One of the more eventful local elections in Seattle history is now over. With a new district system for electing city councilmembers, all nine council seats up for grabs and an unprecedented infusion of corporate money, the biggest takeaway from the results was surprisingly pedestrian: People who have made a lot of money really like the idea of making more of it.
The district system was designed to increase city council accountability, and in that it was successful. Seven of nine council seats faced strong challenges to the establishment candidate, as opposed to the somnambulant coronations that have been the Seattle norm in recent years. Four dozen people ran for those seats in the primary. And the single most important issue dominating the election — the city’s relentless push for density and its impact on decimating affordable housing — was the campaign centerpiece of every one of the challengers, including several strong progressives.
In all nine races, the candidate who raised the most money won. Six of those winning candidates shared the same campaign consultant, Christian Sinderman, who also ran Mayor Ed Murray’s 2013 campaign.
These election results are being spun by urbanist backers as an electoral ratification of Seattle’s current infestation of construction cranes. That’s one way to read the results. Another way is to conclude that most people don’t follow city council politics very closely, and name familiarity — which is driven by money — is a huge advantage. And another way is that in eight of the nine current races, challengers got more than 40 percent of the vote and the winners just over 50 percent — in stark contrast to the 70 and 80 percent winning margins many council members have enjoyed in the past. As evidenced by the tighter races, slowing the developer gravy train clearly has a significant local constituency, far more so than in the past.
It just wasn’t enough to win a majority of council seats.
As is, the Seattle City Council will be far more diverse in almost every respect than it has been in the past few decades. A majority are women, and four are people of color. In another progressive win, Councilmember Mike O’Brien was reelected. So was Councilmember Kshama Sawant, despite a ferocious establishment effort to unseat her led by Murray and Council President Tim Burgess. Debora Juarez’s election in Northeast Seattle adds another progressive voice, and on some issues Lorena Gonzales, newly elected to a citywide seat, will be a progressive voice as well. Getting a fifth vote to pass progressive legislation won’t be an unthinkable non-starter any longer.
The days of a monolithic council and chronic 9-0 and 8-1 votes are over for a while to come. That unpredictability likely won’t extend to anything involving serious money.
But that could change. With the passage of I-122, which grants registered voters four $25 vouchers to finance candidates in upcoming mayoral, city council and city attorney races, underfunded candidates in these races will have another assist in waging competitive campaigns.
Moreover, other local results had a decidedly progressive bent. All four reform candidates won their school board races, and in Fred Felleman, the Port of Seattle will have an ardent environmentalist as a commissioner for the first time in its sordid history.
Those down-ticket races — political speak for an election’s lower-tier races — had more progressive results precisely because they didn’t draw as much corporate money. In the council races, that money was critical. Three of the four biggest beneficiaries of corporate soft money (winners Burgess and Rob Johnson, loser Pamela Banks and the still hopeful Shannon Braddock) held election night leads, and in the case of Braddock, Johnson and (potential) winner Bruce Harrell, their leads were small enough that corporate money swung their elections. Cash still has a disproportionate influence on local elections, and most of the money is coming from people and companies who rely on elected officials to help them make more of it.
The other significant result, though, was the outlier to these trends. Sawant is shaping up to be a unique political talent, and her success is a genuine phenomenon. Consider these numbers from her campaign: More than 600 active volunteers; more than 178,000 phone calls; more than 90,000 door knocks throughout the campaign; 9,236 doors knocked on in the final weekend; and well over $450,000 in donations — without accepting any corporate cash — from 3,445 different donors, triple the number of any other candidate. Her donations were smaller, averaging half or less than that of other campaigns. But Sawant made it up with her sheer number of donors and volunteers.
That is utterly unprecedented in local politics. It’s why Sawant is returning to council while the candidates she worked most closely with fell short. If what Sawant has could be bottled or cloned, progressives would dominate city politics. As is, they’re only an election away from being a determining force.
Can public financing and campaign experience outpace Seattle’s steady exodus of voters who can no longer afford to live here? We’ll find out next election.