddance to her and to anyone that supported her.
Terror in what way? Like a coup on the American govt.?
They don’t get it. They are all about themselves.
Progressive tears are flowing. Sorry folx. A majority of Seattle — even D3 — believes in basic funding cops, believes city parks aren’t for tents and stolen bikes, and wants to see Link rail be safe to ride again. Wants downtown and Broadway Ave not to be open air drug markets. You had 4 years of Council control; crime went up, OD went up, businesses closed and open camping took off. The voters have spoken. This was a wave election across the city. The Stranger Election Control Board lost at least 5 of 7 Council recommendations. Seattle is done with ignoring crime and enabling it by bad Progressive policies.
All that stuff gets worse under your conservative candidates. I cannot wait for it to back fire.
Keep on waiting. Your propaganda doesn’t match our reality
Except that it won’t – when there was a more moderate city government all “that stuff” was much better here… and no, the people being elected are not conservative.. simply a small amount less far left as your preferred representative who was a far left as it is possible to get on the spectrum of political belief..
I’m sure you know that the winning candidates are not “conservative,” but quite moderate/liberal anywhere but Seattle. So why are you trying to label them as something they are not?
I identified as a progressive all my life until CHOP and the spectacular collapse of the quality of life in Seattle under extreme progressive leadership. The far left has lost their minds and turned allies into enemies. Now I just want a city run by reasonable people that want to build it up for everyone rather than burn it down. I will never support a candidate recommended by The Stranger ever again because I want to live in a vibrant city, not a sh*thole filled with drug vagrants from Florida selling stolen goods from the park.
Those things rose across the country as a result of an unprecedented global pandemic, but sure, it was the four years of having a slight majority of progressive candidates in a strong mayor system 🙄
Depresing results. The boomer rich upper white class gets their way.
And it sure feels good. Headed out in my orthopedic shoes to drive my Tesla to Seattle Caviar. Time to celebrate!
Have you noticed who those rich boomers are voting for? Lots of people of color..Woo, Hollingsworth, Saka, Rivera. Or maybe it’s more than just rich boomer white people who are voting this way! Pretty scary, isn’t it?
And then you have the progressive up above who’s excited for things to get worse for poor people under the new leadership? I mean, what even is their ideology, if not just a bunch of posturing young middle class white kids with no skin in the results of these elections?
lol reverse idpol… this has been a thing since Obama and before. No one is fooled. Class-centric politics 4ever.
Yeah, we all know about the dirtbag left. Your taking over of the progressive movement, where all issues come down to class, has destroyed the cause. Listen to yourself. First you say you’re excited for things to get worse for the people you pretend to care about, then you basically call black people stupid voters who must only have voted for Hollingsworth because she’s black. Everything you’ve said here is disgusting and frankly makes you sound like a Trump Supporter.
“Class-centric politics 4ever” … as the Progressive erases the resounding win of … checks notes … the Black, CD family resident homeowner, gay, weed store owner Hollingsworth… what part of “the Ruling Class” is she a part of exactly?
Sure – blame that buzzword-laden boogeyman instead being introspective about why the candidates you favored lost.
This comment right here is racist. Majority of black folks voted for joy because they want safety and deserve safety. What I’m hearing you say is that the black community of Seattle don’t deserve safety or want safety, which is complete racism. This is how the black community is feeling, stop speaking for the black community!
And why did the majority of black folks favor Gonzales over Harrell?
You desire everyone see and prioritize the needs of marginalized people in this city and yet when it doesn’t go EXACTLY your way you devolve into stereotyping and name calling. Please grow up.
I think the results are encouraging as well as many of my neighbors and the owners of the businesses I frequent and most of them a neither boomers, rich nor white.
Of course you all like to forget Gen X voters, because we apparently do not matter and we won’t give in to your bullshit generation bating nonsense.
I am by no means upper middle class, nor rich. And I voted for Joy Hollingsworth.
Mostly because I’m sick of white progressives talking shit about things for which they have little to no understanding.
So I would rather vote for a black woman with sensible policies for all of us than another progressive with high ideals that end up being ruinous and leading to terrible outcomes for all.
Are the Boomers in D3 in the room with you now?
Meanwhile, Mosqueda looks to win the county seat. I wonder how many people voted for her here just to get her off the city council Lolol
she wasn’t on my ballot but I could assume that happened many places
Good riddance to Mosqueda. Apparently, the City Council will appoint her replacement until the next city-wide election. But will that be the current Council or the new one? Hopefully, the latter!
The new Council.
Looking forward to CM Hollingsworth! Finally someone who will be responsive to our district’s concerns…starting with potholes and ending with gun violence. She or her office crew may even answer our emails/phone calls, Congrats to Joy and best of luck.
That cat photo is darn cute!
Hooray! Finally the cities wealthy profiteers and their worshipers will have people fighting for them. Lock the unhoused up and sanitize the streets! Re-education camps for all who do not believe in profit!
Money is everything!
Profit is it’s own reward!
Take joy from profit and profit from joy!
Do you think only white folks voted for her? Do you think the BIPOC community doesn’t want safety? Do you think the BIPOC community deserves to live in a safe neighborhood? What I hear you saying is only white rich people deserve to be safe. Stop with your racist rants. I live in the CD and what I’m hearing is that everyone wants to feel safe in their homes and wants to feel safe walking down the street, but that many don’t….
oh wow! nothing racist in what i said…pure satire. i was commenting on how ridiculous it is of the folks who hated Kshama to say that nothing good came out of her time in office. i didn’t agree with her at times but a lot of good came to those who are suffering the most, increased wages etc because she fought for them not for the rich. in fact she was an antagonist to the rich and those are the only people who i’m interested in seeing hold office as long as we have to live in this charade of democracy. she gets blamed for an increase in unhoused people, addiction and crime when in reality those are all predictable outcomes of capitalism. in a just society we would all be like Kshama…fighting for those that have less not licking the boots of those who have it all.
and the last three statements in my comment are actually taken from the Ferengi rules of acquisition. so put away your racist card and go watch some star trek!
I’m guessing it was mostly whites — for Hollingsworth and Hudson both. By and large, poor people of color understand that the political system as it currently exists isn’t likely to do much for them, no matter who’s in office. (Yes, they probably should vote anyway, but I understand why most of them don’t, except maybe for president.)
Funny though isn’t it, that the countries that have had (may still have) re-education camps have been non-capitalist…
USSR..
China..
Vietnam..
Cambodia..
North Korea..
Cuba..
I see Marxists regimes (that have seemingly almost inevitably lead to eventual dictatorships) on that list.
I can’t TELL YOU how happy everyone i know is that Joy will be our representative.
She is actually from here and gets it. Knows everyone and is going to be the best council person we’ve EVER HAD!
I’M SO HAPPY!!!
Me too! And I voted for Alex.
over 40% of the voting district disagrees with you so you don’t know many people I guess