Teresa Mosqueda well ahead of Kate Martin for Seattle City Council #8 with most not sure

First term Seat­tle City Coun­cilmem­ber Tere­sa Mosque­da is on track for reelec­tion this autumn and is like­ly to cruise to a sec­ond term in Novem­ber past a crowd of oppo­nents who sim­ply aren’t get­ting any trac­tion among Seat­tle vot­ers, a new poll con­duct­ed for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute suggests.

26% of like­ly August 2021 Seat­tle vot­ers said they were vot­ing for Mosque­da, while 55% said they were not sure. The remain­ing respon­dents said either that they would not vote (3%) or picked one of Mosqueda’s opponents.

The chal­lenger who looks most like­ly to get through to Novem­ber and face Mosque­da is activist Kate Mar­tin, per­haps best known for the unsuc­cess­ful “Park My Viaduct” bal­lot mea­sure that Seat­tle vot­ers over­whelm­ing­ly reject­ed a few years ago. 6% of respon­dents said they were vot­ing for Martin.

Mar­t­in’s cam­paign is run­ning ads that ask Seat­tleites if they’ve “had enough,” but most of the vot­ers who have formed an opin­ion about the field of can­di­dates vying for City Coun­cil Posi­tion #8 evi­dent­ly don’t agree.

Mosqueda’s oth­er chal­lengers are all under five percent.

Paul Felipe Glumaz and Bob­by Lind­sey Miller are tied for third place with 3% each. The oth­er can­di­dates either got 1% or received no sup­port in our poll, which was con­duct­ed by Change Research for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Institute.

Our 2021 Top Two Seat­tle sur­vey has a mod­eled mar­gin of error of 4.3% at the 95% con­fi­dence inter­val. All 617 respon­dents par­tic­i­pat­ed online. The poll was in the field from Mon­day, July 12th, 2021 through Thurs­day, July 15th, 2021.

Here are the exact ques­tions that we asked, and the respons­es that we received:

QUESTION: The can­di­dates for City Coun­cil Posi­tion #8 this year are list­ed below in the order that they will appear on the August Top Two bal­lot. Who are you vot­ing for?

[See list of can­di­dates as it was shown to respon­dents]

ANSWERS:

• Not sure: 69%
• Tere­sa Mosque­da: 19%
• Kate Mar­tin: 5%
• Paul Felipe Glumaz: 2%
• Bob­by Lind­sey Miller: 2%
• Alexan­der White: 1%
• Ken­neth Wil­son: 1%
• Jor­dan Eliz­a­beth Fish­er: 1%
• Jesse James: 0%
• Alex Tsimer­man: 0%
• George Free­man: 0%
• Bri­an Fahey: 0%

FOLLOW-UP QUESTION ASKED OF UNDECIDED VOTERS ONLY: If you had to choose, who would you vote for?

ANSWERS:

• Not sure: 81%
• Tere­sa Mosque­da: 9%
• Kate Mar­tin: 2%
• Bob­by Lind­sey Miller: 1%
• Paul Felipe Glumaz: 1%
• Ken­neth Wil­son: 1%
• Jesse James: 1%
• Alexan­der White: 0%
• Alex Tsimer­man: 0%
• Bri­an Fahey: 0%
• Jor­dan Eliz­a­beth Fish­er: 0%
• George Free­man: 0%
• Would not vote: 4%

COMBINED ANSWERS, BOTH QUESTIONS:

• Not sure: 55%
• Tere­sa Mosque­da: 26%
• Kate Mar­tin: 6%
• Paul Felipe Glumaz: 3%
• Bob­by Lind­sey Miller: 3%
• Alexan­der White: 1%
• Ken­neth Wil­son: 1%
• Jesse James: 1%
• Jor­dan Eliz­a­beth Fish­er: 1%
• Alex Tsimer­man: 1%
• George Free­man: 0%
• Bri­an Fahey: 0%
• Would not vote: 3%

Tere­sa Mosque­da — who has a long and dis­tin­guished his­to­ry of involve­ment in Wash­ing­ton’s labor move­ment — was first elect­ed to the Seat­tle City Coun­cil in 2017, eas­i­ly defeat­ing rival Jon Grant. She received 121,192 votes (59.85%), while Grant received 81,302 votes (40.15%).

Mosque­da has broad and deep sup­port among labor, Demo­c­ra­t­ic, and pro­gres­sive orga­ni­za­tions for her reelec­tion bid, with a long list of endorse­ments.

A tes­ti­mo­ni­al from U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Prami­la Jaya­pal, per­haps the most pop­u­lar office­hold­er in Seat­tle, graces the front page of Mosqueda’s reelec­tion web­site, which has an Accom­plish­ments page in addi­tion to a Pri­or­i­ties page.

Mosqueda’s top accom­plish­ment is the enact­ment of the Jump­start Seat­tle rev­enue recov­ery plan, which levied a tax on large employ­ers with pay­rolls of $7 mil­lion or more to fund essen­tial pub­lic ser­vices under finan­cial duress due to the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic. The tax has so far with­stood a chal­lenge from Seat­tle’s busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, which has con­tend­ed that it is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. A King Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court judge dis­agreed; that rul­ing is being appealed.

The Stranger, which endorsed Grant four years ago, is now an enthu­si­as­tic backer of Team Tere­sa, with The Stranger Elec­tion Con­trol Board writ­ing:

“In our endorse­ment of her com­pe­ti­tion in 2017, we called Tere­sa Mosque­da a ‘self-styled con­sen­sus builder’ who would ‘ride into city hall on bold promis­es only to dis­ap­pear into mil­que­toast cen­trism.’ In her four years on the coun­cil, Mosque­da has proven us all wrong. We will eat crow, but not in front of oth­er crows, as we fear they may keep harass­ing SECB mem­ber Charles Mudede.”

The Seat­tle Times, mean­while, pub­lished a wide­ly crit­i­cized edi­to­r­i­al ear­li­er this week say­ing that it was mak­ing no endorse­ment in the race, but nev­er­the­less offer­ing some praise for Mosqueda’s first term on the Council.

“To her cred­it, Mosque­da has a rep­u­ta­tion for lis­ten­ing to the busi­ness inter­ests antag­o­nized by oth­er far-left coun­cil mem­bers,” the Times edi­to­r­i­al board wrote in its com­men­tary on the Posi­tion #8 race, which was prompt­ly dubbed a non-endorse­ment endorse­ment by sev­er­al commenters.

“She pushed to pro­vide pan­dem­ic emer­gency resources to res­i­dents, small busi­ness­es and child­care sites. Before join­ing the coun­cil, she helped write the suc­cess­ful ini­tia­tive for a high­er state min­i­mum wage, which this edi­to­r­i­al page sup­port­ed. She speaks up for port com­merce, which hap­pens to rely on union jobs. Mosque­da has envi­able polit­i­cal skills, but this list of pos­i­tives is too short to mer­it reelec­tion when the count of wrong­head­ed moves is so long.”

Hav­ing con­clud­ed that none of Mosqueda’s rivals are cred­i­ble oppo­nents, the Times end­ed its com­men­tary with a line that acknowl­edges the edi­to­r­i­al board expects Mosque­da to be reelect­ed this autumn to a sec­ond term: “Seat­tle deserves bet­ter. Mosque­da ought to try deliv­er­ing it more often.”

Mosqueda’s sup­port­ers say she has already deliv­ered for the peo­ple of Seat­tle and will con­tin­ue to if she is reelect­ed. She is the only can­di­date list­ed in Fuse’s Pro­gres­sive Vot­ers Guide for Seat­tle City Coun­cil Posi­tion #8.

Though most vot­ers in our sur­vey said they were unde­cid­ed, we antic­i­pate the vast major­i­ty will ulti­mate­ly back Mosque­da when they go to vote.

Bal­lots in the August Top Two elec­tion are due back by Tues­day, August 3rd at 8 PM. A list of drop box loca­tions in Seat­tle and across Mar­tin Luther King Jr. Coun­ty is avail­able from King Coun­ty Elec­tions. Bal­lots can also be returned through the Unit­ed States Mail, but we rec­om­mend using a drop box.

NPI does not endorse can­di­dates for office and is not aligned with any of the can­di­dates run­ning for elect­ed posi­tions in Seat­tle this year. No cam­paigns were involved in the design or exe­cu­tion of this survey.