Seattle's Conservative Cycle is Over

Proposition 1A Stomps to Victory, Likely Heralding a New Era

Seattle Finally Starts Taxing the Super Rich (A Little Bit)

The results are in, and they are clear.

Proposition 1A is set to pass in Seattle. 68% of Seattle voters wanted to fund the social housing agency. When it came to the question of how to fund it—tax the rich v take money from housing for the very poor - the answer was 57.5% in favor of taxing the rich, with 42.5% favoring of the other (confusing) option.

The Seattle Times reported this walloping as leaning toward Proposition 1A, despite the fact that at the time of November’s election November they used terms like “rejected initiative 2114” and “was passing” for statewide initiatives that had significantly smaller margins on election night.

Crosscut (now Cascade PBS) was subdued, but at least it was accurate with “poised to pass” and the Urbanist described reality as any politico understood it - “Proposition 1A up big in early returns.”

Surprise

This lopsided result is despite Amazon and the Chamber spending big on lies in the mail, with Bruce Harrell’s help.

It is despite the Council blatantly violating the city charter (also known as flouting the rule of law). They did this to push the ballot to a special election in February, when the smaller, often more conservative electorate would be cheaper to bamboozle with corporate-bought mailers. We also learned yesterday that Maritza Rivera and Sara Nelson likely made this illegal move at the behest of the Seattle Chamber, which then led the disinformation campaign alongside Microsoft and Amazon.

It is also despite the deceptive inclusion of Proposition 1B by the council (also Rivera’s doing), which was slammed by the Democratic Party and labor as an assault on the state and national Democratic Party platforms and working people everywhere.

In December, I wrote a piece arguing that Seattle’s conservative super-cycle might be over. I was pretty convinced at the time, but I’m much more convinced now. In it I showed that every one of the eleven major Seattle races in 2021 and 2023 (except for mine) had shifted right, and that those ten races had shifted an average of eleven points to the right.

I also argued that that the theories about why the results were anomalous were all wrong. These included Tanya Woo’s problems (which were real), Alexis Mercedes Rinck’s strengths (which are also real), labor spending and a lack of corporate spending, and turnout. I showed that, though these may have contributed to her margin, they were unlikely to sufficiently explain her result.

My working theory was that:

Last, I suspect Trump plays a huge part. He was President in 2017 and 2019, but not 2021 and 2023, and he was back on the top of the ticket in 2024. People here hate his politics. That by itself is enough to mobilize people, and remind them of why they are progressives. When Trump is in the background, Seattle voters probably even pay more attention to who the Democratic Party says it endorses, rather than just defaulting to the local newspaper of record. They might also notice how Trump and Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” sounds a lot like the BS spouted by Bob Kettle, Sara Nelson, Maritza Rivera and Rob Saka. Whatever the causal mechanism, I suspect Trump being around makes a difference, and will do so in turnout as well.

I am much more confident of this now. It is true that special electorates like this one are very different than general elections. It is also true that Presidential electorates are also very different than Seattle’s usual November elections. So I don’t know exactly what kind of margins a solid progressive candidate should expect (and even in progressive years, centrist Mayor have done well). But it seems increasingly clear that we are in a new era.

Between my quoted argument above and the fact that this Seattle City Council took many months to accomplish anything, then mainly engaged in performative gestures, and during budget season cut funding for affordable housing, Seattle’s conservative leaders are unpopular. This is made worse by the fact that some of these politicians actively lied to voters about their positions on housing during their campaigns.

Bruce Harrell was on council for more than a decade, pushing policies that created many of our biggest problems—especially the affordability and homelessness crises. Harrell follow an unbroken line of centrist Mayors since 2013. He has had a split council since 2021 and a conservative council that stormed the gates in 2023.

These people own Seattle’s problems. Seattle voters are no longer living in the frame brought to us by 2021.

What I predicted then looks likely to pass:

Seattle politics are likely to return closer to their average. That means Sara Nelson and Ann Davison are both very vulnerable and a strong candidate should be able to handily defeat them.

It even means Bruce Harrell could be vulnerable.

Yes, he has done his best to not make too many enemies, so he looks set to coast to reelection.

But he has done this by failing to lead, accomplishing very little, and he is now already failing to stand up to Trump when our AG and Governor are showing much more courage.

Given that the top three concerns of Seattle residents are homelessness, public safety, and housing costs, and all have gotten worse during Harrell’s term, he has certainly not been successful in any serious sense. And with his budget cuts hitting things like affordable housing and oversight of labor violations, he is not exactly pursuing a popular agenda.

All of this suggests that the Seattle institutional left’s “hug Harrell because it could be even worse” strategy is no longer a smart one, and it is time to update it.