Lol holy shit, last night was wild, gossipy, and full of surprises and celestial spectacle.
Though the state still needs to tally half the votes cast in the 2024 primary elections, we ask you: when has working with partial information ever stopped us from delivering screaming hot takes? Never. It has never stopped us, and it won’t stop us now. So let’s talk about what you should be talking about with your friends at the water cooler, or on Slack, or in the local politics group chat, which you totally have. Right? Right.
A Backlash to the Backlash Is Brewing in Seattle. Even though voters only saw one Seattle City Council seat on their ballots this cycle, last night did not bode well for the conservatives who just took office this year.
If you haven’t been reading the blog, just know that those new, conservative council members have done very little except piss off even the most mild of progressives with attacks on minimum wage laws, threats to renters’ rights, and a quest to jail as many poor people as humanly possible. If they’re the backlash council to the last council, then there just might be a backlash to the backlash brewing.
Tanya Woo, who the council appointed to the vacant citywide position earlier this year, currently trails her progressive challenger, Alexis Mercedes Rinck by five points, 41.5% to 46.5%. Rinck’s lead will likely increase as the remaining ballots trickle in, and it is pretty safe to say that the combined 8% of voters who filled in the bubbles for lefties Tariq Yusuf and Saunatina Sanchez will vote for Rinck in the general. Woo is in a bad position for an incumbent, and that means trouble for her peers on the council who endorsed her.
Several council members, including Sara Nelson, Joy Hollingsworth, and Bob Kettle, also appeared to support candidate Andrea Suarez for the State House in the 43rd Legislative District. She only secured 23% of the vote, trailing first-place Shaun Scott’s commanding 54%.
This result could be especially concerning for Council President Nelson, who is up for reelection next year. According to recent polling from Northwest Progressive Institute, only 22% of surveyed voters said they approved of Nelson’s performance on council; 32% said they disapproved, and 46% said they were not sure. She’s vulnerable, so the left ought to rally around a strong, progressive challenger next year.
The Stranger Still Reigns Supreme. Some whiny reporters at The Stranger were worried that our endorsements wouldn’t mean as much after we got bought by a normie Democrat. Maybe it's too soon to say, since we wrote and reported our endorsement package before we met our new stepdad, but so far it looks like we have maintained our influence. With the exception of two Congressional challengers and the Commissioner of Public Lands, all of the people we endorsed won their races. Not just made it through the primary. They fucking won.
In comparison with the other major endorsing outlet in town, the Seattle Times, we whooped ass. To be fair, both The Stranger and the Seattle Times endorsed Bob Furgeson for Governor and Nick Brown for Attorney General, and several others. But when we disagreed, as we so often do, The Stranger came out on top.
Our candidates beat Seattle Times candidates in races for Public Lands Commissioner, Superintendent of Public Instruction, Insurance Commissioner, the open seat in the 43rd Legislative District, the open seat in the 5th Legislative District, and in the citywide Seattle City Council seat. So next time some crank writes on Post Alley about how washed The Stranger is as an endorsing body, remember that they know nothing and that their adult children probably don’t call them. Seattle’s Only Newspaper still has it, and we hope you continue to bestow that sacred trust upon us. We will endeavor to continue earning it.
Another Way to Look at a Few of the Times-endorsed Flunkies. Candidates who presented themselves as reasonable and pragmatic centrists didn’t do so hot, even if conservative editorial boards the world over love their type.
Take Reid Saaris, the I-don’t-like-charters-but-charters-like-me candidate running for Superintendent of Public Instruction. He was outdone on the left by Incumbent Chris Reykdal, and on the right by David Olson, the peninsula school board member who discussed “critical race theory” on conservative talk radio.
In the 43rd Legislative District, the politically unknown tech employee Daniel Carusello is dead last behind Shaun Scott, the progressive lobbyist leading the race, and Andrea Suarez of We Heart Seattle.
In the race for Washington’s Insurance Commissioner, longtime OIC project manager John Pestinger, a self-described liberal listed as a “strong Republican voter” in a Democratic voter database, fell far behind our pick, Patty Kruderer, and also Phil Fortunato, one of the most conservative Republicans in the galaxy. Does this mean our politics are more divided? Or are people sick of politicians they can’t trust to take a side on basic issues?
Dems Dominate Statewide Executive Races. In an unsurprising turn of events, Democratic candidates swept Washington’s statewide executive seats, barring one rather large exception we’ll discuss later.
Attorney General and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bob Ferguson currently leads with 45.5% of the vote to Republican gubernatorial candidate Dave Reichert, who managed to just barely finish a little less than 20 points behind Ferguson with 28% of the vote. Ferguson’s election-night tally runs 3.5 points ahead of a July poll from the Seattle Times/SurveyUSA, and runs just 1.5 points behind the number current three-term Governor Jay Inlsee put in up his 2012 primary race, all of which must make Ferguson’s team feel good.
Meanwhile, Lt. Governor Denny Heck trounced the competition with about 49% of the vote, more than double Republican challenger Dan Matthews. Incumbent Democratic Secretary of State Steve Hobbs earned 49%, a solid lead ahead of his Republican challenger, Dale Whitaker, who finished more than 10 points behind. In the race for Insurance Commissioner, Democratic state Sen. Patty Kurderer holds a comfortable lead with about 45% of the vote to Republican Phil Fortunato’s 28%. In the Attorney General’s race, Republican Pete Serrano technically leads the field with 42%, well ahead of Stranger-endorsed candidate Nick Brown, who secured 36%. But if you add Democratic state Senator Manka Dhingra’s tally to Brown’s, then the Democrats dominate that race with 58% of the vote. In a time with conservative judicial fuckery in Washington DC and a terrifying 2024 General Election looming, swimming in an ocean of blue executives soothes the soul a little. Of course, the Lands Commissioner race had to be the exception that proves the rule.
The Lorax Is Shook: We may wind up with two Republicans to choose from in the general election contest for the Commissioner of Public Lands, thanks to a crowded Democratic field that didn’t really need to be so crowded, if you ask us! The race to replace Hilary Franz featured one progressive Democrat (King County Council Member Dave Upthegrove) and four more conservative Democrats (Department of Natural Resources Tribal Liaison Patrick DePoe, state Sen Kevin Van De Wege, Allen Lebovitz, and Redmond City Council Member Jaralee Anderson) squaring off against two Republicans (a very Trumpy Sue Pederson and a former Republican Congresswoman Jaime Herrera Buetler).
Big Timber dumped a shit-ton of money into Kevin Van De Wege’s coffers, earning him a whopping 8.2% of the vote. Tribes spent a good chunk of change on the campaign for DePoe, who garnered 13% of the vote. And a couple of political neophytes–Anderson and Lebovitz–took home 15% of the vote between them, leaving the only person who actually wants to save the trees in close third with 19.9% of the vote. Upthegrove’s camp feels like they might juuuust squeak past Pederson, who currently has 20.3% of the vote, but it’s hard to say. If he doesn’t, then so much for the Evergreen State.
Washington State Supreme Court Looks Weirdly Tight. Preliminary results in the race for a seat on the highest court in the state show a close contest between civil litigation attorney Sal Mungia, who leads with about 42% of the vote, and Federal Way Municipal Court Judge Dave Larson, who earned 37%. Those numbers seem surprising considering Mungia’s endorsements from both The Stranger and the Seattle Times, but we’re just now getting word that other places in Washington exist outside of the Puget Sound region.
Mungia’s spokesperson cautioned that with plenty of ballots left to count in King County, the gap between those candidates may continue to grow. However, with conservative-coded Todd Bloom taking in about 17% of the vote, and with Larson running a campaign that at least appears right-leaning, Mungia may be in trouble depending on how Bloom supporters split. Over the phone, Mungia acknowledged feeling concerned, but he said he’s felt concerned since day one, and he just wants to keep putting out his message of fairness as he continues to campaign.
Gaza Isn’t Driving Votes. We’ve marched, we’ve shut down traffic, we’ve written countless emails to our local, state, and national representatives demanding an end to US support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and we must continue doing all that work in the name of all that is right and true and good. But when it comes to the electorate, single-issue Palestine voters are not a dominant force in Washington State.
Council on American-Islamic Relations Executive Director Imraan Siddiqi will not advance through the primary, coming in with only 3% of the vote share in the 8th Congressional District. Three-term Congresswoman Kim Schrier currently leads that race against Republican banker Carmen Goers, 51.5% to 44%. Cracking 50% and running 7.5 points ahead of the Republican is a good place for Schrier to find herself, but she’ll have to keep working hard to keep that seat.
Closer to home, in the 9th Congressional District Melissa Chaudhry pulled in 18%, which might allow her to squeeze past Republican Paul Martin (who?) if the last-minute progressive votes go her way, which they will. But even so, she’d be a distant second to Congressman Adam Smith, who leads the field with an unassailable 58%. Moreover, Chaudhry is currently running about nine points behind Sarah Smith, who earned 27% of the vote share at the height of the most recent progressive movement in 2018, which doesn’t bode well for any sort of foreign-policy based campaigns in the state.
