Seat­tle City Coun­cil can­di­date Kshama Sawan­t’s momen­tum has some­times slowed in the days since Novem­ber 5th, but it has nev­er stopped.

Moments ago, King Coun­ty Elec­tions pub­lished new num­bers that reflect the lat­est batch of tab­u­lat­ed bal­lots. The fresh results show that Sawant is now ahead of incum­bent City Coun­cilmem­ber Richard Con­lin by more than 1,000 votes.

Yes­ter­day, Sawant had a four hun­dred and two vote lead. As of today, she has a lead of 1,148 votes, and we would­n’t be sur­prised if it was big­ger tomorrow.

If she defeats Con­lin, Sawant will be the first open­ly declared Social­ist ever elect­ed to the Seat­tle City Coun­cil. Owing to the adop­tion of Seat­tle Char­ter Amend­ment #19, she would serve only a two-year term. She could choose to run for reelec­tion in the dis­trict where she lives or run for one of the at-large seats.

In the mean­time, she’ll have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to shape how Seat­tle is governed.

It took more than a week for Sawant to actu­al­ly over­take Con­lin, bring­ing back mem­o­ries of Sharon Peaslee’s upset vic­to­ry in 2011 and the tri­umph of HJR 4204 in 2007 (sim­ple majori­ties for school levies).

While the out­comes in oth­er called races and oth­er close races have not changed, Sawant has accom­plished some­thing remark­able: she has come from behind late in the eleventh hour to take the lead (and most like­ly win, too).

Mean­while, in oth­er close races:

  • After shrink­ing to just nine­teen votes yes­ter­day, the gap between yes and no on SeaT­ac Propo­si­tion 1 (the Good Jobs ini­tia­tive) expand­ed to fifty-three votes today, a very good sign for the mea­sure’s prospects of passing.
  • Steve Kas­ner con­tin­ues to trail incum­bent Belle­vue City Coun­cilmem­ber Kevin Wal­lace in the con­test for Posi­tion #6. Wal­lace had a two hun­dred vote lead of yes­ter­day; he added one vote to his lead today.
  • Seat­tle Propo­si­tion 1 (pub­lic financ­ing) remains behind by 3,106 votes.
  • Demo­c­rat Mary Hall remains ahead of Repub­li­can Gary Alexan­der in the Thurston Coun­ty Audi­tor’s race.
  • Kit­sap Coun­ty has final­ly joined the Yes on I‑522 camp (we’ll have more on this lat­er tonight in a sep­a­rate post).

King Coun­ty Elec­tions’ next update will be at around 4:30 PM tomorrow.

About the author

Andrew Villeneuve is the founder and executive director of the Northwest Progressive Institute, as well as the founder of NPI's sibling, the Northwest Progressive Foundation. He has worked to advance progressive causes for over two decades as a strategist, speaker, author, and organizer. Andrew is also a cybersecurity expert, a veteran facilitator, a delegate to the Washington State Democratic Central Committee, and a member of the Climate Reality Leadership Corps.

Adjacent posts

Enjoyed what you just read? Make a donation

Thank you for read­ing The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate, the North­west Pro­gres­sive Institute’s jour­nal of world, nation­al, and local politics.

Found­ed in March of 2004, The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate has been help­ing peo­ple through­out the Pacif­ic North­west and beyond make sense of cur­rent events with rig­or­ous analy­sis and thought-pro­vok­ing com­men­tary for more than two decades.

The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate is fund­ed by read­ers like you and trust­ed spon­sors. We don’t accept unso­licit­ed ad buys or pub­lish con­tent in exchange for money.

Help us keep The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate edi­to­ri­al­ly inde­pen­dent and freely avail­able to all by becom­ing a mem­ber of the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute today. Or make a dona­tion to sus­tain our essen­tial research and advo­ca­cy jour­nal­ism. Your con­tri­bu­tion will allow us to con­tin­ue bring­ing you fea­tures like Last Week In Con­gress, live cov­er­age of events like Net­roots Nation or the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion, and reviews of books and doc­u­men­tary films.

Become an NPI mem­ber Make a one-time donation