Sam Cho, Grant Degginger, Fred Felleman, Garth Jacobson advance in Seattle Port races

A few weeks ago, a total of ten can­di­dates filed to run for two posi­tions on the Seat­tle Port Com­mis­sion that must be filled this year. Of those ten, just four can­di­dates will advance onwards to the Novem­ber gen­er­al elec­tion, which is real­ly a runoff under the zany Top Two sys­tem that Wash­ing­ton State uses.

In ini­tial returns, King Coun­ty vot­ers were back­ing Sam Cho and Grant Deg­gin­ger for Posi­tion #2, along with Fred Felle­man and and Garth Jacob­son for Posi­tion #5. (Despite its name, the Port of Seat­tle’s juris­dic­tion extends far beyond the bor­ders of the City of Seat­tle; its bound­aries mir­ror that of King County.)

Incum­bent Felle­man, who is com­ing off a suc­cess­ful first term, looks like a lock for reelec­tion. He has 69.85% of the ear­ly vote and is enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly backed by the labor move­ment and the envi­ron­men­tal community.

Felle­man’s two chal­lengers have just 30% of the remain­ing vote. Garth Jacob­son attract­ed 21.66% sup­port and will face Felle­man in Novem­ber. Chal­lenger Jor­dan Lem­mon’s cam­paign is over. Lem­mon is receiv­ing just 7.69% of the vote.

For Posi­tion #2, which is an open seat cre­at­ed by the depar­ture of incum­bent Court­ney Gre­goire (and once held by NPI’s Gael Tar­leton), vot­ers were favor­ing Sam Cho and Grant Deg­gin­ger over five oth­er can­di­dates: Pret­ti Shrid­har, Kel­ly Charl­ton, NPI alum Dominic Bar­rera, Nina Mar­tinez, and Ali Scego.

Cho is an entre­pre­neur and for­mer ana­lyst for the Unit­ed States Depart­ment of State who also spent time work­ing for the fed­er­al Gen­er­al Ser­vices Admin­is­tra­tion and State Sen­a­tor Bob Hasegawa. His cam­paign was sup­port­ed by the King Coun­ty Labor Coun­cil, King Coun­ty Democ­rats, and the ILWU (which rep­re­sents mar­itime work­ers) as well as Hasegawa and State Sen­a­tor Joe Nguyen.

Cho’s cam­paign made effec­tive use of direct mail to con­nect with vot­ers, send­ing out a well timed piece empha­siz­ing his cre­den­tials and vision for the Port.

Cho cur­rent­ly has a plu­ral­i­ty of the vote (28.27%), with 69,673 votes cast in sup­port of his can­di­da­cy so far. He appears posi­tioned to move on.

In sec­ond place is for­mer Belle­vue City Coun­cilmem­ber Grant Deg­gin­ger, who has 25.97% of the vote (64,017 votes). Deg­gin­ger is a well known fig­ure on the East­side, owing to his ser­vice on the gov­ern­ing body of King Coun­ty’s sec­ond largest city. He served a stint as Chair of the Pub­lic Dis­clo­sure Com­mis­sion fol­low­ing his retire­ment from the Belle­vue City Council.

Now he’s look­ing to get back into pol­i­tics — this time as a port commissioner.

Deg­gin­ger says his pri­or­i­ties are con­tin­ued invest­ment in clean­er fuels, con­ver­sion of port vehi­cles and truck fleets, reduc­ing the wait times in the secu­ri­ty lines at SeaT­ac Inter­na­tion­al Air­port, and open, trans­par­ent, and account­able Port oper­a­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly with respect to the cap­i­tal projects the Port has planned.

Cur­rent third place fin­ish­er Preeti Shrid­har — who has exten­sive expe­ri­ence work­ing with cities in King Coun­ty on envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion ini­tia­tives — appears to have fall­en short of mak­ing the Novem­ber runoff.

Shrid­har was sup­port­ed in her cam­paign by The Urban­ist, Wash­ing­ton Con­ser­va­tion Vot­ers, OneAm­er­i­ca, State Sen­a­tor Man­ka Dhin­gra, State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive My-Linh Thai, and NPI’s Gael Tarleton.

Shrid­har has 17.19% of the vote (42,377 votes) and is 21,640 votes behind Deg­gin­ger. That’s a deficit that will be dif­fi­cult to over­come in late ballots.