“It’s one of the most important, I think, pieces of policy that we can be considering this year,” Gregerson said before the committee vote. “We know over and over every year during the odd year that we have half the number of people turning out to vote. These are extremely important elections. They’re making decisions for everyday people.”

A look at recent election data shows that odd-year elections empower a smaller electorate more heavily weighted toward wealthier areas to decide important local races. Even-year elections, when federal and state offices are on the ballot, simply have higher turnout that is more representative sample of the populace, so having local races decided those years would be more democratic and fair. Since 2010, Washington State has averaged 43% turnout in odd years, compared to 74% in even years. That’s a lot of missing votes in local races.

Elliott Day, who was campaign manager for Mohamed Egal’s successful SeaTac City Council campaign last year, put together some maps and analysis which show that the odd-year hit to turnout is not uniform across the board. Wealthy neighborhoods see a much smaller drop off all across King County, which means their influence goes up.

The Urbanist covered the remarkably high turnout in wealthy single-family areas in Seattle’s recent election, and the comparatively low turnout in working class areas. Day’s map confirms this pattern and shows where it stands in contrast to the 2020 presidential year when electoral turnout was high across board.

The pattern is consistent all over the county, as shown in the maps below which illustrate the shift in the electorates of Shoreline, Renton, Mercer Island, and Bellevue. Turnout cratering in lower-income and tenant-heavy areas and holding steady in the wealthiest corners of the county likely makes it easier for certain kinds of candidates to win and for certain issues to gain salience and attention.

Day’s analysis quantified the impact on the tenant vote countywide and also found a strong correlation between appraised land value and influence in odd-year elections.

Moving local elections to even years would be an easy fix to encourage higher participation and address this structural flaw in our electoral system.

Critics, including some of Gregerson’s Republican colleagues on local government committee, argue voters who don’t vote in odd years are just “lazy” and should get their act together. Some also argue the current arrangement helps provide work for political professionals and consultants in odd years and prevents a logjam scenario when mayors, councilmembers, county executives, county councilmembers, state legislators, federal legislators, statewide officeholders, and presidential campaigns would all be vying for attention, campaign contributions, and ad space at the same time. The ballot would also get even longer in even years, which could push past voters’ attention spans, critics argue, causing them to skip lower profile races or races simply listed later in the “crowded” ballot.

But these complaints don’t outweigh the benefits of higher voter participation in municipal and county races that are highly influential in people’s lives. More people vote in even year elections and it is a more representative sample.

“It is more cost-efficient; it’s better government,” Gregerson argued in committee deliberations. “When more people vote, we have a better democracy, more transparency, and better decisions.”

The importance of these local races is only growing as cities and counties rise to the occasion to address major problems neglected by a gridlocked Congress and Republican-hijacked courts. Issues ranging from climate action, gun control, criminal justice reform, pollution, transit disinvestment, runaway housing costs, gaping wealth inequality, and traffic safety are increasingly tackled on the local level. Campaign infrastructure can and will adjust to new circumstances and need not be an excuse for willfully holding low-turnout elections out of a misguided sense of tradition.

Conservatives may argue progressives are trying to tilt the scales in their favor, but an even-year electorate wouldn’t have changed the outcome of the mayoral race given Mayor Bruce Harrell’s resounding 17-point victory. Moderates and conservatives can still win in even years, but issues facing tenants and the poor wouldn’t be so likely to be overlooked.

Northwest Progressive Institute (NPI) has made passing even-year elections one of their top priorities for the 2022 session. They commissioned a poll on the idea and found strong support: 52% support to just 24% opposition. In making the case, NPI’s Andrew Villenueve noted that voting patterns between even and odd years have only further diverged in recent years.

Turnout in odd-numbered years has continued to be awful even as turnout in even-numbered years has gone up. Washington saw very healthy turnout in both the 2018 midterm and 2020 presidential cycles, aided by prepaid postage on ballot return envelopes, more drop boxes, and the availability of same-day voter registration. Voting has only gotten easier in Washington, yet voters are not voting consistently. They’re sending a message: Fewer elections, please!

We need to listen.

As the old adage goes, less is more. And in this case, less is better, too.

We will see greater and more consistent participation across local elections if we pass this bill. All of the data we have, including this new polling and the voter turnout data I just mentioned suggests that voters want this change.

Andrew Villenueve, Northwest Progressive Institute

Communities of color suffer the most from this political paralysis on these issues, and their influence is stunted by odd-year elections. Young voters will reap the consequences of our inaction on climate and environmental destruction and they’re in the crosshairs of the housing affordability crisis. Unfortunately, they are the voting demographic most disadvantaged by our odd-year setup. It’s not a recipe for success.

It’s better to meet voters where they are at rather than to throw up obstacles. The broader consensus we can form to tackle the huge problems before us, the better off we will be as a society. Even-year local elections are a necessary step in the right direction.

Comment on the bill to convey your support to your legislators.

The post Odd-Year Elections Suppress Tenant Votes but Even-Year Election Bill Can Fix That first appeared on The Urbanist.

Earlier this month, Councilmember Kshama Sawant survived a recall election by 310 votes. Like her previous elections, Sawant’s strength was overwhelmingly in Capitol Hill and the Central District — formerly redlined areas which continue to be lower income and more racially diverse than the northern and eastern reaches of Council District 3.

Cartographer Jason Weill created a results map which shows that once again the E Republican Street wall held Capitol Hill voters south of Republican Street overwhelmingly favored Sawant, as did voters west of 32nd Avenue. The sole exception was one Miller Park precinct that dips south of Republican Street and did back recall (not a total surprise as this precinct also backed Bruce Harrell last month, while Nikkita Oliver and Nicole Thomas-Kennedy won by very narrow margins there.) It’s basically the same formula that has propelled Sawant to victory in her last three elections, albeit by slipping margins in her last two contests.

Politically, Sawant’s win — her fourth in eight years — guarantees another progressive vote on City Council while also deflating narratives that Seattle’s political fault lines were irrevocably shifted in centrists’ favor after Bruce Harrell decisive mayoral win in November. She will continue to be a firebrand for Leftists, a punching bag for centrists, and a thorn in many sides. (More on the political ramifications here.)

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Turnout mostly followed the same pattern as the November election did. Single family zoned areas turned out in greater numbers that the denser apartment-heavy core of D3, as the turnout map via Weill embedded below shows. Young voters did turn out in the recall election a bit more than they did in November and composed the only age demographic with higher turnout than November, but not enough to remake the overall turnout map. Overall D3’s recall turnout was just shy of 53%, which wasn’t far behind the 54.6% citywide turnout in the mayoral election the previous month.

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In a way it’s not surprising that the voting pattern is consistent. Sawant is an extremely well known figure after being on the ballot so frequently over her eight years in office, voters have largely formed an opinion about her one way or the other. City Councilmembers don’t typically get so much attention, but being basically the only revolutionary Marxist elected official in the country will tend to do that.

A Look Back at 2019 Turnout

Rich vs Poor

Councilmember Sawant regularly stresses that movement politics and a direct confrontation with the powers than be — whether corporations, billionaires, megadevelopers, political elites, and so forth. That may prove out in time, but for now the turnout map tells a little different tale. The most mobilized precinct of all in the recall election was the exclusive gated golf-adjacent community of Broadmoor with 78% turnout, a whopping 97% of them who favored recalling Sawant. Fifteen Broadmoor precinct residents opposed ousting Sawant — an interesting group of free thinkers.

Some of the lowest turnout rates, meanwhile, were registered in Yesler Terrace, a community with one of Seattle’s largest mixed-income social housing developments. The main Yesler Terrace precinct had 30% turnout and another precinct just to the east registered the lowest turnout of the election at 24%. In those two precincts 63% and 85% of voters, respectively, opposed the recall.

In battle of rich versus poor, the rich continue to outvote the poor, sometimes by a three-to-one advantage in turnout rate. It seems doubtful the socialist revolution envisioned by Sawant could ever happen if that continues to be the case.

The post Sawant’s Recall Maps Show Familiar Path to Victory Through Capitol Hill and Central District first appeared on The Urbanist.

The campaign to recall Sawant succeeded in forcing the low-turnout December election they wanted, but District 3 (D3) voters didn’t cooperate and participated at levels just shy of the November election. D3 turnout was 52.9% compared to 54.6% citywide the previous month. Turnout in 2019, meanwhile, was 59% in D3. The Kshama Solidarity Campaign had pivoted to collecting signatures in favor of the recall in hopes of getting it on the November ballot rather a special election, but ultimately the court let the recall campaign sit on the signatures and approved a December 6th election.

The Washington Supreme Court okayed three complaints against Sawant for inclusion on the ballot, namely inappropriately printing about $1,700 worth of Tax Amazon flyers on the City dime (for which she agreed to pay a fine), holding an unauthorized rally against police brutality inside City Hall when it was closed due to pandemic restrictions, and allegedly disclosing Mayor Jenny Durkan’s home address to police brutality protesters, which Sawant denied doing. By a narrow margin, voters found those criticisms as insufficient reason to remove her halfway through her term.

Councilmember Sawant and her allies sought to frame their victory as a vindication of Socialist Alternative’s approach, her refusal to back down from bold policy proposals, and an unapologetic style that relishes criticism of the political establishment, including her Democratic colleagues.

Although elected with Socialist Alternative (SA), Sawant is also a member of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). DSA is growing much faster than the more insular SA, which has a higher bar to join. To her DSA comrades, Sawant had both an an olive branch and a critique in her comments in the aftermath of the recall. She credited socialists uniting for her victory, but also said DSA must keep a strong class analysis in their platform and thinking.

“The wealthy…took their best shot at us, and we beat them. Again,” Sawant said at a December 10th victory speech outside Seattle’s New Hope Missionary Baptist Church. “We won because we did not back down. We did not back down in our socialist city council office. Instead, we went on the offensive, and won some of the most crucial victories for renters’ rights this year. We did not back down in fighting for workers.”

Longtime Sawant staffer Jonathan Rosenblum wrote in The Nation that going on the offensive was key to Sawant’s win.

“In stark contrast to mayoral candidate and City Council President Gonzalez, Sawant ran on a platform of rent control, increasing the Amazon Tax, community control over the police, and a Green New Deal for Seattle,” Rosenblum wrote. “Mainstream political consultants might urge candidates in Sawant’s position to burnish their appeal to undecided voters, but every piece of campaign literature loudly proclaimed the councilor’s socialist bona fides and the right-wing, racist nature of the recall.”

Rosenblum laid out some of the big wins on their tenant rights agenda.

“Between the spring and the December 7 vote, she successfully mobilized tenants’ rights groups, the Seattle teachers union, University of Washington workers’ unions, other progressive unions, and SA and DSA activists to win breakthrough renters’ rights legislation: the right to counsel for all tenants facing eviction; a ban on school-year evictions of children, their families, and educators; a ban on any rent increases without six months’ advance notice; and extensions of the Covid-related eviction moratorium into 2022,” Rosenbaum wrote. “And she led the effort to collect more than 15,000 community signatures demanding that the Seattle City Council enact her bill to institute rent control as soon as activists succeed in lifting Washington state’s ban.”

Certainly delivering big wins for tenants was a major part of the loyalty Sawant has built with D3 renters, which in turn propelled her to another victory. The Sawant Solidarity Campaign also claimed to have orchestrated the largest get-out-the-vote field effort in city history, which included droves of organizers and volunteers (apparently fluent in eight languages) canvassing houses and apartment buildings repeatedly. The campaign also tabled across the district with printers on hand to print out ballots for voters who had misplaced them.

This tactic earned the ire of the Seattle Times Editorial Board, who crankily called for a law from the State Legislature to outlaw the practice. This take showed for the umpteenth time that the the Blethen gang are severly out of touch. A quick, easy way to get a replacement ballots improves rather than threatens our democracy, particularly as younger voters are far less likely than Boomers to own a printer. Printing stations for replacement ballots should become standard practice for campaigns. For those worried about election integrity, voters still have to be registered for there to be a replacement ballot to print, and King County Elections already checks for duplicates as part of their verification process. It’s hypocritical for editorial boards to rail against barriers to voting in the South, while calling for them at home.

Sawant’s insistence on calling out systemic failures and fundamental injustices seems to fire up younger voters, perhaps at higher levels than a typical progressive message and messenger would. On election night, Sawant pointed out democracy itself was at stake.

“This 15-month long mockery of democracy has reminded us the difficulty of having a genuinely democratic society under the billionaire’s system,” Sawant said in her speech. “We saw the utter hypocrisy of how this thoroughly undemocratic recall system in Washington was applied by the capitalist courts. The recall against Amazon’s Mayor, Jenny Durkan, Teargas Jenny, was unanimously thrown out by the state supreme court judges, despite the weapons used by the police under her watch against peaceful protestors, myself included. Despite the 18,000 complaints by peaceful protestors.”

Sawant criticized her colleagues for not endorsing her, which she saw as synonymous with abandoning the working class. She called out Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda for opposing her rent control proposal, which would set up a very strict form of rent control “with no corporate loopholes” if and when the State Legislature repeals its ban on rent control. Since Sawant hasn’t shared her bill with colleagues yet, she seems to be assuming opposition rather than responding to actual obstruction. Sawant argues her proposal would build momentum for repealing the ban, but it could very well make it less likely by sending the signal that Seattle will pass an extreme version likely to shut down housing production — and Mandatory Housing Affordability contributions along with it. Better to calibrate rent control carefully following best practices and build a coalition behind it rather than to expect an extreme ultimatum to do the trick.

But whether a candidate in Sawant’s mold could deliver a citywide victory is a more complicated question. A progressive mayoral candidate can’t just win D3 by 51% to win citywide. They have to grab closer to 60% in this progressive-leaning district in order to weather losing more conservatives precincts of North Seattle and West Seattle, especially those along the sound and lake that have consistently voted heavily for the centrist mayoral candidate in recent elections. Sawant’s decisive 2015 win (with 56% of the vote) over Pamela Banks was more in that ballpark, but her margins have slipped since then. She grabbed 52% in 2019 versus Egan Orion, who, granted, was much better funded than Banks.

What 2021 showed is that Sawant’s socialist brand doesn’t fare much worse than other progressive lane candidates, but it doesn’t necessarily fare better either. Abolitionists Nikkita Oliver and Nicole Thomas-Kennedy won D3 too and by larger margins, but hemorrhaging votes in other districts cost them the election. González nearly ran at a tie in the district, while losing badly elsewhere. In 2019, Tammy Morales, who is also a solidly left candidate, grabbed 60% of the vote while Sawant had a much closer race, even as an incumbent.

By the same token, pundits treating Sawant as an aberration also have to face the facts. Sawant really does speak for the majority of her district. After four elections in eight years, it’s hard to dispute. D3 isn’t like just any other district due its high share of younger voters and tenants, who have been mobilized by a decade of socialist organizing. The normal centrist machine messaging just doesn’t play well in D3 — and breaking up Sawant’s base in Capitol Hill and the Central District through redistricting may be the only way centrists defeat her in 2023. Zooming out, if younger voters continue to hold similar political views as they age, this could spell demographic doom for centrist brand of politics across the city.

Sawant is lucky to run in the most progressive district in Seattle. The Urbanist Elections Committee has endorsed Sawant in every opportunity it could and Seattle is lucky to have her holding down the left wing of the city council and rallying behind bold social programs. But when Sawant and company claim their formula would work verbatim in a citywide race or in a swing district, don’t believe them. Progressive should learn from their top-notch field operation, but using it to deliver the same message would be folly.

Mayor-Elect Bruce Harrell’s resounding 17-point win showed that many Seattle voters respond to vibes and promises of unity and decisive action, even if the details or ideological content is fuzzy. In contrast, for Sawant, ideology is always front and center. Sawant having a super close race while Harrell waltzed showed that owning the space of the uniter and coalition builder is an advantageous position. Progressives don’t have to sacrifice their values to occupy that space. It just means stepping away from the axe grinder now and then.

Clarification: This post has been updated to clarify Sawant’s rent control bill hasn’t been shared with colleagues yet.

The post What Sawant’s Close 310-Vote Recall Victory Means for Seattle Politics first appeared on The Urbanist.

I discussed this pattern with political consultant Crystal Fincher on a recent episode of her Hacks and Wonks podcast. Fincher made the excellent point that our political and economic system tends to reinforce this tendency. Tenants move more often, so campaigns can struggle to locate them to communicate with them and their voter registration is less likely to be up-to-date. Older, wealthier homeowners have more bandwidth to follow politics than do tenants who are barely scraping by; homeowners also benefit from the fact that the bulk of political speech is geared toward mobilizing them. Campaigns aggressively door-knock single family homes and drop literature and distribute yard signs to blanket lower-density areas, while lavishing far less attention on apartment buildings, especially when buildings have a secured entry. So while Seattle has more apartments than single family homes, its elections are largely waged on single-family turf.

Reaching apartment buildings requires more planning than just cutting a door-knocking list and hoping a random volunteer can somehow sweet talk their way inside a locked entry. Progressive campaigns do not appear to have devised a workable strategy, based on my own personal experiences door-knocking, and on a look at these turnout maps.

In Weill’s turnout map color scheme, dark green areas had the highest turnout exceeding 70%, while lighter green areas were a step down, but still above average. Yellow signifies turnout near 50%. Yellow-orange was in the 40s, orange was in the 30s, and red was in the teens and 20s. As illustrated below, turnout standouts include Laurelhurst, Montlake, Madison Park, Madrona, Sunset Hill, Magnolia, and Seward Park. None of these neighborhoods has an Urban Village designation and all are blanketed in single family zoning.

As a whole, Seattle voter turnout was 54.6% in the 2021 election, 49.2% in 2017, 52.5% in 2013, and 55% in 2009, which is the last time progressives prevailed over the Big Business-backed mayor candidate when Mike McGinn defeated T-Mobile executive Joe Mallahan. In 2019, turnout ranged from a low of 47.8% in Council District 2 to a high of 59.4% in District 6.

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As the 2019 turnout map shows below, the difference between single family zones and the rest of the city wasn’t as pronounced. Particularly in District 3 and 6, more dense areas turned out at single family levels. This helps explain why Kshama Sawant and Dan Strauss won despite massively well-funded campaigns against them. District 7, however, is more of mixed bag. Interbay, Downtown, and South Lake Union still had pretty weak turnout, but Lower Queen Anne was pretty solid. Relatedly, Andrew Lewis’s win was more of a squeaker.

Looking farther back at 2017, when former prosecutor Jenny Durkan beat urbanist Cary Moon by 13 points, turnout was softer across the board. The green bands along the water were a lighter shade, but because the urban core of the city was still largely orange with low turnout, it still equaled out to a rout of the urbanist/progressive mayoral candidate. (See the interactive map here.)

If maps continue to look like they have, progressive urbanists may struggle to win. The challenge is figuring out how to motivate working class apartment dwellers to vote at rates closer to those of people living in mansions. This schism in representation has been a persistent problem in politics; solving it could finally release the gridlock facing our biggest challenges like climate, housing affordability, racial justice, and wealth inequality.

The post Voter Turnout Maps Tell Tale of Two Cities: Urban and Suburban first appeared on The Urbanist.

Turnout is sitting at 52.4%. King County Elections said virtually all returns from ballot boxes have been counted, which leaves only ballots still coming in from the post office (with a postmark by 8pm Tuesday) remaining to be counted and 591 ballots with signature challenges that potentially could be cured. Because a majority of challenged ballots are from younger voters, they will also likely break for Sawant. Track your ballot to make sure it has been counted, District 3 voters.

Ballot curing may add some votes, but the 232-vote lead appears durable, especially because the last-minute votes still trickling in via the post office are likely to favor Sawant based on the late trend in her favor that erased her initial eight-point deficit on election night.

1,378 additional votes were counted today, which was slightly more than the 1,200 King County Elections projected yesterday. The swing was even more leftward with 67.34% of votes supporting Sawant on the “no recall” side. Remaining drops will continue to get smaller in size.

No recount

King County Elections says that recounts aren’t required for local ballot measures, which the recall is, KUOW reported. “A recount is required when the votes for an office or statewide measure fall within a certain range. There is no required recount range for local ballot measures,” King County said per KUOW.

Sawant’s 0.58% lead would have avoided a machine recount anyway, but it was near the 0.5% threshold had this been a normal election.

In Washington State, mandatory recounts happen under the following conditions, excluding local ballot measures:

• A machine recount is required when the difference between the top two candidates is less than 2,000 votes and also less than half of 1% of the total number of votes cast for both candidates.
• A manual recount is required when the difference between the top two candidates is less than 150 votes and also less than a quarter of 1% of the total votes cast for both candidates.

Even so, recounts typically do not change an election result.

Sawant’s supporters have framed her success in the recall vote as an example of democracy in action.

Our campaign to make sure the voice of working people is heard in this election has infuriated the Seattle Times. Yesterday, the Times published a scandalous editorial in which they called for grassroots ballot printing stations to be outlawed by the state legislature, even describing such efforts as “coercion.”

The Times, which has consistently advocated for the interests of big businesses over working people at every opportunity, is openly calling for anti-democratic measures that would drag Washington to the right. In this election, only one campaign systematically fought for the participation of working people, youth, renters, and communities of color. Only one campaign engaged volunteers to help voters with language barriers cast their ballots. Only one campaign, day after day, printed ballots for people who misplaced theirs, or threw them away by accident. It was ours.

Greyson Van Arsdale, Kshama Solidarity Campaign 

Political Implications

Sawant holding onto to her seat keeps a progressive majority on City Council, albeit to varying degrees by councilmember. Generally, Councilmembers Teresa Mosqueda, Tammy Morales, Andrew Lewis, Dan Strauss, and Lisa Herbold tend to compose that more progressive wing with Sawant, although the latter three do tend to moderate on some issues. Councilmembers Alex Pedersen and Debora Juarez make up the moderate wing and rarely buck the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce (see: Jumpstart Seattle vote), and incoming Councilmember Sara Nelson ran on a platform aligned with their positions.

Mayor-Elect Bruce Harrell will take office in January, as will Nelson, who is replacing Lorena González, and Republican Ann Davison, who is replacing City Attorney Pete Holmes. These moderate victories will change the dynamic at City Hall, but Councilmember Sawant surviving her recall certainly put the damper on narratives arguing the city’s politics had undergone a major shift to the right. This is still a city that elects bold progressives, even as it elects a Republican city attorney who voiced rhetoric on cracking down on the poor. District 3 is still a place that elects a Trotskyite socialist even if its neighbor to the north elects consummate moderate Alex Pedersen.

If her lead holds, for the next two years at least, Councilmember Sawant will remain a counterweight to the more moderate agenda that Harrell has laid out. And she will be looking over his shoulder and — if we’ve learned anything over eight years in office — speaking her mind.

The featured image credit is from the Seattle City Council, via Creative Commons.

Correction: An earlier version incorrectly stated that recalls qualify for recounts and mistakenly listed the gap at .48%.

The post Sawant Pulls Ahead in Thursday Ballot Drop, Likely Survives Recall first appeared on The Urbanist.

On election night, King County Elections initially estimated 6,665 ballots remain to be counted, which makes Sawant’s six-point deficit steep, but not necessarily insurmountable. Wednesday morning King County Elections revised its estimate to around 9,000 ballots remaining, with 6,000 expected to be tallied Wednesday afternoon’s ballot drop alone.

To hold on to her seat, Sawant would have to win about 61% of outstanding ballots to close the gap, based on the County’s latest estimate for remaining ballots, which is based on an educated guess of how many ballots will trickle in via the mail. If more ballots remain than the County expects, the math gets less tight. The upward revision to 9,000 ballots, already lowers Sawant’s win threshold from needing to win two-thirds of the remainder to a more manageable 61%.

Sawant has closed significant election night gaps before — including a 13-point swing in 2019 — but the recall election appears a bit unique with more folks voting early rather than waiting until the last-minute, as left-leaning Seattle voters often do. After eight years in office, most voters have made up their mind about Sawant one way or the other. Some prognosticators remain confident she will pull off another signature comeback. A recount also isn’t out of the question if the margin ends up razor-thin.

True to her style, Sawant was defiant on election night and delivered one of her signature hammer-and-sickle-dropping oratories, lambasting the corporate establishment, the Democratic Party, not to mention her colleagues on Council for not defending her or standing up for the working class. She even offered an analysis (albeit a simplistic one) of why Council President Lorena González lost her mayoral bid — namely that she campaigned on the defensive and failed to brand Bruce Harrell as the corporate candidate. González’s campaign manager disputed that assessment.

The recall election materialized from a litany of complaints about Sawant’s comportment as an official. While not deciding the veracity of the complaints, the Washington State Supreme Court deemed that three charges from that laundry list were credible enough to warrant a recall. The complaints the court deemed worthy of recall consideration amounted to $1,700 worth of misused printer paper, holding an unauthorized rally inside City Hall when it was closed due to pandemic restrictions, and allegedly disclosing Mayor Jenny Durkan’s home address to police brutality protesters, which Sawant denied doing.

The Urbanist Elections Committee (of which I’m a member) endorsed a “No Recall” vote and called the charges against her flimsy and the recall “a transparent attempt to do via a one-off December election what could not be accomplished in three consecutive general elections: defeat Sawant.” Sawant defeated Egan Orion in 2019, Pamela Banks in 2015, and upset incumbent Richard Conlin in 2013. Amazon and Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce invested heavily in defeating her the last time around, but the money bomb may have backfired and ended up playing into her narrative around corporate excesses.

If Sawant fails to close the gap before final certification, one of the few socialist city councilmembers in the country will forfeit her seat and, by City Charter, the City Council will have 20 days to appoint a temporary replacement until her seat can be filled at the next general election, which would be November 2022 in this case.

Publicola‘s Erica C. Barnett reported that Transportation Choices Coalition executive director Alex Hudson and Marjorie Restaurant owner and Capitol Hill EcoDistrict executive director Donna Moodie were rumored to be names some city councilmembers were considering as replacements, but both women said they were happy at their current jobs.

And, of course, the saga isn’t over yet. If this afternoon’s ballot drop strongly favors Sawant, it could be a sign she’s headed to victory.

This article was updated at 10:40am with the latest ballot estimate figures and again to note the gap after Wednesday’s drop.

The post Recall Shaping Up to Be a Nailbiter as Sawant Trails Early first appeared on The Urbanist.

Harrell’s 17-point victory over Council President Lorena González was the most resounding, while Davison (the first Republican elected in Seattle in decades) won by just four points over abolitionist Nicole Thomas-Kennedy. However, the pattern of denser multifamily areas supporting more left-leaning progressive candidates remains pretty consistent across the races.

For Harrell this meant nearly a clean sweep in some of Seattle wealthiest enclaves. Some Laurelhurst precincts gave Harrell more than 90% of their votes and most Magnolia precincts more than 80%. Meanwhile 98% of Broadmoor backed Harrell, and he cleared 94% in one View Ridge precinct (a ritzy area west of Magnuson Park that isn’t shy about announcing its view corridor status). Seward Park, where Bruce Harrell lives, gave 82% of their vote to him, while González barely eked out victories in the core of West Seattle Junction, where she lives, while losing the rest of the peninsula pretty handily.

Most of North Seattle was a blood bath, too. González had showed more strength there in the primary — when Harrell and González together took nearly two thirds of the vote. However, it appears the third of the electorate the pair didn’t win in the primary broke heavily toward Harrell rather than her, flipping some of those precincts.

González had precincts where she cleaned up, but not nearly to the degree that Harrell did in view corridor land. A good precinct for González topped out in the 60% range rather than the 80s and 90s that Bruce managed. And that proved decisive, especially when paired with a strong turnout advantage for older homeowners over younger tenants living in the denser core of Seattle.

Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda won by 19 points over civil engineer Kenneth Wilson, but she also saw her greatest strength in dense urban center as opposed to the single family view corridors that were a bastion of strength for the centrist slate. Most coastal precincts are still red in Mosqueda’s map, but the interior is so solidly blue that it more than canceled out that advantage. Dominating urban villages and carrying the interior appears to be the formula for progressive candidates to win, but only Mosqueda pulled it off facing a lackluster opponent. Harrell, Nelson, and Wilson all ran on preserving single family zoning, but that issue alone didn’t appear decisive given Wilson’s struggles. A recent poll found adding density in single family zones is popular among voters, although less so with seniors who are the most reliable voters.

The pattern of single family zones preferring more conservative candidates and apartment-heavy urban villages breaking for progressives has been persistent in recent elections. The difference in the 2021 election appears to be how strongly single family zones broke for the centrist slate and turned out in greater numbers than denser precincts. U District turnout in particular seemed abysmal. Precinct maps from 2019 shows progressive Council candidates ran up their totals in the dense core neighborhoods to a greater degree while not losing single family zones quite so badly.

González vs Oliver results

Nikkita Oliver outperformed González across the city, but the differences in the maps are most stark in South Seattle. As a Garfield graduate, former District 2 Councilmember, and Black and Japanese American son of Seattle, Harrell made significant inroads in D2 over a typical business lane candidate. A significant portion of D2 voters split their ticket and backed both Harrell and Oliver, despite their platforms and messages being quite different.

Mosqueda vs González

Mosqueda fared much better than her counterpart on Council. The waterfront still trended toward the centrist candidate, but Mosqueda won more precincts on the slopes and had a nearly solid wall of blue down the interior of Seattle. Wilson had a pocket of support in West Seattle, but underperformed Nelson, which suggests an early hasty opening of the West Seattle Bridge was not a potent motivator for peninsula voters like he hoped.

Past maps

A look back at the 2017 results map shows Jenny Durkan precincts ended up being Harrell precincts four year later, plus some South Seattle additions. History has repeated itself.

In 2013, Ed Murray rode basically the same mix of precincts to victory. That formula has only gotten stronger in Mayoral elections. Murray won by 4 points, Durkan won by 13 points, and now Harrell by 17 points. While single family areas haven’t been adding much population due to their restrictive zoning, Downtown has been the fastest-growing area of the city over the last decade, and much of it has gone for the centrist slate in the last three Mayoral elections. But Downtown and South Lake Union also went for Andrew Lewis in 2019, suggesting a more complicated picture.

As The Urbanist notes every election, the results map continues to mirror Seattle’s zoning map. Single family zoning and more conservative voting patterns seem to go hand-in-hand, especially in the wealthier parts of town. Areas with urban zoning went for progressives, with the exception of Downtown. Perhaps a Frazier factor is in play, with residents of Downtown apartments and condos being wealthier than multifamily dwellers citywide. Homelessness also could have been a potent wedge issue there.

Redlining maps still echo as well in election results maps. Parts of the city that were redlined and historically denied investment opportunities make up the progressive base, while the areas ranked the most desirable (where incidentally White people were showered with federally-backed mortgages that built up their wealth) continue to compose the conservative base.

After three straight losses, progressives must certainly look to flip the script and change the mayoral map. Seattle’s tenant population is growing faster than its homeowner population, but it will not be decisive in elections if tenants don’t turn out to vote in larger numbers — particularly if Downtown tenants continue to swing toward centrist mayors. Forging a stronger coalition behind urbanist policies will take some doing, but it’s certainly within reach.

Author’s note: Thanks to Jason Weill for the excellent precinct-level maps. Check them out here for full features and hover over the precincts to see vote tallies.

The post Election Results Maps Show Single Family Surge Propelled Centrists to Victory first appeared on The Urbanist.

Today, we strongly encourage District 3 voters to reject the Recall effort against her, which is entirely based on complaints that are insignificant, unsubstantiated, or both.

While we are familiar and frustrated with the less effective aspects of her political style, this Recall is a transparent attempt to do via a one-off December election what could not be accomplished in three consecutive general elections: defeat Sawant. 

The substance of the recall complaint, such as it is, focuses on petty complaints about misused printer paper. Sawant agreed to pay a fine of $3,516, twice the value of the printing she did on the City dime. This is chump change and not worth the expense of an election.

The other two formal complaints from the Recall side are flimsy as well. Sawant has repeatedly said she did not disclose Mayor Jenny Durkan’s home address to protesters who led a march into Laurelhurst mansion-land. Those leaders also say they learned the Mayor’s address through other means. Moreover, even if Sawant had disclosed the address to protest leaders, this would be grounds for a negative campaign ad in 2023 — not a recall election in 2021.

The other charge is that Councilmember Sawant briefly let a few hundred (masked) people inside City Hall during a June 2020 protest when it was not open to the public due to Covid precautions. This was perhaps unwise. However, no Covid outbreak was linked to the event and no property was damaged. This event does not justify a recall.

Fundamentally, Capitol Hill and the Central District failed to produce a better candidate in the 2019 election, and so we were blessed with four more years of Kshama drama — the good, the bad, all of it. The Recall campaign simply wishes this weren’t so; and the way the campaign has been managed has been patently disingenuous and focused on forcing a low-turnout election in December.

Being an outspoken, controversial, democratically-elected Councilmember is not illegal. Vote “Recall No” by Tuesday December 7th. 

How to vote and register to vote

Ballots should be arriving in mailboxes of District 3 voters. If voters have not received their ballot by Monday November 22nd and believe they should have, voters should give King County Elections a call at 206-296-8683. 

The deadline to register to vote online is November 29th. Voters can register and vote through 8pm on Election Day at any Vote Center locations. In addition to Elections HQ in Renton (open now), King County Elections will open a Vote Center at Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center on December 4th, 6th, and 7th to provide in person services to those who need to register to vote, update their registration, receive a replacement ballot, or use an assistive voting device.

Ballots must be postmarked by Election Day, December 7th, or returned to one of the 16 drop boxes locations open for this election.

The post Vote No on the Recall of Kshama Sawant first appeared on The Urbanist.

On election night, Lorena González was down 29.6 points in the Seattle Mayor’s race, City Attorney candidate Nicole Thomas-Kennedy was down 17.3 points, City Council candidate Nikkita Oliver was down 20.8 points, and incumbent Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda was up only 5.3 points on Kenneth Wilson, a relative unknown who raised little money and garnered few endorsements.

Only half of the expected turnout had been counted and veterans of covering Seattle elections warned the final results would look quite a bit different. Still, many pundits indulged in hot takes gloating how badly progressives had failed — and in some ways they did (as I wrote about last Friday). Ultimately, none of those candidates made a miraculous comeback, but the margins did tighten considerably, which muddies the clean narrative of progressive repudiation some had advanced.

With virtually all the ballots counted now, González is down 17.5 points, Thomas-Kennedy is down 3.8 points, City Council candidate Nikkita Oliver is down 7.9 points, and Mosqueda is up 19.2 points. Thus, from election night, González gained 12 points, Thomas-Kennedy and Oliver gained 13 points, and Mosqueda gained almost 14 points.

• González: -29.6 –> -17.5 = +12.1 point swing
• Oliver: -20.8 –> -7.9 = +12.9 point swing
• Thomas-Kennedy: -17.3 –> -3.8 = +13.5 point swing
• Mosqueda: +5.3 –> +19.2 = +13.9 point swing

A 13 point progressive swing from election night to the final result is starting to be routine in Seattle, with Councilmember Kshama Sawant and Shaun Scott also matching the feat in 2019. That swing propelled Sawant to victory, but Scott came up four points short.

A 19-point win for Councilmember Mosqueda is hard to rectify with a 17-point loss for Council President González. Perhaps, Wilson was really that weak of an opponent. The centrist political machine never really adopted him and funneled money and endorsements his way like they did for Mayor-Elect Bruce Harrell, Councilmember-Elect Sara Nelson, and newly elected Republican City Attorney Ann Davison. Voters appear frustrated with the City Council and a perceived lack of progress on key issues, but they’re also leery of electing novices like Wilson.

A well-worn approach to homelessness

Harrell, a former three-term Councilmember himself, seemed to convince voters he represented a new approach while running on policies very similar to Mayor Jenny Durkan and with the support of 12 former or current Seattle City Councilmembers and five former Seattle Mayors. But, between his platform and the cadre of endorsements he received, Harrell seems to represent a return to the old approach that attempted to solve homelessness with technocratic fixes, task forces, encampment removals, and whatever new fad came along so long as it wasn’t a major new revenue stream to fund permanent affordable housing and wrap around services on the scale needed.

Seattle declared war on homelessness under Mayors Norm Rice and Greg Nickels, who both endorsed Harrell. The pair of two-term mayors ran Seattle from 1998 through 2012, with four years of Paul Schell in the middle. Nickels declared a 10-year plan to end homelessness, but failed to make a dent and came up short in his quest to establish a regional partnership to mobilize the suburbs behind homelessness solutions. In 2015, Mayor Ed Murray went so far as to declare a state of emergency around homelessness along with County Executive Constantine. Homelessness continued to rise under Mayor Murray’s tenure.

In 2017, Durkan ran a campaign that attempted to paint her opponent Cary Moon into a corner for expressing interest in a right-to-shelter ordinance, which Durkan opposed due to cost concerns. Durkan alleged ensuring shelter for all would divert resources from permanent affordable housing and released a homelessness plan that promised 1,000 new tiny homes in her first year and a rent voucher program supplementing low-income tenants by a few hundred dollars per month. Durkan won the election handily, but she implemented neither program; she completed just 73 tiny homes in her first year.

Four years later, Harrell ran on building emergency shelter for 2,000 homeless people as soon as possible so that he could clear parks of encampments. Suddenly shifting focus from permanent housing to temporary emergency shelter was greeted as visionary in establishment circles whereas four years ago it had been naïve and a distracting from real solutions.

Centrist politicians flit from one idea to another, but meanwhile numerous studies sit on the shelf have found that Seattle should spend much more money on supportive housing and homelessness services in order to end homelessness — something on the order of one billion per year according to a 2020 McKinsey report.

Failure to connect homelessness to restrictive housing policies

Returning to the 1990s, Mayor Rice, for his part, implemented the urban village strategy that cordoned the vast majority of housing growth into a handful of urban centers and hubs, plus some business districts, which in all represented about 12% of the city’s land, while reserving roughly 30 square miles exclusively for single family homes. Most single family zoned neighborhoods saw effectively zero growth — and in many cases even a negative population growth rate. Meanwhile, population in urban villages and centers shot up dramatically. And with so little land dedicated to apartments and townhomes, prices for that land and housing on top of them skyrocketed, as well. In King County, rents jumped 52% from 2010 to 2017.

More than anything else, the rapidly rising price of housing seems to be driving factor in the rise of homelessness, but no mayor has attempted to shift the fundamental land use imbalance dating back to Mayor Rice’s urban village strategy in 1994. The City now has in its hands a racial equity analysis of the urban village strategy telling them that reform is needed, but that’s not the campaign pledge that Harrell ran on.

On the campaign trail, Harrell ripped into González for proposing to “abolish” single family zoning in favor of base zoning that allows triplexes, fourplexes, and perhaps some small apartment buildings. González’s approach would have followed in the footsteps of cities like Portland, Minneapolis, Sacramento, Berkeley, and even Grand Rapids, Michigan, but Harrell painted it as radical and out of step. In doing so, Harrell mirrored Trump’s desperate attacks arguing Joe Biden wanted to abolish the suburbs. However, with issues of homelessness and policing dominating the election, Harrell paid little price for his reactionary approach on housing policy.

Even Norm Rice admitted the urban village strategy is due for an overhaul in a Crosscut article from David Kroman looking at what the election means for density and housing policy.

“Clearly it’s probably time for a reboot from when I started versus where we are today,” Rice said. “Neighborhoods have changed from where we were before.”

That view didn’t stop Rice from supporting Harrell. The same goes for the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, which often talks about its support for density and reforming single family zoning — especially as an alternative to new business taxes — but seems to find other causes around election time, such as the Compassion Seattle charter amendment this time around.

“The chamber’s new CEO, Rachel Smith, said that is still true today,” Kroman wrote. “At the same time, when asked about Harrell’s campaign statements, Smith agreed with him that talk of eliminating the zones was not helpful.”

“I think talking in absolutes is both inaccurate and can be polarizing,” Smith told Kroman. “I think it’s kind of like saying, ‘We’re going to ban all cars from the city.’ Do we need to take serious measures to reduce our carbon emissions from vehicles? Of course. Should we tell everyone we’re going to ban cars from the city next year? No. It’s not realistic and it’s not going to inspire people to action and change.”

Still, polling shows support for single family zoning reform.

“Polling shows support for more density,” Kroman wrote. “In a recent survey conducted by the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, 64% of respondents said they supported new housing in their neighborhoods; 62% favored allowing duplexes and triplexes in single-family neighborhoods.”

Unfortunately, the people who are most likely to vote — seniors — are those least likely to support changes to single family zoning.

Off-year elections are unlikely to change the mayoral outcome given Harrell resounding 17-point win, but it does change the contours of the debate and ensure the electorate is less likely to support zoning changes than an even-year electorate with higher participation from younger voters and renters. As a result, our system rewards candidates that follow a backward approach and delay action on housing affordability.

The post Seattle Progressives Gain 13 Points from Election Night, but Come Up Short first appeared on The Urbanist.

Soul searching is underway in progressive circles, while some centrists are indulging in gloating, as can be expected.

Sandeep Kaushik, a consultant and lobbyist for Comcast and Lyft who advised Republican Ann Davison’s campaign, penned the magnum opus in this genre under the title “Bubble Trouble: How Seattle’s Radical Left Grew and (Predictably) Got Whupped.” The piece has self-congratulatory pomp, condescending advice, and clumsy wordplay in spades, but Kaushik’s central premise is worth considering. Is the left unmoored, overconfident, and out of touch? Do progressives need to retool to win?

Looking farther afield, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe’s loss to a Republican does have Democrats worried about a national shift to the right. But it’s not clear turning to moderates running in the corporate-friendly center lane is the fix, since Governor McAuliffe was the posterchild for this kind of candidate. Plus, across the country there’s no clear pattern of victory for corporate friendly moderates; progressives prevailed in some big races, such as Elizabeth Warren protégé Michelle Wu coasting to victory in Boston’s mayoral race on a Green New Deal platform. Cleveland elected Justin Bibb on a police accountability and affordable housing platform despite his opponent’s attempts to brand him as a Defund candidate.

In the specific example of Seattle’s off-year mayoral elections, losing two straight races by double digits appears to be proof of concept. But, on the other hand, in order to make good on his bold pledges, Harrell now has to clean up the mess he pointed to on the campaign trail. If Harrell can’t deliver and show his policy platform and governing strategy works, what has he really proven? That said, even if Harrell can’t meet campaign promises, until progressive mayoral candidates get better at articulating an alternative vision and holding centrists accountable to their promises, they may well keep losing in Seattle.

One might have hoped for Seattle voters to have learned this lesson from Mayor Durkan’s hapless administration, but the genius of centrist campaigning this cycle was to relentlessly refocus voter anger and disappointment on the Seattle City Council, which had been a project of many years for the centrist pundit class. In reality, Seattle has a strong mayor system and many of key failures of the past four years should be laid at Durkan’s feet and the centrist administration before her. But, perhaps the greatest gift Durkan ever gave to her establishment backers was knowing when to exit stage right.

Well-timed exits laid groundwork for centrist wave

Without Durkan running in the election as a sharp reminder of a four years of inaction, insularity, and shrouded secrecy, voters clearly funneled their dissatisfaction at City Council instead. None suffered more from this dynamic than Council President González, who apparently seemed to voters as the next best emblem of a wayward City government and lack of progress addressing homelessness once Durkan was removed from the equation.

Knowing when to make his quiet exit also served Bruce Harrell well. Harrell served 12 years on Seattle City Council and didn’t really leave much of a lasting mark — even on the central issues on which he staked his mayoral campaign like homelessness and police reform. This is despite having allied with centrist mayors to work with for eight of those years. However, bowing out rather than facing a tough challenge from Tammy Morales in 2019 ended up baptizing Harrell anew from his association as an ineffective councilmember to — somehow — a competent outsider. It’s amazing what a 22-month break will do.

Exiting stage right meant Harrell had time to rest, relax, and prep his campaign rather than take part in tough decisions during a grueling pandemic that was paired with big budget shortfalls, mass protests, police tear gassing whole neighborhoods and abandoning East Precinct, a coordinated coverup in which Mayor Durkan and several top police officials deleted their text messages in violation of public records law, and then Mayor Durkan firing whistleblowers in her public records office.

Would Harrell have stuck by the Seattle Police Department (SPD) as they bungled things and doubled down? Could he have averted austerity budgeting without passing the JumpStart Seattle tax that Mayor Durkan opposed but ultimately raided to patch her budget? Could he have signed JumpStart without earning the ire of corporate leaders? Would he have seen a middle way out of the infighting as he now promises to do as mayor? Could he get the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce to drop their second legal challenge to JumpStart?

We’ll never really know how Harrell would have handled the last two years, a period Mayor Durkan has called the most challenging in the city’s history. Surprisingly, he didn’t seem to face many questions about how he would have handled key decisions differently. But now Harrell has four years to pick up the pieces and make good on campaign boasts. Whether Harrell can display policymaking skills as mayor that he didn’t really flash as councilmember remains to be seen. But that is the bet that Seattle voters have made.

Owning the issue of homelessness

The task for progressives is to break this pattern of centrist mayors playing them and their council majorities for fools and swiping credit for their key initiatives (like JumpStart) or obstructing them (pedestrianizing streets and equitable zoning reform) as they see fit and then turning around and blaming them for inaction and “divisiveness.” Progressive messaging in 2021 made some attempts at telling this story, but it failed to resonate and cut through the noise. The issue of homelessness dominated the election, and Harrell owned the issue.

González ran on a tax-the-rich platform, but what she’d invest the revenue on seemed to get lost in the shuffle. Supportive housing for homeless Seattleites certainly seemed to be in her plans and it’s a big part of what the JumpStart tax funds, but the vision didn’t seem concrete enough to inspire voters. The audacious promise from Harrell and the Compassion Seattle campaign to make 2,000 emergency housing units magically materialize in his first year with no new funding also helped wash out González’s message.

Now, unless Harrell is planning to pull a Durkan and retire rather than run for re-election, progressives at least are likely to have the opportunity to make the election about the incumbent mayor’s failure to meet his promises. Progressives need to get better at holding centrists accountable when they govern far from their campaign promises. Unless, Harrell manages to pull off a miracle and add 2,000 housing units in a year, he’s going to have answer for a failed pledge. Readers of The Urbanist may recall, Mayor Durkan promised 1,000 tiny homes in her first year, but built only 73 and still hasn’t made good on even half that in the proceeding years. Unfortunately, readers of most other publications didn’t hear much about that, and campaigns did not stress this issue enough, either.

The Compassion Seattle plan was a quick emergency shelter buildout on the cheap and then the clearing of encampments from parks as soon as possible. But clearing encampments without a viable plan to shelter homeless people and stabilize them in permanent housing is inherently a temporary fix akin to a game of whack-a-mole. It may provide temporary relief to the homeowners near the encampment site, but the encampments will form again elsewhere in absence of stable low-barrier housing to offer the chronically homeless. The emergency housing thrown together in one year is not going to be permanent housing or high-quality.

The pandemic drove the increase in encampments since the City and its providers had to ensure physical distancing at congregate shelters right as many people lost their jobs or suffered relapses or intensified addiction issues due to the stress, anxiety, and isolation of the pandemic. The Centers for Disease Control also gave guidance against sweeping homeless camps during a pandemic to lower transmission risk, but the Durkan administration has continued to conduct some sweeps (albeit at a lesser pace) anyway.

Perhaps, most of the Seattle electorate didn’t really want to hear nuance and explanations why it’s a tough problem to solve. They wanted assurances the problem would be fixed soon. Even if it turns out to be a lie, Bruce Harrell was willing to make that pledge.

Structural disadvantages

Overpromising on the salient issue of the election can be a potent campaign tactic, even if it leads to tougher reelection four years down the road. But Harrell and the centrists also had other structural advantages on their side. Centrists can count on a significant fundraising advantage and favorable media coverage since many of the mainstream media sources in Seattle are conservative owned — from the Blethen-owned The Seattle Times to the Sinclair-owned KOMO. It’s not just fundraising and media bias, the centrist political machine is also more professionalized and better organized.

Harrell’s message was carefully calibrated to appeal to the likeliest off-year voters: Boomers and homeowners. The Urbanist has predicted the increase in Seattle’s tenant population would eventually swing the city’s politics, especially on issues of housing and wealth inequality. But when turnout is 50% and the half of the city that sat this election out is overwhelmingly tenants and younger people, then our politics are not going to reflect Seattle’s demographics, which recently became majority-renter for the first time in several generations.

Switching to even-year mayoral elections likely would not have saved González given her decisive defeat, but it would have given tenants a bigger voice and more of a chance to influence the debate. Outside of his 2,000 emergency housing pledge, Harrell never really articulated a clear policy on housing and criticized González in debates for calling for apartment ban repeals, and he got away with it. This could have big implications for the next big zoning debate that will come with the 2024 Comprehensive Plan update. Is Seattle under Mayor Harrell going to try to grow more equitably and promote affordable housing throughout the city or shrug and call the status quo good enough?

The centrist political machine

The business community, and the consulting and public relations apparatus around them, are always plotting the next campaign and seeding it with polling and messaging that feeds into poll-tested messages and brands their opposition before a candidate has even arrived. Much of this work happens via the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and the Downtown Seattle Association, which released their polling in 2020, telegraphing their key issues and how they were likely to frame them. They carefully select a candidate ready to run their plan to the fullest and and rarely fail to get them through the primary given the consensus that has been reached ahead of time. Harrell was likely more progressive than some business leaders wanted, but their side didn’t splinter and backed him anyway, seeing that his pedigree growing up in the Central District, being a football star at the University of Washington, and a distinguished lawyer would play well.

The centrist machine playbook also planned negative messaging early with thorough opposition research that catalogued negative tweets and controversial statements. They then started amplifying them early through intermediaries that mostly insulated the candidates themselves from being being seen as launching the attacks. With the hits on the opponents delivered early and often by their allies, the final campaign messages centrists delivered in crunch time were largely positive and hopeful. Centrist candidates presented themselves as pragmatic “get things done” unifiers to cut through the gridlock and divisiveness. This is the third time that centrists have successfully used this formula while paying little penalty for not delivering on an end to divisiveness and gridlock on key issues in the city.

The centrist machine also learns from their mistakes. Since telecommunications executive Joe Mallahan’s failed mayoral bid in 2009, centrists haven’t run a straight White guy or a corporate executive for mayor. Instead, they select someone very ready to carry the corporate agenda, but who is also ready to appeal to a demographic outside their base. Because Harrell is of Black and Japanese descent, criticisms related to race and equity didn’t stick to him, and he turned the tables when Gonzalez inadvisably ran an ad with a White woman accusing him of siding with sexual abusers. Having a person of color this cycle, a lesbian before that, and a gay man on the ticket before that, allowed centrists to offer some semblance of social progress even if their economic platform in practice has boiled down to the rich get richer and the poor get scraps. And, to be clear, the centrists have championed a smattering of progressive programs, like Harrell’s “Health Care for All” idea and Durkan’s universal pre-K education, to curry favor with voters, even if the details are vague and campaign commitments are squishy.

One thing centrists didn’t do following their loss in 2009, however, was reconcile and help progressives implement their agenda. The centrist machine also still controlled the Seattle City Council at the time, so they had their base — which included Harrell — stonewall Mayor Mike McGinn’s agenda and did everything they could to paint him as ineffective, divisive, and out of touch, rebranding him Mayor McSchwinn in the process. The labels stuck and McGinn lost narrowly to Murray in his 2013 reelection bid.

When the 2019 election blew up in their faces, centrists changed tactics. Amazon’s late million-dollar money bomb refocused the election around corporate excesses and juiced progressive turnout. Outside of Alex Pedersen, the Amazon/Chamber backed candidates were routed. In reaction, the Chamber announced it was going to take a step back and get out of the political action committee (PAC) game, putting its heavy-hitting Civic Alliance for Sound Economy (CASE) PAC on ice. Instead of being the funnel for corporate donations, those companies and business executives gave directly to PACs set up separately for each candidate.

The PAC backing Bruce Harrell still raised well over a million dollars, but it was harder to point to one villain without Amazon and the Chamber focusing attention on themselves. The biggest donor to Harrell’s PAC was George Petrie and his business partner John Goodman of Goodman Real Estate, a major Downtown landlord and prolific evicter. Petrie was also Trump’s biggest donor in Washington state, and González attempted to link Harrell to Trump, but it just didn’t resonate with swing voters like Amazon’s money bomb did in 2019. As The Stranger‘s Rich Smith put it, instead of Amazon, we got Amazon’s landlords giving in 2021. Additionally, Amazon did seem to be running a ton of TV ads about its $15 minimum wage, perhaps hoping to repair its public image after the 2019 debacle.

Progressive tent-building

To some extent this coalescing, planning, and course correction also happens on the left, but not nearly as systematically nor as grounded in political science and a strategy for winning the general election — not just the primary. For example, early polling provided warning signs that Council President González was not going to be a strong candidate this cycle, despite a strong progressive résumé and winning her last two citywide races decisively — albeit against middling opponents. Polling was clear: homelessness was going to be the top issue and the vast majority of voters thought the city was on the wrong track. It’s tough to be the incumbent in such an environment.

This is what ultimately pushed The Urbanist Elections Committee (of which I’m a member) to endorse Colleen Echohawk in the primary (before switching to González in the general). With her long stint running Chief Seattle Club, a housing and homelessness service provider geared toward urban Indigenous people, Echohawk could run as an expert and own the issue of homelessness while still running as an outsider. Nearly every other progressive group that weighed in went with González, including the pivotal endorsement from The Stranger, arguing Echohawk wasn’t sufficiently progressive. Echohawk finished a distant third in the primary with 10% of the vote.

Asymmetrical political warfare

It’s an asymmetrical contest right now between centrists and progressives in Seattle. The centrist side is well-funded, never stops campaigning, follows political science to hone their message and campaign plan, and exerts a great deal of message discipline. The progressive side doesn’t start campaigning and coalescing until the election year and finds itself woefully behind the opposition in orchestrating their plan, as expertly laid out by the panel on Crystal Fincher’s Hacks & Wonks post-election roundtable below.

The confluence of factors in 2021 played right into the centrist machine and their simple, but effective, campaign strategy. Having González, Nicole Thomas-Kennedy, and Nikkita Oliver on the same ticket seemed to help centrist messaging that ‘radical activists have gone far’ hit home. With surgical precision, the centrist machine branded González as the status quo incumbent and Thomas-Kennedy and Oliver as too radical. It all blended into a ‘more of the same’ radical hodgepodge that turned off voters right as the centrist machine planned. Never mind that Mayor Durkan is the incumbent and Bruce Harrell’s platform is remarkably similar. That didn’t matter when the structural disadvantages were so steep and progressive messaging was so scattered compared to the opposition.

In a Citizens United ‘corporation are people, my friends‘ world, progressives are unlikely to hold the edge on fundraising, so they really have to get the messaging right. There’s little room for error. Occasionally, a megarich progressive donor comes along like Nick Hanauer and erases some of the independent expenditure deficit, but in Seattle’s case, his money has always flowed to Jessyn Farrell, the vice president of his think-tank, and then dried up after the primary ends and she doesn’t make it through. That leaves unions as the only progressive funder to counteract the copious corporate and real estate campaign spending, and they struggle to keep pace in citywide races. And this year unions spent so much winning the primary for González (dried cherries aren’t cheap) that they were depleted for the general election.

Progressives can still win in Seattle on bold platforms, and we can see from races around the region that progressives are still gaining ground in the suburbs with cities like Burien, SeaTac, Everett, Bothell, and Kenmore swinging toward progressives. Republican King County Councilmember Kathy Lambert also lost to Democrat Sarah Perry in the 3rd District, which spans from Redmond and Sammamish to the east. This doesn’t bode well for the narrative of a major rightward shift in Seattle metropolitan races going forward. A few whiffs in Seattle doesn’t make a long-term regional trend. But progressives are going to have to run smarter campaigns to win citywide races in Seattle.

Progressives need to adapt to the specific conditions each election cycle presents to put forward the best campaign, lead with progressive values, but avoid leading with their chins. A boxer who leads with their chin tends to get knocked out, as we found out this cycle. As Bibb showed in Cleveland, progressives can win on police accountability in mayoral races, but they would be wise to have a knockdown case presented carefully and avoiding terms that turn off swing voters, even if the concept is still there in less inflammatory terms.

Wu’s inspiring campaign in Boston offers some hints for progressives. She centered her messaging around a clear Green New Deal platform and also championed rent stabilization as a tangible, immediately-felt improvement to the lives of stuggling tenants. That’s a demographic that didn’t turn out enough in Seattle, but carefully-calibrated rent control and a Green New Deal could cut through the malaise and incite younger voters to turn out in much higher numbers.

The post Where Urbanists and Progressives Go from Poor 2021 Showing first appeared on The Urbanist.