Leesa Manion wins King County Prosecuting Attorney contest, defeating Jim Ferrell

Leesa Man­ion declared vic­to­ry today in the 2022 race for King Coun­ty Pros­e­cut­ing Attor­ney, accept­ing the con­grat­u­la­tions of her van­quished oppo­nent, Fed­er­al Way May­or Jim Fer­rell, and pledg­ing to get to work on behalf of the peo­ple of the state’s largest juris­dic­tion, home to more than two mil­lion people.

“I am hon­ored to have earned the trust of King Coun­ty vot­ers,” said Man­ion.

“I am look­ing for­ward to serv­ing as your next King Coun­ty Pros­e­cut­ing Attor­ney and want to thank May­or Jim Fer­rell for call­ing to con­grat­u­late me. I am com­mit­ted to work­ing with lead­ers through­out King Coun­ty to ensure that all of our com­mu­ni­ties are safe and sup­port­ed and to build a fair and trans­par­ent jus­tice sys­tem that pro­tects pub­lic safe­ty and pro­motes racial equity.”

“This after­noon, I called Leesa Man­ion to con­grat­u­late her on her his­toric elec­tion as King Coun­ty Pros­e­cut­ing Attor­ney,” said Fer­rell in a state­ment.

“This was a spir­it­ed and hard fought cam­paign and I am incred­i­bly thank­ful to my lov­ing fam­i­ly, friends, and sup­port­ers who put in the work to car­ry our mes­sage to every cor­ner of King Coun­ty. The peo­ple have spo­ken and I wish Leesa suc­cess as she takes on the seri­ous chal­lenges fac­ing our entire region.”

Man­ion’s cam­paign was backed by the King Coun­ty Democ­rats and over a dozen leg­isla­tive dis­trict par­ty orga­ni­za­tions along with King Coun­ty Exec­u­tive Dow Con­stan­tine, Seat­tle May­or Bruce Har­rell, The Stranger, and a large num­ber of pro­gres­sive orga­ni­za­tions. Man­ion is out­go­ing Pros­e­cut­ing Attor­ney Dan Sat­ter­berg’s Chief of Staff and has many years of expe­ri­ence work­ing in the office.

Fer­rell argued that Man­ion did­n’t have the right kind of expe­ri­ence need­ed to be a suc­cess­ful Pros­e­cut­ing Attor­ney, a cri­tique that was loud­ly echoed by The Seat­tle Times when it endorsed him. Though claim­ing to be a Demo­c­rat, Fer­rell sought and wel­comed the sup­port of Repub­li­cans for his campaign.

At one point, while on Jason Rantz’s right wing talk show, he stu­pid­ly attacked NPI, false­ly claim­ing that our KCPA elec­toral research was a “push poll.”

Fer­rel­l’s appear­ance on Rantz’s show was illu­mi­nat­ing. It showed that part of Fer­rel­l’s strat­e­gy was to get Repub­li­can vot­ers enthused about his candidacy.

But King Coun­ty is a very Demo­c­ra­t­ic, pro­gres­sive juris­dic­tion, and most of its vot­ers want to be rep­re­sent­ed by lead­ers who share their val­ues of empa­thy, mutu­al respon­si­bil­i­ty, and integri­ty. Going on right wing talk radio and mak­ing false state­ments about a pro­gres­sive orga­ni­za­tion’s work seemed to us to be a very coun­ter­pro­duc­tive move for a can­di­date try­ing to win in King County.

The Stranger’s Will Casey has had some of the best report­ing this year of Fer­rel­l’s cam­paign, fil­ing sto­ries on Fer­rel­l’s sym­bol­ic redun­dant ban on smok­ing fen­tanyl and his attacks on Restora­tive Com­mu­ni­ty Path­ways (RCP, which is a pre-fil­ing diver­sion pro­gram for young first-time offend­ers). The Stranger endorsed Man­ion, writ­ing of Fer­rell: “He’s sim­ply so deeply embed­ded in the sta­tus quo that he can’t seem to grasp that the poli­cies he’s push­ing will lead to even worse over­crowd­ing at our (exple­tive) jails and, in turn, even more crime.”

Real Change’s Guy Oron also pub­lished a reveal­ing inter­view with Fer­rell in which he was chal­lenged on many of the posi­tions he’s tak­en as part of his campaign.

An inde­pen­dent expen­di­ture oper­at­ed by a com­mit­tee call­ing itself “Fam­i­lies for a Safer King Coun­ty” and fund­ed by the Wash­ing­ton Asso­ci­a­tion of Real­tors, Steve Gor­don, Sabey Cor­po­ra­tion, Wash­ing­ton Fed­er­al Bank, and Home­street Bank sent out mail­ers to boost Fer­rell. One mail­er that went out in late Octo­ber tout­ed Fer­rel­l’s Seat­tle Times endorse­ment and claimed that he would elim­i­nate the “back­log of felony cas­es” and “close the revolv­ing door for career criminals.”

Man­ion cam­paigned with the enthu­si­as­tic sup­port of for­mer King Coun­ty Sher­iff Sue Rahr, who joined Ari­ana Orford and Brad Black­burn to offer endorse­ment tes­ti­mo­ni­als in a thir­ty sec­ond spot cre­at­ed to sum­ma­rize her cam­paign themes.

NPI’s final pre­elec­tion poll, a coun­ty­wide sur­vey of like­ly 2022 vot­ers in King Coun­ty, found Man­ion just one point ahead of Fer­rell in the aggre­gate — a vir­tu­al tie. How­ev­er, as the post announc­ing that find­ing detailed and explained, the poll found Man­ion had a lead greater than the mod­eled mar­gin of error among vot­ers who had already cast their bal­lots, which was telling. Fer­rell led among vot­ers who had not yet vot­ed, but not sure vot­ers grav­i­tat­ed more to Man­ion than to his can­di­da­cy when prompt­ed to make a choice, which was also telling.

The returns in every coun­ty­wide con­test we polled — King Coun­ty Pros­e­cut­ing Attor­ney, King Coun­ty Char­ter Amend­ment 1, and King Coun­ty Propo­si­tion 1 — are in each case clos­er to the num­bers from the sub­set of respon­dents who had already vot­ed rather than the aggre­gate num­bers, which makes sense, because those vot­ers were self-report­ing where they came down on these impor­tant ques­tions, rather than telling us what they were think­ing of doing.

In a “non­par­ti­san” race with an oppo­nent who also iden­ti­fied as a Demo­c­rat, Man­ion need­ed to make sure that King Coun­ty vot­ers knew that she was the most pro­gres­sive and most qual­i­fied choice. The elec­tion results demon­strate that she was suc­cess­ful in get­ting that mes­sage out. We should have some precinct-lev­el data soon to show where in the coun­ty her and Fer­rel­l’s sup­port came from.

Our polling indi­cat­ed Man­ion led in Seat­tle and on the East­side, and that’s prob­a­bly where many of the votes that she received were cast.

NPI con­grat­u­lates Leesa Man­ion on being cho­sen by vot­ers to serve in this impor­tant post. When Man­ion is next up, in 2026, she will get to run for reelec­tion along with sev­er­al oth­er coun­ty offi­cials, owing to the suc­cess­ful pas­sage of King Coun­ty Char­ter Amend­ment 1, which will align all elec­tions for coun­ty posi­tions in even-num­bered midterm and pres­i­den­tial elec­tion years like this one.