Ann Davison ahead of Nicole Thomas Kennedy for Seattle City Attorney in initial results

It has been a long, long time since a Repub­li­can was elect­ed to a city­wide posi­tion in Seat­tle, but that could be about to change if the elec­tion results we’re see­ing tonight hold. With about fifty per­cent of the bal­lots that are expect­ed to be cast in the elec­tion tab­u­lat­ed thus far, Ann Davi­son has a sev­en­teen point lead over rival Nicole Thomas-Kennedy for Seat­tle City Attorney.

Davi­son has 58.25% of the vote and Thomas-Kennedy has 40.96%.

The post, one of two exec­u­tive posi­tions cho­sen by Emer­ald City vot­ers every four years, is cur­rent­ly held by three-term incum­bent Pete Holmes.

Holmes failed to advance to the Novem­ber gen­er­al elec­tion back in the sum­mer after NPI’s pre­elec­tion sur­vey of the August 2021 Top Two elec­torate showed that his cam­paign for a fourth term was in big trou­ble.

That cre­at­ed a gen­er­al elec­tion matchup unlike any in recent mem­o­ry, pit­ting a Repub­li­can (Davi­son) against an abo­li­tion­ist (Thomas-Kennedy).

Davi­son was also the ini­tial top vote get­ter in August, but fell to sec­ond after being sur­passed by Thomas-Kennedy in late bal­lots. How­ev­er, Davi­son’s lead over Thomas-Kennedy this time is much wider than in August, which will make it much hard­er for Thomas-Kennedy to mount anoth­er come from behind victory.

Ear­ly gen­er­al elec­tion polling by Elway Research and Strate­gies 360 sug­gest­ed the race could be very com­pet­i­tive, with each poll find­ing only a small lead for Davi­son. How­ev­er, our sub­se­quent gen­er­al elec­tion polling found Davi­son with a nine­teen point lead over Thomas-Kennedy and thir­ty per­cent unde­cid­ed, sug­gest­ing the dynam­ics of the con­test had changed.

If past counts are any indi­ca­tion, the final tal­ly will show a clos­er race than what we’re see­ing tonight. But it does­n’t look like Thomas-Kennedy has enough run­way to change the out­come this time around.

Pow­er­ful, mon­eyed inter­ests have been spend­ing a for­tune these past few weeks to get Davi­son elect­ed, and while those expen­di­tures doubt­less helped pro­pel Davi­son to where she is tonight, she arguably got an even big­ger boost out of the parade of for­mer gov­er­nors, judges, and jus­tices who pub­licly endorsed her can­di­da­cy, from Gary Locke and Chris Gre­goire to Bobbe Bridge and Lau­ra Inveen.

When you’re a Repub­li­can run­ning for office in a heav­i­ly Demo­c­ra­t­ic city, it real­ly helps to have well known Demo­c­ra­t­ic names vouch­ing for you.

Thomas-Kennedy, mean­while, has been on the defen­sive for much of the autumn despite hav­ing the sup­port of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, owing in part to tweets she post­ed last year, in which she open­ly cheered on peo­ple who were destroy­ing prop­er­ty in the after­math of the mur­der of George Floyd. Davi­son’s camp has been using the tweets to bash Thomas-Kennedy at every pos­si­ble opportunity.

Thomas-Kennedy’s cam­paign cre­at­ed a stir­ring video to rebut the attacks and urge vot­ers to frame-shift before mak­ing a deci­sion, but has been rely­ing on sup­port­ers to repost and share it. As Paul Queary explained a cou­ple of days ago, her cam­paign sim­ply has­n’t had the home stretch vis­i­bil­i­ty that Davi­son’s has because it has uti­lized a more unortho­dox strat­e­gy and tactics.

As of the date of the cam­paign’s last C4, on Octo­ber 26th, Thomas-Kennedy’s cam­paign had spent $348,061.48 of $406,796.94 raised since its incep­tion, with $34,364.42 in lia­bil­i­ties and a bal­ance of $24,371.04. Thomas-Kennedy’s biggest expens­es have been for staff and can­vass­ing through Prism West. The cam­paign has made sig­nif­i­cant use of democ­ra­cy vouchers.

Davi­son, mean­while, is in the red. She has raised $397,426.26 and spent $370,008.47, has $59,906.50 in lia­bil­i­ties and only $27,417.79 on hand, which means she has a neg­a­tive bal­ance of $32,488.71. But a lot of her spend­ing has gone into paid adver­tis­ing dur­ing the vot­ing peri­od. On Octo­ber 14th, for instance, she bought $170,000.00 of cable TV adver­tis­ing through CN4 Partners.

Davi­son also got a boost from The Seat­tle Times Com­pa­ny, which ran an unusu­al num­ber of edi­to­ri­als like this harsh­ly bash­ing Thomas-Kennedy as an extrem­ist and unfit for office. The Stranger, mean­while, has been crit­i­cal of Davi­son. It has backed Thomas-Kennedy with an enthu­si­as­tic endorse­ment and friend­ly cov­er­age.

In a Seat­tle City Attor­ney race with con­ven­tion­al dynam­ics, Davi­son would prob­a­bly be los­ing right now, but this was any­thing but a con­ven­tion­al race.

I sug­gest­ed last month that Thomas-Kennedy’s deci­sion to cam­paign as an abo­li­tion­ist rather than brand­ing her­self as a pro­gres­sive Demo­c­rat helped open the door for Davi­son to find a path to vic­to­ry in this con­test, and I’ve since heard from sev­er­al Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate read­ers who agree with that analysis.

If Davi­son goes on to win, Seat­tle will soon have a new City Attor­ney with almost no rel­e­vant court expe­ri­ence and a “not qual­i­fied” rat­ing from the Wash­ing­ton Coali­tion of Minor­i­ty Legal Pro­fes­sion­als. The City Coun­cil may soon need to step up to pro­vide more account­abil­i­ty and over­sight than it has in the past.