By Erica C. Barnett

We recorded this week’s Seattle Nice podcast on Wednesday, just before the afternoon drop of results from King County Elections reinforced what was already clear on Election Night: Progressive candidates swept the local primary election in Seattle, coming in ahead of incumbents in the races for mayor, city council, and city attorney.

And it isn’t just a challengers-vs.-incumbents phenomenon. Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck, who was winning her 2024 race with 76.6 percent of the vote as of Wednesday afternoon), is poised to overtake Sally Bagshaw for the second-highest showing, by percentage, in any council primary election; first place is held by former councilmember Sue Donaldson, who won 81.5 percent in her primary in 1991.

Looking at just the latest batch of election results from Wednesday (which I’ll update to reflect Thursday’s vote drop when it arrives), challenger Katie Wilson was beating incumbent mayor Bruce Harrell 48 percent to 43.5 percent; challenger Erika Evans was beating incumbent city attorney Ann Davison 53 percent to 35.8 percent; and city council Position 9 challenger Dionne Foster was beating incumbent Sara Nelson by 55.8 to 37 percent.

UPDATE: Thursday’s results looked much more like election night, with Wilson leading Harrell, just in the new batch of votes, 47 to 45; Evans leading Davison 53.4 to 36.7; and Foster leading Nelson 54.9 to 39.3. Overall, Wilson is currently leading Harrell 47.8 to 43.8, Evans is leading Davison 53 to 36, and Foster is leading Nelson 55.4 to 38. Rinck has 76.7 percent of the vote.

Meanwhile, in the race for District 2, city land-use attorney Eddie Lin was leading SDOT outreach staffer (and former Harrell transportation advisor) Adonis Ducksworth 46 percent to 30 percent overall.

So what’s behind these results? I think it’s two things. First, people are terrified about what Trump’s policies will mean for Seattle, and they don’t see city leaders—particularly Republican city attorney Ann Davison—addressing the situation with urgency.

PubliCola is supported entirely by readers like you.
CLICK BELOW to become a one-time or monthly contributor.

Support PubliCola

Second, and related: Four years since the backlash election of 2021, voters have had plenty of time to see results from the people they elected, and they’re not impressed. Affordability is an urgent issue to Seattle residents struggling to live in an increasingly expensive city, but the council, mayor, and city attorney have focused more on arresting drug users and increasing fines for graffiti than providing affordable housing and services for people in need. Seattle has seen what the leadership of Ann Davison, Sara Nelson, and Bruce Harrell looks like, and they aren’t impressed.

Sandeep disagrees that people are concerned about, or even aware of, the policies Seattle leaders have been passing and overlooking over the last four years. He argues that local politics are now nationalized, and that fear of Trump has translated into a kind of throw-the-bums-out overreach that has resulted in a “lurch to the left” among Seattle’s “fickle” vote base. In this theory, Ann Davison lost not because she relentlessly promoted and passed policies that are broadly unpopular, from ending therapeutic court to reinstating ineffective banishment zones for people caught using drugs, but because she has an “R” by her name.

And David kind of agrees with both of us, saying people are “taking out their anxieties and their frustrations about the status quo against the incumbents who are in office,” but also that Katie Wilson is speaking to the concerns of ordinary people—like why a slice of pizza in Seattle costs $8.

Listen: