By Erica C. Barnett and Andrew Engelson

Call it the “Fuck Trump” effect. That, at least, was the most common explanation I heard on Tuesday night for the progressive rout that had left-leaning candidates destroying centrist and conservative incumbents. After two successive backlash elections in which centrists and a Republican (City Attorney Ann Davison) won election after election, voters are fed up with the status quo.

This is part of a national trend—plenty of social media pundits, along with The Nation, have declared Katie Wilson “Seattle’s answer to Zohran Mamdani”—but it’s also a specific response to local politicians who have prioritized police over human services, surveillance over safety, and trees over housing.

From City Attorney Ann Davison (losing to challenger Erika Evans 37 to 51 percent) to City Councilmember Sara Nelson (losing to progressive challenger Dionne Foster 39 to 54 percent) to Mayor Bruce Harrell (losing to labor organizer and transit activist Katie Wilson 45 to 46 percent), progressives ran the table on Tuesday night.

At Harrell’s outdoor party on the back patio of Bluwater Bistro in Leschi, there was no TV or obvious group of campaign staff monitoring the night’s results, and the crowd was visibly unbothered as they mingled over a buffet that included kebabs, whole Dungeness crabs, and a white sheet cake. Harrell spoke for just a few minutes, emphasizing the need to “tell the story” of the city’s success. “I don’t take a lot of shots” against opponents, Harrell said. (Earlier in the day, the mayor sent out an email blast that harshly criticized Wilson for appearing on a controversial Youtuber’s show, suggesting she had poor judgment).

“We talk about public safety—we know we’re creating a safer Seattle. We’re talking about transportation. We … talk about climate change. We know we’re going to save our planet, our water and our air. We’re talking about housing affordability,” Harrell said.

During a brief interview after his speech, Harrell told PubliCola he thought the progress his administration has made in the past few months just isn’t well known by voters yet; he cited work on the city’s comprehensive plan (which was delayed a year), the city’s Real Time Crime Center and CCTV cameras, and progress on housing construction.

Across town on Beacon Hill, at Wilson’s election-night party at El Centro de la Raza, the mood was joyous. Wilson, a community activist and co-founder and general secretary of the Transit Riders Union who has never held elected office, told supporters, “By the time all the ballots are counted, our numbers are  going to go up. We are very much in this race. And we are going to build the biggest ground game Seattle has ever seen.”

“Bruce Harrell is doing a bad job,” Wilson said over cheers. “We’re going to fix that in November.”

“We knew we had momentum, but you never know until you know,” Wilson told PubliCola. “The numbers are pretty freaking great.”

Volunteer Austin Schey, who moved to Seattle just a year ago and spent a month knocking on doors and tabling for Wilson, said he was impressed with Wilson’s focusing on housing  and affordability.

“I see Katie as someone that actually cares about people,  So many of our politicians are wealthy homeowners out of touch with what people actually need. She’s not a wealthy person. She’s worked odd jobs. She knows how the system works and she knows what people need.”

Over on Capitol Hill, a joint party for incumbent Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck (defeating several challengers with 75 percent), Evans, and Foster was still going strong well past 10 pm, as jubilant supporters hung out at Stoup Brewing to celebrate victories for three progressive women of color. (Earlier in the evening, a conga line briefly formed).

Rinck told PubliCola she was looking forward to working with new colleagues to focus on issues like affordability and fighting federal funding cuts (her colleagues Nelson and Maritza Rivera endorsed her opponent Ray Rogers, who ended election night with less than 5 percent), and added that a progressive city attorney would be less likely to focus on priorities that harm people, like banishment zones for drug use and sex work, and more likely to file proactive lawsuits against the Trump Administration. Overall, Rinck said, “I’m in the clouds right now.”

Foster told PubliCola that many voters she spoke to specifically cited Nelson’s emphasis on policies they didn’t support, like rolling back gig worker minimum wages and weakening city ethics rules, as reasons they were voting against her.

Her campaign talked to people “who were frustrated about the comprehensive plan not getting delivered on time” and wondered “what’s going on with council members leaving City Hill early,” before the end of their terms. (Tammy Morales and Cathy Moore were both elected in 2023 and left early in their terms.) “Or, why are we arresting protesters—what is going on?”

Evans said the thing she heard most frequently from voters was that they never see Ann Davison out in the community, talking to people about what their priorities are. “Community organizations don’t hear from her,” Evans said. “She’s not asking them, hey, what are the things you care about, as opposed to just like her putting forth her own pet policies.”

In other local races, Eddie Lin, a land use attorney at the city, was leading Adonis Ducksworth, a longtime SDOT outreach staffer and onetime transportation advisor to Harrell, 46 to 31. In the county executive race, County Councilmember Girmay Zahilay led fellow Councilmember Claudia Balducci 4o to 30. And funding for democracy vouchers, Seattle’s public campaign finance program, was winning 56 to 44.

Tonight’s results likely represent the high-water mark for centrist candidates; later results tend to benefit progressive candidates, so the margin of victory for progressive candidates will likely rise.

As one of my Seattle Nice podcast co-hosts put it Tuesday, it was a “bloodbath” for Seattle’s centrist incumbents—a backlash to the backlash.