• "I am surprised and disappointed," acknowledged 16-year Seattle City Council member Richard Conlin, referring to Socialist Alternative challenger Kshama Sawant's stunning 9.05 percent swing from election night to November 15—the night Conlin officially conceded. "I think people of Seattle, generally, when they think of socialism, we think of Sweden, and that's not a bad model," Conlin generously added.

• Speaking at a November 17 Kshama Saw­ant victory rally, King County Labor Council executive secretary David Freiboth kicked off his remarks by admitting, "This is one of the few times I'm happy we were wrong." The KCLC had endorsed Conlin.

• Bleeding hearts, rejoice: The Seattle City Council's 2014 budget includes $130,000 to fund the young-adult shelter at YouthCare's James W. Ray Orion Center, located at the bottom of Capitol Hill on Denny Way. When coupled with a $120,000 budget allocation from the King County Council, the sum will be enough to keep the 20-bed shelter open on weeknights for another year. The city council is slated to approve the city budget on November 25.

• SeaTac Proposition 1, which would guarantee a $15-an-hour minimum wage, looked to be in peril last week when it had only a 19-vote lead. But Prop 1 now leads by a small but likely insurmountable 46 votes out of 5,944 ballots cast. The battle now heads to the courts, where opponents will argue that the measure both lacked sufficient signatures to qualify for the ballot and is outside the scope of SeaTac's municipal authority. But if voters can set a $15 minimum wage in SeaTac, we can set a $15 minimum wage in Seattle. And if we can do it in Seattle, we can do it in cities throughout the nation. Millions of low-wage workers are looking to SeaTac to lead the way.

• The race to replace Dwight Pelz as Washington State Democratic Party chair just got a bit more interesting with the news that former Planned Parenthood Votes Northwest political director Dana Laurent is throwing her hat into the ring. Laurent has a résumé rich with relevant experience as a grassroots organizer, party activist, political fundraiser, campaign manager, and political strategist, and she's been enthusiastically endorsed for the job by former senate majority leader Lisa Brown. But don't expect her impressive credentials to stop critics from attacking the 39-year-old Laurent for her "youth and inexperience," which is misogynist code for "having working ovaries," something women in politics are discouraged from possessing.

• Spotted dining together in a Queen Anne restaurant the weekend after the election (with respective spouses in tow, it appeared): failed school-board candidate Suzanne Dale Estey and the victor of the other available school-board seat, Stephan Blanford.

• On Tuesday, November 19, Seattle police arrested at least four people at the Central District's Horace Mann building for criminal trespass. Community groups had been essentially occupying the building, which is owned by Seattle Public Schools, since summer, in protest of the district's racial inequities. Check thestranger.com/slog for more on this story.