I was wondering how long it would take before this article appeared. Everyone knew it was coming. This paper put way too many eggs in the Sawant basket to accept that she lost the election.

Wait, she gets credit for universal preschool? The council was talking about it way before her. They've even passed legislation.

And rent control is a terrible, terrible idea that strongly reduces affordability over time.

I was so hugely pleasantly surprised by how much more substantive her campaign turned out to be than I'd expected. Still, she never convinced me she would be willing to do, or even was interested in knowing about, the mundane daily work, well out of the spotlight, that a council member needs to attend to. (Ask Mike O'Brien!)

A socialist woman of color who makes clear she intends to be not just an agenda-driver on the council, but a worker among workers there? She has my vote.

Who wrote this headline, Ted Cruz?

"She protested with striking fast-food workers. She waved signs with picketing taxi drivers. She got arrested while protesting bank foreclosures in South Park. She didn't do any of these actions to score political points (...)"

Bullshit! That's the ONLY reason why she did so. That's how her trotskyist organization works. Latch on to a cause, and flyer and table the fuck out of it promoting her and her party. When the cause ceases to be useful to them, they drop it like a hot potato. You only need to look at how they behaved during Occupy. When they couldn't control it, Sawant and her buddies ran away. (Yet she gets to claim that she was an Occupy organizer, trading in on a movement that she abandoned nearly as soon as it started.)

Describing these as selfless actions couldn't be farther from the truth. They're the result of a profoundly nasty narcissism.

Well I view her tweet of "You're the loser" as childish and sulking. Do you want to elect someone who will lose gracefully or someone who will sulk and stamp her feet when she doesn't her way?

Conlin has few legislative victories because opportunities for legislative victories on the council are pretty much nonexistent.

If Sawant won, she would have even fewer.

I think she's probably as well off outside the council as in, where she can promote ideas that are both sensible and have traction ($15 minimum wage), and maybe even make them happen (via initiative), and let ideas that aren't and don't (rent control) fall by the wayside (where they are headed whether she wants them to or not).

Wow you guys are in denial

Rent control is a terrible idea would turn Seattle into SF, a playground for the rich only.

She ran in the captial hiss district before (the 43rd) didn't win then, why would she now?

Sawant ran a great race and she is to be congratulated.

But the real victor was The Stranger which put her in position to...to....to further a typical Seattle liberal agenda.

I am yet to hear anything by or from Sawant which is anything more than mainstream liberal, which is of course smart politics.

Much as Alan Lobdell took an unfathomable 20% -- one-fifth -- of the electorate away from the favored son candidate in the KC Executive's race!

Really amazing that that level of dissent is brewing underneath the "solid Seattle" political bloc.

@5:

You've just described the modus operandi of literally EVERY self-serving politician who's ever run for office - it's certainly not a practice endemic to one particular person or political cause.

I agree with @2 and @7. Basically, the only substantive policy difference she had with Conlin (despite all of the "I am more of a progressive than you" rhetoric) is over the minimum wage. Most of her other proposals sound great, but aren't when you do the research (like rent control) or are simply illegal (like an income tax) or both (like rent control). You may as well run for the council promising to reduce spending on the military. Great, everyone on the council agrees -- so what? You can't do anything about it. My guess is that a lot of her supporters really didn't understand that. Basing a campaign on the ignorance of the voters is nothing to be proud of.

Conlin is the most progressive member on the council as far as density goes. The Stranger seemed to ignore that. Fortunately, lots of other people didn't, and we retain a guy who is working really hard to reduce the cost of rent (using every practical means necessary) and is way ahead of other council members on the issue.

One last thing: This wasn't a miracle campaign, but one based largely on the support of The Stranger. Money doesn't decide these issues, endorsements (and sometimes just hard work) do. Compare the two competitive races and you see an almost identical pattern except for the newspaper endorsements. Shen had plenty of money, but the support of The Seattle Times is worth a lot less than the support of The Stranger in Seattle, and it showed up in the numbers.

I hope that her run for council will get the other ancient white people there to realize that us median income folks in Seattle need to have affordable housing too. You can't just jump from an aPodment for $600 a month and the next step be an apartment where rents start at $1200... and that's if you're lucky enough to find it.

Kshama Sawant: the Darcy Burner of 2013. She wins elections by losing them, at least according to SLOG. And in a few years she'll likely have moved off into obscurity, just like Burner has.

True, in this world, Tesla actually went up 15% instead of down.

@8, what are you talking about here: " captial hiss district"?

I would have voted for her, but I though her rent control position was short sighted and she used SF as a standard for good housing, which anyone who has been there knows housing there is a rich mans joke. Also I wasn't keen on her mass transit thoughts.

Congrats to her, and to State Senator Mike McGinn!

@7

Classic Seattle stasis. Instead of supporting someone who has come to change the way we do things so that the Seattle City Council might start to pass legislation that changes people's lives for the better, you dismiss her because 'that's how it's always been'.

The reason there are no chances for legislative victories on our city council is that we keep refusing to elect anyone who will take on big issues and make big changes. Instead we get backyard goats and and endless number of wonky little giveaways to developers in exchange for permanent incumbency.

@18 - For your reference

#22

Sawant would do better if she changed parties to Republican and ran for the King County Council.

She'd appeal to largely unrepresented ethnic and immigrant groups in the metropolitan area.

@5 Abandoned??? The Occupy Movement disintegrated and has moved on and Sawant moved on with it. Any one that was left after 5 months was a shambling oaf merely bent on sputtering their frustration out into the void. Sure, SA is a filthy Trot paper peddling org which often mistakes direct action with symbolic resistance and newspaper subscriptions for real support;

except when they are not... like now. They nearly won a city council seat. I'm a pretty hard syndicalist but I know when to get behind something that has a chance to change the dialog just a bit. The SA is pretty reformist but the topics of conversation we want to be having right now just got a little more hard to ignore. I would have relished seeing her jam a wrench into their business friendly agenda by making the sound arguments people crave.

And yes, a syndicalist can vote for a trotskyite because I know who I am and what I believe in so therefore I don't fear alliances. Lenin taught me that : )

What I don't understand is, why does everyone assume that Conlin will run for a district office? Of all the current council members, he strikes me as the one who's best suited to run for -- and win! -- one of the two city-wide seats. It seems like a no-brainer for him to choose that over a risky and expensive repeat of this year's contest.

Yes, and now that the professional progressive "left" has shot their wad on a Marxist Leninist Trotskyite, a more conservative candidate will waltz in and take Conlin's seat. That is what happens with half-assed revolutions. Just ask the French.

@25: Lenin loves your support. Now go stand up against that wall over there when we win the election. Cigarette is optional.

@11:

Exactly, which is why I disagreed with Cienna's comment that Sawant was doing those things for altruistic reasons. She's not.

@25:

Hardly anybody saw Sawant after one month. November rolled around, and she just wasn't there. The plebs just weren't good enough for her, I guess.

And if you're a syndicalist who cracks jokes favoring the murderers of syndicalists, you're just a sad, sad person, really, and not worth the time to finish this sen

Ah yes, the "winning by losing" strategy...it's not a very satisfying result for the losing side, and seems a bit supercilious to everyone else. Conlin has been a good progressive pol, and Sawant an effective activist. I'm pleased they're keeping their respective gigs.

Is this kind of insufferable hyperbolic 1984 Double Speak we're going to have to endure for the next four years?

There is no doubt Sawant did a respectable job considering all the gooey far left baggage she was saddled with, IE; her former stance on nationalizing Amazon and nonsense like that.

But let's be frigg'n real here. She didn't win. And she is not going to win a major public office any time soon.

If she HAD one she would've been completely inert, alone, and isolated and would have accomplished nothing but being photogenic socialist show pony for old out of touch communists like Mudede to masturbate over.

I say this as someone who VOTED for her, who supports rent control (which CAN work when done right) and the raise in the minimum wage.

The rest of her socialist agenda nobody knows how to make work. If she wants to get elected she is gong to have ditch the Star Trek Socialist Sci-Fi bullshit and work on things that can be accomplished with in the system we have. And then the far left will hate her as a sellout.

So Fanrf is right. She is going to be way better as an outside agitator. The more you hold on to this idiotic idea that a capital S socialist will be an electable political force in Seattle, the worse things will get for her and her ideas.

And for Christ sake the first thing you and she had better do admit she fucking LOST. What are you? Teabaggers?

It's as melodramatic as Braveheart in here. Well. FYI: William Wallace was hanged, drawn, and quartered. He din't win.

I don't claim to follow Seattle politics closely, but a loss is a loss is a loss. The "losing is really winning" meme is worthy of the Tea Party.

yeah and don't even get me started on that fucking loser Jesus.

@31

32 I hear you on that. However it's not quite so simple here.... and BTW I don't see too many Tea Party Folks winning 46% of any votes but whatever here's the video from last night's Election Party:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TguWL3N2K…

I will hold Rich Conlin to his promises to address banks who are not negotiating in good faith and underwater home ownership, as noted,
http://mortgagemovies.blogspot.com/2013/…

Peace.

Did you just compare Sawant to Jesus?

You people really ARE nuts.

I don't even...

Ohhhh...wait, you mean Sawant is like the Jesus Christ that was a heavily mythologized construct and amalgam of probably several historical messiah figures who may or may not have been crucified over two thousand years ago? Okay. I get the comparison now.

Yeah. In two thousand frigg'n years we'll look back on Sawant, crucified by the Seattle electorate, as the socialist messiah, alright.

OW! Sorry my eyes keep cramping from rolling so hard.

@35 She got 46%... against Richard Conlin.

Let's face it. A potato with hat could've gotten 30% of the vote against Conlin.

I like Sawant. She's pretty smart if a little kooky, unlike most far lefties she's got a sense of humor. And she's charming. But again a potato with hat is more charming than Conlin.

While I think she did a great job in many respects, let's not go drafting a Sawant hagiography quite yet, okay?

I guarantee you all this premature "SHE WON BY LOSING" will end up backfiring horribly.

@29 But I'm not cracking jokes? It would be very nice if it was that black and white or red and black or whatever simple flag you want to drape yourself with. Lenin was a genius that wasn't afraid to win and he wasn't afraid to try protect that victory. If the Black Guard is making deals with the Whites... what do you do to save the revolution which is being beset from all sides?

Try to understand history and politics from the vantage point of those that were there, not from where you are. Also, try not to adopt the platitudes of a bunch of mealy mouthed capitalist overlords.

@37

2009

Council Position No. 2

Richard Conlin 136277 77.23%

David Ginsberg 39627 22.46%

2005

City Of Seattle Council - Position 2

Richard Conlin NP 97202 60.62%

Paige Miller NP 62639 39.06%

Write-in 507 0.32%

2001

City Of Seattle Council Pos. No. 02

Richard Conlin 85229 62.66%

Michael R. Preston 50782 37.34%

I can't find the election results for 1997, but the Times said Conlin "easily beat former Councilwoman Sherry Harris". Did Harris get more than 46%? Don't think so.

From here it looks like Sawant did better than anyone ever has against Conlin. She put him in more danger than any challenger in his 16 years on the Council. It's a remarkable feat and it particularly underscores the value of being willing to fight for something other than the usual Seattle Democratic Party status quo.

@36 no.

Ugh, as a liberal this is what I hate most about liberals. Liberals define "success" as getting their issues "talked about". Right wing homophobic bigots define success as getting their representatives elected, as do corrupted overloads. No wonder the gap between the rich and the poor keeps growing in this country. When we get a 15 dollar min wage, we can celebrate but until then stop calling failed elections and failed strikes "successful" because they got people "talking about the issues". Success is results, not talk.

Could we just clear up a couple of simple points? Sawant is NOT a Leninist/Trotskyist! She did not call for anything even close to a Communist Platform. There were no calls to nationalize basic industry without compensation to the capitalist class. There were no calls to smash the capitalist state structure and to replace it with Worker Councils, ie; (Soviets). Why don't you folks just READ some Lenin & Trotsky and not what some rad/ lib Democrat says about them? When the Paper compares Conlin to Alexander Kerensky and Sawant to Trotsky..it is laughable. If anybody here is Kerensky here it is Sawant! As for Socialist Alternative they are about as "radical" as George McGovern back in the seventies. S.A. is simply the left wing of the local Democratic Party. So please read a bit of real history from original sources .

@45, actually you're wrong, did you read Sawant's website:
http://www.votesawant.org/why_socialism

"The only way to ensure that the economy meets the needs of the whole population and the environment is to change the system that is the root cause of these problems.

This requires taking the top 500 corporations that dominate our economy (the Wal-Marts, Exxon-Mobils, United Health Groups, Halliburtons, Microsofts, etc.) into public ownership and placing them under the democratic control of elected representatives of workers, consumers, and the community at large."

Sure this wasn't one of her main talking points, but it is something she wants and points it out on her official website.

Liberals define "success" as getting their issues "talked about".

..... Well I do hear your point there.... but before blacks got to sit at the same lunch counter the issues had to be "talked about."

Expect no less when someone like Kshama Sawant is challenging part of a juggernaut of financial oppression, just sayin'.

@45 Actually she talks about it all the time. SA is part of the CWI; a Trotskyist International which grew from Militant in the UK which succeeded in bringing down the Thatcher government during the poll tax battles.

The arguments that SA put forward are absolutely not reformist. Please give examples if you have any.

Does she realize that the new district she seems to think is hers for the taking includes South Lake Union? The largest employer in district 3 is almost certainly Amazon, who she is arguing should be collectivized. If she thinks Bezos isn't going to dump a bunch of $ into whatever opponent she has, she's delusional. There's no way she wins a race in a district with Amazon and Madison Park conservative old money aligned against her.

No one's reading this anymore, but I'll give my thoughts anyway. Conlin is one of the better members of the council. Mike O'Brien is better, but I'm not sure I'd put any other current member above him. But Conlin is also a poor match for the district to be, which will be centered on Capitol Hill rather than Madrona (where he lives). I would hope that he would run for one of the at-large seats, leaving the new 3rd open for Sawant.

@40 First. People are sick to death of Conlin - why do you think he just basically announced his retirement? It wasn't just because of Sawant, his time is up and he knows it.

Second. Literally none of those previous challengers had half the media bandwidth that Sawant did or understood social media as well. She was smart, for sure. But more or less it was timing.

Third. She did well. But it's waaaaaay too early to tell if this means anything to the long term landscape.

Recall, people said the same shit about Occupy. And then even the Stranger took a heaping shit on the mess that became Seattle Occupy. I was there at Seattle Occupy for a week. It was an embarrassment.

You know as well as I Occupy's tactics and strategy was a joke that accomplished very little... until the adults in it realized that they would have to, you know, grow up and field candidates to run for conventional office and utilize conventional hierarchy. Which means they stopped being Occupy.

Hence what Sawant is attempting to do now (which the core of Occupy swore they would never do).

And to get any further she is gong to have to forget this delusional bullshit about nationalizing corporations because literally no governing class anywhere - even in so-called socialist countries - take that seriously or find it remotely workable. Not even Krugeman.

Theorizing about nationalizing corporations is basically Dungeons and Dragons for third rate academic hacks. It's politically meaningless.

With Sawant it's gong to be much smarter to wait and see and not over hype her or your setting her up for a huge fall.

@53 Or, you know, he's >50 and just wants to retire. People do that you know.

Too late! Conlin says he won't run again!

http://crosscut.com/2013/11/06/thedailyt…

@12, months and months of free advertising for McGinn by the Stranger and he only lost by 10 points. Yes indeed, the Stranger endorsement is worth tons more than the Times, and I am Marie of Romania.

@53

Blah, blah, blah. Opinion, speculation, worry, doubt, innuendo.

Hard data makes a strong case. Nobody ever did this well against Conlin. All the rest is smoke.

@58 Facts are facts. People are so quick to say it's a fact she didn't win, then they have to accept the fact that she did demonstrably better than anyone else.

@53 Occupy accomplished very little? I wouldn't say that. It opened the dialogue across the entire country, and it sensitized millions to the specific issue of securitization of mortgage loans and the whole nine yards. Years later that struggle rages on in the courts where there are indeed victories. I am not a zealot here but as a closing attorney on these mortgages 10-12 years ago I see the impact and that is why I was at Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Boston opening nights; spoke at Boston about the mortgages as a matter of fact. From 2+ years ago:
http://christopher-king.blogspot.com/201…

@59 - facts are facts. The USA has been held hostage by the tea partiers in congress because those assholes got to congress and got a say in how shit was done. Opening a dialogue isn't getting shit done, its talking. The right wingers and wall streeters laugh everytime they hear a left winger rant about "how successful they where at opening a dialogue" and the gap between the rich and the poor keeps growing. And as long as the left is happy with "opening a dialogue" the right wingers and wall streeters will keep growing that gap.

Loosing isn't winning, talking about doing something isn't the same as succeeding at doing something. The sooner the left realizes this the sooner they can be more effective and reduce the direction this country has been going for the last 20 years.

I trust (and hope) that she keeps trying. She has a lot of good ideas and maybe if she keeps up her agenda some change will come about.

This is closer than it first seemed. I am new to Washington and have never seen this type of balloting but all night long I was telling people that the late vote is going to favor Sawant and this is what I have just read, at 11:29p 7 Nov.

"This election isn't over. Not by a long shot. On election night both Richard Conlin and the Seattle Times declared the vote deficit "insurmountable." But post-election returns now clearly indicate that Kshama Sawant is on track to beat Conlin! In fact, the latest King County total ballot count shows Kshama Sawant at 48.26% of the vote and gaining ground rapidly!"

.....So I don't know how many ballots are out or whatever but that is about as close as it can be folks. As noted in my video some will still say close but no cigar and those who say that will still be in denial of what is really happening out here.

49.5% so to hell with the naysayers this is serious stuff.
http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2…

Ru-Ro.... it ain't over 'till it's over.... and it's still not over, however:

Kshama Sawant takes the lead:
4:10 pm.11/12/13 total votes so far

KSHAMA 49.91 %
CONLIN 49.88 %

Either way it turns out the naysayers have nothing to say at this point except, "Oh, my bad."