Sawant wins second term in expensive District 3 race

It was the most expensive City Council election in Seattle history, and the winner believes her victory signals that voters are fed-up with corporate politics.  

Nearly $1 million was spent as Kshama Sawant and Pamela Banks faced off in a race that saw the Socialist Alternative incumbent win a second term in November, garnering 55 percent of the vote to represent the newly formed District 3 that includes Capitol Hill, Madison Park, Montlake and the Central Area.  

“It’s a confirmation that working people in the district, in Seattle and, indeed, nationwide are looking for an alternative to corporate politics,” said Sawant, who noted that voters have shown their agreement through those results that Seattle is currently a deeply unequal city.  

While Banks had been within striking distance on Election Night, less than 1,000 votes behind her opponent, Sawant expanded her lead with each ensuing ballot drop and eventually won by nearly 4,000 votes. 

Banks officially conceded on Nov. 6, writing in a Facebook post that she entered the race because she believed the district deserved “a representative that answers to you and speaks on your behalf.” She said she would continue to fight for the community despite not doing so from a City Council position. 

“My heart and my door will always be open to you,” she wrote. 

Magnified issues

Sawant, who knocked off longtime incumbent Richard Conlin two years ago for her first term on the council, said many of biggest issues facing the city — ones she’ll now be tasked with addressing over the next four years — are magnified within her district. 

Those hot topics include the need for affordable housing, a more expansive mass-transit system and robust human service offerings, along with a conversation of how to fund those measures.   

“All these issues,” she said, “they are issues that need to be solved citywide, and people in all districts are clamoring for solutions to these problems.” 

Paramount among those concerns is the housing crisis. 

“Rent is skyrocketing citywide, but you can see some of the biggest crunch in Capitol Hill and the Central District,” Sawant said. “You can see that also being exemplified in the way that low-income people, people of color — particularly the African-American community — is being, because of the price of housing, being driven out of the urban core of the city.”

Sawant also noted that the needs of the LGBTQ community are “absolutely central” to District 3 and that members of that community are also being pushed out of the neighborhood. Along with skyrocketing rents, she said, LGBTQ community members are overrepresented among low-wage workers and among those feeling the housing pinch. She also said it was critical that Seattle establish a city-funded and community-run LGBTQ center. 

Ultimately, Sawant said having a parochial outlook to the current problems facing the city isn’t going to get things fixed, and discussions over taxing the super-wealthy and having progressive — instead of regressive — taxation must take place across all districts.  

How the district voted

Sawant, who emphasized her policy to not accept corporate donations throughout the campaign, ultimately raised more money than every other candidate running for City Council, at $450,000, and she and Banks combined to bring in at least $300,000 more than the next closest race (the citywide Position 8 battle between Tim Burgess and Jon Grant), and at least $500,000 more than the second-closest district race. 

The District 3 race even outpaced the spending on both sides of the Move Seattle transportation levy, for which both sides combined to spend more than $750,000 total. 

Only one other City Council candidate (Burgess) eclipsed the $300,000 mark, while just two (Bruce Harrell in District 2, and Lorena Gonzalez for Position 9) raised more than $200,000. 

At an average contribution size of $265, Banks had one of the highest in the city, while Sawant’s $121 average was ahead of only Deborah Zech-Artis in District 7 among all City Council candidates in the general election. 

“The reason I supported the district initiative, the charter amendment, was because running district-wide election campaigns, as opposed to citywide election campaigns, is less daunting for grassroots campaigns that have to fight against corporate cash,” Sawant said. 

Capitol Hill voters also had a say in who would fill the city’s two at-large positions. Gonzalez and Burgess defeated Bill Bradburd and Grant, respectively. Gonzalez carried 78 percent of the vote in her race, while Burgess also led comfortably with approximately 55 percent of the tally. 

Turnout was also relatively strong in District 3 with 32,287 ballots returned as of Nov. 21, among 63,777 registered voters. That slightly trailed District 6 (Northwest Seattle) for the highest total number of ballots submitted, but it was still best margin of ballots submitted versus total registered voters at more than 50 percent. 

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