NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate provides the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Thursday, November 14th, 2013

Thursday election update: Kshama Sawant pulls further ahead of Richard Conlin

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.

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