Comments

1
It's not about Sawant.
It's about The People. The Masses. The Community.
2
After her mean-spirited rant on election night, I've lost all respect for her. Nobody likes a sore loser -- or a sore winner for that matter.
3
@2: "sore loser -- or a sore winner"

So which one are you?
4
@2 Um...I was THERE on election night, and I didn't see or hear a "mean-spirited rant." I *did* see her call about 20 different campaign workers up on stage to join her, which I thought was pretty fucking generous. But hey, what would I know? I was THERE when I could have been reading some media report from someone with an axe to grind or something.
5
@2) You were hating on her long before election night (see here and here). You also predicted she'd only get "single digits" in this race.
6
Oh kshaw, kshaw....
7
Aren't you embarrassed to live in a place where you still don't know who won the election two days later? I sure as hell would be.
8
Dominic, the mistake you're making is thinking that people care enough to vote about the city council.

See 2011 (an off year november election) where Seattle City Councilpeople were getting vote counts in the 150,000 off 200,000 ballots cast. A similar trend was seen in the primaries, where I think about 10% of ballots cast for mayor didn't get cast for council. In the general election, I think you can expect even more voter apathy towards the Council (even if Sawant gets you all hot and bothered)..

http://your.kingcounty.gov/elections/ele…
9
@7, of course not. We allow for everyone to vote, not just those lucky enough to get out of work on a Tuesday.
10
@7 hmm, voting in my underwear, looking up information, interviews, and campaign websites vs. knowing 4 days earlier. How does democracy survive?!
11
@7, no, I'd be embarrassed to live somewhere that disenfranchised voters because of the randomness of USPS though.
13
This is a bunch of wishful thinking with a whole shitload of assumptions that absolutely depend on a value more extreme than the outlier of one small data set as well as the assumption that far more people voted than usual (200,000? Ha! Give me a break!). It is obvious that her campaign is having a little cognitive dissonance right now. They didn't think it was possible for her to lose. But she did and maybe that is why.
14
Yep, even in this hotly contested council seat, if you presume every Seattle resident is voting for Mayor, 9.75% of the ballots don't have a vote for Conlin or Sawant (or write in).

I suggest you recalculate for 180,000 and learn to accept that Sawant has a few more years to prepare.
15
@7 No, but I am a bit embarrassed to have grown up in a city that reported 99 percent of the vote on election night but would put broken voting machines in the black precincts and purge the rolls on college campuses in order to selectively suppress the vote.

I'll take a slower count in exchange for removing the tools of voter disenfranchisement.
16
You guys know nothing you say here can pick up any more votes for her one way or the other right? You're still talking as if you were trying to drum up support for your guy.

Your guy. You know? Richard. Richard Conlin? The guy all the anti-Sawant people are supporting? Why not gloat about all the neat things Richard is going to get to do now that he's been reelected? Tell me again all the goodies Richard has in store for us.

All I know is Sawant might pick up enough votes to catch up with Conlin. Or she might not. No way to tell. Nothing I say will affect it.

Socialists have accomplished something unprecedented, either way. We know that.
17
Get your ballot chasing shoes on, everyone.
18
Not necessarily pro Sawant, but we should ask:
Why is socialism so taboo?
19
@2 Dom just made you his bitch. How's it feel?
20
@4:

I think @2 is referring to a tweet from Sawant's official twitter account on election night. It read:

"Kshama Sawant @VoteSawant
.@cohenkomo @cmconlin you are the big loser of the night. You can collect your paycheck for 2 years and then ... Goodbye. #ConlinisGonelin"

Usually, the loser in an election sends a gracious message to the winner. Rarely, (like right now in the VA Governor's race), the loser refuses to call the winner. This nasty twitter shit? It's really unheard of.

How many of those 20 volunteers she so "graciously" let up onstage with her (which is completely normal and precedented, unlike your portrayal of it) were actually her Socialist Alternative party members?

And needless to say, these number are complete wishful thinking. I'd expect the journalists at the Stranger to call the Sawantniks on this instead of just regurgitating the dodgy math from the same group that announced a run against Jamie Pedersen last year.
21
@7, as long as we know before somebody has to be in the chair in January is all that matters.
22
@18, because that's the "safe" word Republicans use during dirty, dirty sex.
23
Sawant realizes that by keeping the question open, win or lose, she continues to have a soapbox for her next run even if she doesn't win. Why not get the free air time and attention. If she concedes, she disappears for a year and a half. This way she is establishing herself as the established favorite in the district elections.
24
@20 How many Democrats voted for Sawant? Answer: "Mostly"
25
If she started threatening to unionize the Stranger, like she is for Amazon, Dominic and Goldy would never utter her name again.
26
All the comments about unionizing the Stranger remind me of those people who scream about having their First Amendment rights violated when a comment is removed.

Intentionally or unintentionally clueless in both cases.
27
I voted for Sawant, and I have to agree I felt her rant on election night was mean-spirited and not what I want to see in someone seeking elected office. There is a time to be gracious, and she showed that she has no grace.
28
When she puts up bullshit numbers like this it's indicative of all the bullshit numbers she's been spewing the entire election cycle. If only she had math, reason, and evidence on her side.
29
Wow, 55% she got of tonight's drop. How exiting for her!
30
Well, you can argue that the 4:30 drop was just one data point, but collectively the numbers are definitely moving in her direction. She has an uphill battle to make up the deficit, but it is mathematically feasible.

Guess we'll just have to wait a few more days to know for sure.
31
The 8:30 drop is in: 55.8% for Sawant.
32
I don't live in Seattle and don't really care about your local races, but I've been casually following your political coverage for a while now and good god, is it awful. Ansel needs to make up his mind whether he wants to be a journalist or a revolutionary - splitting the difference, he's making a hash of them both. Goldy should stick to gardening. Dominic is better but perhaps there's a halo effect just because I think he's kind of cute. His picture is, anyway.

In any case, the Stranger is way too much in the tank for this Sawant person - it's blindingly obvious even to someone with no stake in Seattle politics. Good political coverage requires at least the pretense of impartiality.

And in case you're wondering, I've never voted Republican in my life.
33
@25- heh, I'd liked to see The Stranger run by a democratic union of the people...So for this edition, the majority of Seattleites, you know single family home owners, want us to cover how tall buildings that ruin their view are horrible Seattle - Dominic can you do that for the good of the people? Great, next the majority of Seattleites would like an article on Starbucks new winter drinks - Bethany you got that one right? Alright Goldy can you write an article about how great the Seattle Times is, the democratic union voted to give it some good press. And for music the majority of Seattleites would like a piece on either Owl City or Dave Matthews. Finally Charles M can you write a piece on the brilliance of The Tree Of Life - turns out that was the majorities of Seattleites favourite art film and they'd love confirmation on how smart they are to have loved it. Alright people, lets go out there and do the will of the people!
34
I mean, what does city council do anyway?

This was an exercise in seeing what someone could do.

And she had more of an impact than I expected, although circa 40% for a non-incumbent seems pretty regular over the years, so maybe my problem is that I joined the Seattle party too late.......
35
Look at all the dems losing their cool over the fact that 40 socialist activists have won (so far) over 60k votes.
36
at 55.8%:44.1% for the remaining votes, sawant can win if there are only 165000 votes total. position 1
in 2011 had 166000 votes despite 10,000 fewer ballots cast.

so the math can go either way at this point.
37
I don't mind that she's been a little pugnacious. I admire a classy concession as much as anyone, but I also love to see a real pugilist in the mix now and again.
38
@34

Once again:

2009
Richard Conlin 77.23%
David Ginsberg 22.46%

2005
Richard Conlin 60.62%
Paige Miller 39.06%

2001
Richard Conlin 62.66%
Michael R. Preston 37.34%

Don't have Conlin's first election, 1997, but he won easily.

So no, 40% would be the upper bound, nobody has ever actually hit that number. Nobody has ever come close to how well Sawant has done against Conlin.

48.26% to 51.53% !

And counting. That's like nothing we've ever seen. This race is different.
39
Hrm, well, if these numbers hold and there's another 50,000 ballots on the way, it's possible. But how far away are these things coming from that ballots in a Seattle race that had to be postmarked by Tuesday will arrive on Friday or later ? You'd basically need another 2.5 days of returns like Wednesday/Thursday.
40
Dominic @5: Touche. Guilty as charged.

But some agree with my basic point: @27.
41
Is this race one with a 0.5% and under 2,000 votes trigger for a automatic recount ?

Right now, Sawant trails by 4,205 votes. But over today's ballots, she did gain 2,000 votes. Maybe Sawant supporters just aren't the type to mail ballots in ahead of time.
42
Vote.wa.gov says there are an estimated 135,000 ballots left to count in King County.

http://vote.wa.gov/results/current/Turno…

43
Well, leek, Seattle is about 1/3 of the total county population. Maybe there's 45,000 ballots remaining. Although you'd think that late counts would tend to be a bit more rural than Seattle.
44
Looks like Seattle returns almost 40% of the ballots, though--as of tonight, 548,523 ballots were returned in King County as a whole and 213,938 of them were from City of Seattle residents.
45
Wait a second. The Stranger is NOT unionized?

Oh, I know, The Stranger must be organized as a commune in which everyone is paid according to their needs etc etc. Right?

Whew! I was worried it might be a capitalist organization. You know, the kind that involve money and greed...making a profit.
46
For the record, I dropped my ballot and all my procrastinator friend ballots (6 total) at the drop box van in north Seattle @ 6:30 Tuesday Nov 5th and according to the ballot website my ballot has been accepted but hasn't yet been counted.
47
What's happen next?
48
@32 "Good political coverage requires at least the pretense of impartiality. " This is simply not true. "The pretense of impartiality" is the same as dishonesty, hiding ones biases. A paper with lots of up front biases can do great political coverage. It may not be giving you the information or spin you want, but you know, so you can seek out other information sources if you don't trust their upfront values to match yours. The Seattle Times is a wildly biased paper pretending it's not. The TV news companies are owned by mega-corporations and are totally untrustworthy to give unbiased coverage as a result. But if you want "pretense" of impartiality, The Seattle Times and the TV news media is there for you! You are their target demographic!

Right wingers who spend their time hanging out on Slog crack me up. If your right wing and corporate "pretense of impartiality" sources are so awesome, why do you even read The Stranger or its blog?
49
4,200 votes is a lot to make up, but even though Sawant is unlikely to win, you have to admit she did kill Conlin's political career.
50
@32 never voted Republican in your life person: the sincere concern troll is really the saddest troll of all.
51
FYI, I'm estimating about 55,000 ballots left to count in the race. It's just an educated guess, but I show my math. Which means Sawant would have to win a difficult but doable 53.8 percent of the remaining vote.
52
@46, you do realize that the king county ballot tracker doesn't go beyond "We have received your ballot, your signature has been verified, and your ballot will be counted", right ?

http://www.kingcounty.gov/elections/news…
53
@52, there is actually a distinction between them receiving your ballot and them counting your ballot. It's Track point 2 and Track point 3. In my case, my ballot packet has been received, but the signature has not yet been verified and the ballot has not yet been counted.
54
I'm usually pretty pessimistic about politics (remember Mr. Hope and Change turned Mr. Child Killer with Drones?) But this is some really good news for Sawant and I'm now a little hopeful that she will win
55
She has alot of anger in her and I suspect that if elected, she'll channel that into daily politics, which will rub so many people the wrong way that she probably wont be re-elected. All of her supporters will say "Actually I don't mind this at all, I like this brand of politics in which we lose our temper and act unprofessionally", only to freak the fuck out once someone returns the favor. I see this in McGinn supporters all the time.
56
@55, you know, a mayor acting like you claim I agree it's bat shit crazy. And I voted accordingly this time around as a result (but let's remember why McGinn won in 2009, the other guy was a freaking idiot) But I think in a council position that brand of politics would bring about some discussion on some issues that the rest of the council has ignored for too long.
57
hey! maybe if we think real hard we can stop this rain!!

NO RAIN! NO RAIN! NO RAIN! NO RAIN!
58
@55

Could be and my initial take on her is very unfavorable. "All hat and no cattle" as they put it in Texas.

But nothing that Sawant has said so far is even really bizarre. She's really quite conventional.

If she can soften her affect and work with colleagues, she might well be effective. And candidates do have the capacity to change once they are in office.

The real challenge is whether she actually has anything interesting and useful to say. So far she certainly doesn't add much to the discussion of creating a more walkable and walkable city. In fact quite the contrary since her emphasis is on managing a limited supply rather than building more housing.

59
She isn't elected (yet) and many who speak up have already started trying to smear who she is as a person. Interestingly it's somewhat similar to what happened to McGinn, another non-establishment candidate. It certainly would be worthwhile to have her on the council just to see how ridiculous the attacks against her will get.
60
Downtown is worried, as this makes a $15 an hour minimum wage a certainty in 2014 instead of something they can "discuss" and kill in committee
61
@59 Except here they get to add in a lot of misogynistic, racial, and political stereotypes too. She is pretty uppity, don't you know?
62
Yo, the time stamps on these recent reader responses (or whatever you call them) are way out of whack. 11:31 a.m., 9:42 a.m....

@46 Bless you and your friends, and bless the city that has accessible drop boxes all over the place (that's what it sounds like) and goes out of its way to make sure citizens can vote almost 'til the last minute. May it never change.

Chef Joe's trying hard, poor guy. He must be sweating bullets.

I wasn't as crazy about the Conlin-Sawant race. I've long thought America could use a little more socialism and redistribution of wealth back to the middle and lower classes, though. I just hope she doesn't disappoint me. I really don't know what to expect from her.

(And notice how I write as if Conlin has already lost, something that's still very much in the air.)

What I really wanted was for McGinn and Proposition 1 in SeaTac and public financing in Seattle to win, and it looks like I'm going to lose all three of them. And I-522 would have been nice. Oh, well. It's an off-year election, you know? And none of the young people that I've talked to voted. At least the idea of $15 minimum wage has been firmly planted.

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