Early 2023 Top Two results suggest Barón, Reyneveld will advance in county council race

Next year, King Coun­ty Coun­cilmem­ber Jeanne Kohl-Welles will retire after a long career in pub­lic ser­vice that includ­ed eight years on the Met­ro­pol­i­tan King Coun­ty Coun­cil rep­re­sent­ing Dis­trict Four, which encom­pass­es much of north­west Seat­tle. Three can­di­dates stepped up to run for Kohl-Welles’ posi­tion, all strong pro­gres­sive Democ­rats: Bec­ka John­son Poppe, Jorge L. Barón, and Sarah Reyneveld.

John­son Poppe, a bud­get and pol­i­cy man­ag­er for King Coun­ty, was endorsed by The Urban­ist, while Barón, a for­mer exec­u­tive direc­tor of the North­west Immi­grant Rights Project, man­aged the rare and impres­sive feat of get­ting The Seat­tle Times and The Stranger to both back his candidacy.

Reyn­eveld, a man­ag­ing assist attor­ney gen­er­al, did not score those valu­able media endorse­ments, but did get the sup­port of the King Coun­ty Democ­rats, the Tran­sit Rid­ers Union, MLK Labor, Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son and a major­i­ty of the incum­bent coun­ty councilmembers.

All three par­tic­i­pat­ed in a can­di­date forum host­ed by NPI last month.

Barón’s dual media endorse­ments appear to have giv­en him a big advan­tage in the ear­ly vote. He has 47.81%, which is near­ly a major­i­ty. Reyn­eveld is in sec­ond place, with 30.83%, and John­son Poppe is in third place with 20.13%.

Election night results

John­son Poppe’s vote deficit is 3,569, which will be extreme­ly dif­fi­cult to sur­mount in the late bal­lots. We’ll know more tomor­row, but it’s a good guess that the gen­er­al elec­tion is going to be a runoff between Barón and Reyneveld.

John­son Poppe was sup­port­ed by King Coun­ty Coun­cilmem­bers Clau­dia Bal­duc­ci and Joe McDer­mott, as well as sev­er­al state leg­is­la­tors from Seattle.

Her pri­or­i­ties were themed around what she called the “three E’s”: Envi­ron­ment, equi­ty, and econ­o­my. “Our region has enjoyed pros­per­i­ty, but that pros­per­i­ty has also left many of our neigh­bors behind,” her cam­paign web­site says. “I’m run­ning to cham­pi­on more hous­ing that’s afford­able for more peo­ple, fam­i­ly-sus­tain­ing wages, acces­si­ble child­care, and work­force devel­op­ment that pro­vides oppor­tu­ni­ty for com­mu­ni­ties his­tor­i­cal­ly exclud­ed and dis­en­fran­chised in our economy.”

Barón, the fron­trun­ner, sup­ports sim­i­lar pol­i­cy directions:

“My vision for King Coun­ty is ground­ed in the val­ue that our suc­cess as a com­mu­ni­ty depends on the well-being of every one of our neigh­bors. And my approach to pol­i­cy-mak­ing is cen­tered on the con­cept that those most direct­ly impact­ed by pub­lic poli­cies should be involved in the shap­ing of those policies.”

“There are two over­ar­ch­ing issues that inform how I plan to approach all pol­i­cy areas.  First, racial jus­tice. I rec­og­nize that so many of the chal­lenges we face as a coun­ty – and as a soci­ety – are dri­ven by the ongo­ing impact of sys­temic racism. I believe it is essen­tial to use a racial jus­tice lens when eval­u­at­ing poli­cies in all these issue areas. Sec­ond, I believe that we will not be able to make suf­fi­cient progress in any of these issue areas if we do not address the way that coun­ty ser­vices are fund­ed. It is essen­tial that we gen­er­ate new urgency to the work with state leg­is­la­tors to devel­op pro­gres­sive sources of rev­enue that will sup­port the invest­ments nec­es­sary to tack­le the chal­lenges in all of these areas.”

As does Reyneveld:

“Sarah is run­ning to bring her expe­ri­ence to move King Coun­ty for­ward and advance pro­gres­sive solu­tions that will meet the scale of the chal­lenges fac­ing our com­mu­ni­ty and region at this crit­i­cal time,” her web­site says.

“She believes that the best pub­lic pol­i­cy  cen­ters the com­mu­ni­ty and racial equi­ty, and ensures that peo­ple with lived expe­ri­ence who are clos­est to the issues dri­ve the solu­tions.  As a com­mu­ni­ty advo­cate and admit­ted pol­i­cy wonk, Sarah has worked with com­mu­ni­ties across King Coun­ty and Wash­ing­ton State to expand access to acces­si­ble and reli­able pub­lic tran­sit, pro­tect our envi­ron­ment, and invest in behav­ioral health, hous­ing, qual­i­ty child care, and pub­lic education.”

When these can­di­dates joined us to record an episode of Can­di­date Sound­ings last month, they were high­ly com­ple­men­tary towards each oth­er. If ever there was a mod­el field of can­di­dates, it would be this trio. They’re all high­ly qual­i­fied and very friend­ly. The vot­ers were for­tu­nate to have three out­stand­ing choic­es. Alas, only one of them can become the 4th Dis­tric­t’s next councilmember.