Ann Davison vs. Pete Holmes vs. Nicole Thomas-Kennedy
Ann Davison vs. Pete Holmes vs. Nicole Thomas-Kennedy (Campaign publicity photos)

It’s look­ing increas­ing­ly like­ly that the com­ing Novem­ber runoff for Seat­tle City Attor­ney will not include incum­bent Pete Holmes, who our polling pre­vi­ous­ly indi­cat­ed was in seri­ous dan­ger of being elim­i­nat­ed in the Top Two elec­tion.

This after­noon, in the lat­est drop from King Coun­ty Elec­tions, Holmes slid to third place in the con­test, behind Nicole Thomas-Kennedy and Ann Davison.

Davi­son — a Repub­li­can who pre­vi­ous­ly ran for Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor but did not make it to the gen­er­al elec­tion — has nar­row­ly led since Elec­tion Night, with Holmes in sec­ond place. Holmes held on to that sec­ond place spot in yes­ter­day’s drop, which was fair­ly small. But now, with today’s much larg­er drop, he has relin­quished that sec­ond place spot to his oth­er challenger.

Hav­ing trad­ed places with Thomas-Kennedy, who is run­ning on a plat­form of abol­ish­ing as much of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem as pos­si­ble, Holmes is now on the brink of elim­i­na­tion. If tomor­row’s count does­n’t at least tilt in his favor, he may be out of luck, because the num­ber of bal­lots left to count will dwin­dle pret­ty rapid­ly after Fri­day. (Accord­ing to KCE’s report, there are 142,000 total bal­lots wait­ing to be count­ed now, not all of which are in Seattle.)

It’s entire­ly pos­si­ble that Thomas-Kennedy will sim­ply pull fur­ther away from Holmes in the next few counts. The swing in NTK’s favor was pret­ty pro­nounced today, and that was just a sin­gle drop, albeit a large one.

Here are the cur­rent num­bers in the City Attor­ney race:

Seattle City Attorney, as of Thursday, August 5th, 2021

  1. Ann Davi­son: 34.5% (43,859 votes)
  2. Nicole Thomas-Kennedy: 33.19% (42,196 votes)
  3. Pete Holmes: 32.02% (40,705 votes)

On Elec­tion Night, Holmes was ahead of NTK by five hun­dred and fifty-six votes. Yes­ter­day, the gap shrank ever so slight­ly to five hun­dred and fifty one votes. Today, NTK erased it entire­ly, and over­took Holmes.

NTK’s new­ly mint­ed lead over Holmes is 1,491 votes.

The race is still too close to call, but again, Holmes’ chances of get­ting through just don’t look good at all. That’s a sce­nario Holmes him­self seems to have come to grips with, hav­ing told reporters that he is at peace with what­ev­er hap­pens.

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.

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