Leesa Manion, Jim Ferrell tied at outset of King County Prosecuting Attorney contest, but Manion’s bio wins among the undecided

This autumn, in addi­tion to vot­ing on con­gres­sion­al and leg­isla­tive elec­tions, vot­ers in King Coun­ty will have the respon­si­bil­i­ty of select­ing a new Pros­e­cut­ing Attor­ney to serve in the coun­ty’s exec­u­tive branch. Long­time incum­bent Dan Sat­ter­berg is retir­ing, after hav­ing held the post for the bet­ter part of two decades.

Two can­di­dates are run­ning to suc­ceed him: Chief of Staff Leesa Man­ion and Fed­er­al Way May­or Jim Fer­rell, who pre­vi­ous­ly worked in the office.

Our lat­est research poll, which just returned from the field and asked King Coun­ty vot­ers about their pref­er­ences in this con­test, finds that the two can­di­dates are ini­tial­ly tied, with 8% apiece and a whop­ping 83% not sure who they’d vote for.

How­ev­er, after the “not sure” vot­ers were giv­en bio­graph­i­cal high­lights of the can­di­dates, Man­ion leapt out in front with plu­ral­i­ty sup­port and a two-to-one advan­tage over Fer­rell. 41% of the “not sure” respon­dents said they’d vote for Man­ion after read­ing those bio­graph­i­cal high­lights, while 20% said they’d pick Ferrell.

36% said they still weren’t sure, and 3% said they would not vote.

In the aggre­gate, Man­ion had 41% sup­port and Fer­rell had 24% sup­port, with 33% not sure and 2% say­ing they would not vote. 

Because this an offi­cial­ly “non­par­ti­san” con­test in which only two can­di­dates filed, it isn’t on the cur­rent August Top Two bal­lot. It will only be on the gen­er­al elec­tion bal­lot this autumn. But we decid­ed to poll it twice any­way: once this sum­mer and again this fall dur­ing the home­stretch of the elec­tion cycle, to ensure that we would have an ear­li­er set of num­bers to com­pare our autumn find­ings to.

As these sum­mer­time per­cent­ages demon­strate, nei­ther con­tender has much name ID at this junc­ture. Vot­ers sim­ply aren’t famil­iar with either of them.

Fer­rell has won elec­tions before, but not coun­ty­wide, which has a much big­ger elec­torate than the City of Fed­er­al Way, while Man­ion is a first-time candidate.

Here’s the text of the ques­tions that we asked and the answers we received:

INITIAL QUESTION: If the Novem­ber gen­er­al elec­tion for King Coun­ty Pros­e­cut­ing Attor­ney were being held today, who would you vote for?

INITIAL ANSWERS:

• Not sure: 83%
• Leesa Man­ion: 8%
• Jim Fer­rell: 8%

FOLLOW-UP QUESTION ASKED OF UNDECIDED VOTERS ONLY: Here’s a short descrip­tion of the can­di­dates, excerpt­ed from the biogra­phies on their cam­paign websites.

Leesa Man­ion is the cur­rent Chief of Staff of the King Coun­ty Pros­e­cut­ing Attorney’s Office, where she has spear­head­ed projects aimed at pro­tect­ing pub­lic safe­ty, reduc­ing racial dis­pro­por­tion­al­i­ty, strength­en­ing vic­tim ser­vices, and hold­ing repeat per­pe­tra­tors account­able. She also over­sees a work­force of near­ly 600 employ­ees and an annu­al bud­get of $80 million.

Jim Fer­rell is the cur­rent May­or of Fed­er­al Way. He pre­vi­ous­ly served as a Fed­er­al Way City Coun­cilmem­ber and as a King Coun­ty Senior Deputy Pros­e­cu­tor, defend­ing vic­tims of crime and work­ing to keep our com­mu­ni­ty safe. Fer­rell began his career as a pros­e­cu­tor for the City of Ren­ton, Wash­ing­ton before mov­ing into the King Coun­ty Pros­e­cut­ing Attorney’s Office in 1998.

If you had to choose, who would you vote for?

ANSWERS FROM UNDECIDED VOTERS:

• Leesa Man­ion: 41%
• Jim Fer­rell: 20%
• Not sure: 36%
• Would not vote: 3%

COMBINED ANSWERS (AGGREGATE), BOTH QUESTIONS:

• Leesa Man­ion: 41%
• Jim Fer­rell: 24%
• Not sure: 33%
• Would not vote: 2%

Our sur­vey of 687 like­ly 2022 King Coun­ty gen­er­al elec­tion vot­ers was in the field from Fri­day, July 22nd until today, Tues­day, August 1st, 2022. The poll was con­duct­ed entire­ly online for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute by Change Research.

Fol­low this link if you’re inter­est­ed in a detailed primer on the survey’s method­ol­o­gy along with infor­ma­tion about who took the poll.

Antic­i­pat­ing that there would be a high num­ber of vot­ers say­ing they weren’t sure when asked about this con­test, we devel­oped a two-part ques­tion. Since the voter’s pam­phlet state­ment for the Novem­ber gen­er­al elec­tion has not been mailed to vot­ers yet and isn’t acces­si­ble, we opt­ed to source descrip­tions of the can­di­dates from their own cam­paign web­sites, which are avail­able to voters.

This approach allowed us to pro­vide respon­dents with infor­ma­tion about the can­di­dates that is (aside from some light edit­ing) iden­ti­cal­ly word­ed to what they’d see if they went to each can­di­date’s web­site and read their About pages.

Both can­di­dates have gar­nered a lot of endorse­ments from local elect­ed offi­cials. For exam­ple, Man­ion has the back­ing of Sat­ter­berg, Exec­u­tive Dow Con­stan­tine, Seat­tle May­or Bruce Har­rell, Asses­sor John Wil­son, and a third of the King Coun­ty Coun­cil. Fer­rell, mean­while, is sup­port­ed by the likes of Issaquah May­or Mary Lou Pauly, Des Moines May­or Matt Mahoney, Auburn May­or Nan­cy Backus, Ren­ton May­or Armon­do Pavon, and King Coun­ty Coun­cilmem­ber Pete von Reich­bauer. U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Adam Smith is also in Fer­rel­l’s camp.

Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty orga­ni­za­tions are most­ly for Man­ion, while police guilds have embraced Fer­rell. Fer­rell also has the sup­port of LiU­NA! Local 242, and the Seat­tle Build­ing Trades. Man­ion has UFCW Local 3000 and Team­sters Joint Coun­cil 28.

For those who are not reg­u­lar read­ers or sup­port­ers of our work, it’s impor­tant to know that the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute does not endorse can­di­dates, or engage in elec­tion­eer­ing for or against any can­di­date. We are not aligned with either of these Pros­e­cut­ing Attor­ney hope­fuls. We did not test any neg­a­tive mes­sages about either can­di­date in this sur­vey; the only infor­ma­tion pro­vid­ed to respon­dents about them were the bio­graph­i­cal details pre­sent­ed above.

As men­tioned, this autumn, we plan to poll this con­test again and bring you one more Man­ion v. Fer­ell find­ing in advance of the Novem­ber gen­er­al elec­tion. If you’d like to be noti­fied of when we pub­lish that and oth­er find­ings, you can sign up to be noti­fied of new Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate posts using the form to the right.