UPDATE 11/9/19 10:45 AM: In front of supporters and volunteers who gathered for training on her campaign’s weekend ballot “curing” effort, Kshama Sawant declared victory Saturday morning in the race for the District 3 seat on the Seattle City Council.

“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!”

“Working people, people of color, young people, came out in huge numbers to vote by overwhelming majority for our socialist politics and against this attempted hostile corporate takeover,” Sawant said to hoots and hollers from the crowd.

The declaration shared across her campaign’s social media accounts marked the end of a week of tallying election results made all the more dramatic by daily updates under Washington’s vote by mail system.

In her statement, Sawant put Seattle’s large companies who opposed her on notice that she does not intend to back down, calling her success in the election “as close a referendum on the Amazon tax as possible.”

She also called the vote “a repudiation of the billionaire class, of corporate real estate, and of the establishment.”

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If economist Kshama Sawant is to, indeed, stage an overtime comeback against challenger Egan Orion, it will start as her previous late surges have — with a quiet, subtle reversal of fortune in the first stages of the late vote counts.

Wednesday’s second release of King County results showed Sawant gaining a small amount of ground on her District 3 challenger — but only by falling short a little less painfully than in her surprisingly deep Election Night gap.

With just over another 3,400 ballots counted Wednesday, the race now stands at Orion, 53.8%, Sawant, 45.8%. The gap is down to a flat 8 points — but now more than 1,900 votes separate the candidates.

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(Image: Alex Garland for CHS)

With reporting by Margo Vansynghel, Jake Goldstein-Street, and Alex Garland

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At Orion’s party held at Pike/Pine’s Sole Repair, the early crowd included his family, supporters, and Uncle Ike’s owner Ian Eisenberg.

“Thousands of voters have talked to me at the doors and they know who I am,” Orion told CHS Tuesday night.

“I know Kshama would like this to be a contest between her and Amazon, but at the end of the day, she’s got me. And I’ve got a really long record of engaging with the community and really getting things done,” he said as someone handed him a BETO for President hat.

“What went well in the campaign? Well, number one that I wasn’t Kshama Sawant,” Orion said earlier in the night before the first count. Orion said he felt only a “9 or 10 point” lead would be really comfortable, given later batches will favor Sawant. 7 or 8 percentage points? That could be OK. But “5 or 6 is like hah,” Orion said, making a distressed sound.

“[Voters] want to see someone that’s accomplished, that’s not too far afield from Kshama and her values and so I think the voters see me as someone that can take those values and get things done,” he said.

Meanwhile, hundreds gathered for the first ballot results with the Sawant campaign in the Central District at the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute — the scene of Sawant’s Primary Election Night triumph this summer. When the Election Night results hit, the music stopped and then restarted and subdued conversations began. “Within range, within range,” one Sawant fan reassured another supporter.
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Sawant volunteers gathered Saturday in Cal Anderson for “get out the vote” efforts (Image: Vote Sawant)

Phone banking for Orion (Image: Egan for Seattle)

It would be ironic if the uber expensive, cash and digital advertising-infused, about as dirty as Seattle political fighting gets District 3 race came down to an old-fashioned “get out the vote” push but that didn’t stop both campaigns duking it out until Tuesday’s 8 PM ballot deadline from rolling out a busy weekend of action across Capitol Hill and the surrounding neighborhoods.

As pamphlet after pamphlet and canvasser after canvasser spread across the neighborhoods, incumbent Kshama Sawant and challenger Egan Orion continued to draw national attention as they battle in a contentious and costly race that serves in many ways as a microcosm for the rest of the city.

For Sawant, the push meant a Saturday morning rally at Capitol Hill’s Chop Suey with what the campaign said were over 160 volunteers that then spent the afternoon at 20 stations across the neighborhood they see as a hub of untapped voters for their Socialist Alternative incumbent fighting for her political life.

One organizer said that only 13% of the Capitol Hill Sawant supporters they’ve identified had voted just three days before the election.

“There are literally thousands of people out there that we need to reach,” Sawant said Saturday. “Many of our people haven’t voted yet, so this weekend is extremely crucial.”

Orion’s campaign was similarly trying to reach voters on North Capitol Hill when CHS visited its 21st and Union office Saturday afternoon.  Continue reading →