The Port of Seat­tle is one of the pri­ma­ry engines of the Pacif­ic Northwest’s econ­o­my, from its marine car­go ter­mi­nals to Seat­tle-Taco­ma Inter­na­tion­al Airport.

The Port is also a local gov­ern­ment in its right, gov­erned inde­pen­dent­ly from the City of Seat­tle and King Coun­ty. Although the Port bears Seat­tle’s name, it shares its bound­aries with King Coun­ty, and port com­mis­sion­ers are elect­ed coun­ty­wide. Three of the Com­mis­sion’s five posi­tions were on the bal­lot this year, con­sti­tut­ing a major­i­ty of the seats. Each con­test attract­ed two candidates.

In ini­tial Elec­tion Night returns, one com­mis­sion­er jumped out to a big lead and seems assured of win­ing reelec­tion, while anoth­er com­mis­sion­er was only mar­gin­al­ly ahead and a third was in a near tie with their challenger.

Over a hun­dred thou­sand votes remain to be count­ed across King Coun­ty, so the two close races could see lead changes before the count­ing ends.

Here’s a look at each race.

Position #1: Calkins vs. Sigler

Ryan Calkins won elec­tion to his sec­ond term eas­i­ly against Nor­man Sigler, with ini­tial returns putting him ahead 73% to 26%.

Ryan had stat­ed that he views the Port as an engine for future job growth, and thus that effi­cien­cy of oper­a­tions and con­tin­u­ing work­ing part­ner­ships with state and fed­er­al offi­cials will help main­tain the high qual­i­ty of oper­a­tions in com­ing years. He sees the cre­ation of Mar­itime High School as an addi­tion­al path, along­side appren­tice­ships, work­force train­ing and new busi­ness guid­ance, toward cre­at­ing those jobs and new oper­a­tions for the Port.

Sigler tout­ed his expe­ri­ence in man­ag­ing com­mer­cial aero­space main­te­nance costs, assess­ing com­mer­cial prop­er­ties for envi­ron­men­tal haz­ards and past work as a health­care strat­e­gy con­sul­tant for Blue Cross/Blue Shield. Sigler stat­ed that he want­ed a spe­cif­ic por­tion of the Port’s prof­its to go toward elim­i­nat­ing Port-relat­ed pol­lu­tion, espe­cial­ly at the air­port, as well as toward mit­i­gat­ing envi­ron­men­tal injus­tice in adja­cent communities.

How­ev­er, Sigler did­n’t raise much mon­ey and did not mount a strong campaign.

Position #3: Bowman vs. Mohamed 

Stephanie Bow­man is in a close race against Ham­di Mohamed, ahead by only 5,500 votes out of over 280,000 cast thus far.

Bow­man cam­paigned on her record of fos­ter­ing job cre­ation at the Port, her efforts to tack­le cli­mate dam­age, and the Port’s part­ner­ship with the Port of Taco­ma through the North­west Sea­port Alliance.

She has also cit­ed expand­ing job train­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for youth of col­or, mak­ing stormwa­ter improve­ments, and devel­op­ing a noise insu­la­tion pro­gram for homes close to the air­port as accom­plish­ments. But she has also been crit­i­cized for tak­ing a posi­tion oppos­ing SeaT­ac’s min­i­mum wage ordi­nance and her 2015 vote to allow Shell Oil to locate its Arc­tic drilling oper­a­tions in Seattle.

Mohamed present­ly works as an advis­er to the King Coun­ty Exec­u­tive Office regard­ing the county’s bud­get, small busi­ness ini­tia­tives, com­mu­ni­ty engage­ment and the county’s COVID-19 response. Her father was a truck­er and her moth­er was a Sea-Tac air­port work­er, and that expe­ri­ence led her to desire the cre­ation of both re-entry pro­grams for COVID-19-impact­ed work­ers and a new Small Busi­ness Recov­ery Task­force. She says she is com­mit­ted to mak­ing the Port a key play­er in address­ing cli­mate change and its broad electrification.

Mohamed resides in South King Coun­ty, not far from Seat­tle-Taco­ma Inter­na­tion­al Air­port. South King Coun­ty has his­tor­i­cal­ly lacked rep­re­sen­ta­tion on the Port Com­mis­sion. If Mohamed wins, the com­mu­ni­ties close to the Port’s largest facil­i­ty would have more clout on its five-mem­ber gov­ern­ing body.

Position #4: Steinbrueck vs. Hasegawa

Incum­bent Peter Stein­brueck is ahead of chal­lenger Toshiko Hasegawa by just under 1,600 votes. He has pre­vi­ous­ly served on the Seat­tle City Coun­cil and his father was archi­tect Vic­tor Stein­brueck, who was instru­men­tal in sav­ing the Pike Place Mar­ket back in the 1960s and 1970s.

Like the oth­er two incum­bents, he is enthu­si­as­tic about reduc­ing pol­lu­tion and elec­tri­fy­ing the Port’s oper­a­tions. He con­sid­ers him­self a firm envi­ron­men­tal­ist (espe­cial­ly in his cre­ation of the Port’s first “tree inven­to­ry”) and favors equi­table access to jobs and appren­tice­ship pro­grams and work­ing to achieve cli­mate jus­tice at all lev­els with the wan­ing of the pan­dem­ic. He has been crit­i­cized as out of touch fol­low­ing sev­er­al exchanges with activists and oth­er local officials.

Hasegawa is the daugh­ter of State Sen­a­tor Bob Hasegawa and has pre­vi­ous­ly served on numer­ous boards on behalf of his­tor­i­cal­ly mar­gin­al­ized com­mu­ni­ties. She has also served as Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Wash­ing­ton State Com­mis­sion on Asian Pacif­ic Amer­i­can Affairs since late 2018. She con­sid­ers exist­ing fund­ing for mit­i­ga­tion of Port activ­i­ties for adverse­ly affect­ed com­mu­ni­ties “a drop in the buck­et” and wants sig­nif­i­cant expan­sion of the program.

Like for­mer pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Eliz­a­beth War­ren, who she intro­duced at her final Seat­tle cam­paign appear­ance last year, Hasegawa has pro­posed a Blue New Deal spe­cif­ic to the needs of the Port and the com­mu­ni­ty it serves, with an empha­sis on improved trans­porta­tion (both via rail and roads), elec­tri­fi­ca­tion, off­shore wind and solar ener­gy instal­la­tions and union jobs.

Of the three chal­lengers, Hasegawa is best posi­tioned for vic­to­ry, and could over­take Stein­brueck in the late bal­lots very eas­i­ly if the sub­se­quent drops favor her. This is a race we’ll be watch­ing close­ly through the rest of the counting.