News Nov 6, 2013 at 4:00 am

The Socialist Insurgent Is Now Beating the Incumbent—Who Already Declared Victory

Comments

1
Oh balls. Now there'll be no living with Goldy.
2
I would love to see the Stranger have the last laugh on this one! Heck, I'm as old as Goldy, and even I think the city council is geriatric!
3
I would love to see the Stranger have the last laugh on this one! Heck, I'm as old as Goldy, and even I think the city council is geriatric!
4
Wonderful illustration!
5
Apparently they're finally getting to the Roosevelt District vote, where Conlin sided with notorious slumlord Hugh Sisley over the neighbors Sisley has tormented for years. Yeah Richard, density's great so long as it's not in your sedate little corner of the world!
6
Hey! Exciting!
7
who is not psyched? mrs. solomon. :(
8
A month before the election I thought she would poll in the mid 40's, but she really hammered home fiscal equity completely lacking, even in "liberal" Seattle.

The only thing liberal in Seattle is the social politics, where the mayor-elect was running against an incumbent that was running to the left if Murray. Murray made an issue about one of the candidates being gay. Social left wing politics in Seattle has been played out.

Economic fairness and structural equity are it, Sawant proves that message is the winner.
Don't know if she can actually deliver on the themes and memes.
Congratulations, the pressure is on.
9
Hey Goldy District 3 also has some not so liberal areas.
10
n the plus side, they're gonna have a hissy fit over there at Seattle Transit Blog when the King of Density, Mr. Conlin, gets his developer paid-for-ass kicked out.
11
Clearly, voters have had enough with BIG money and entrenched bureaucracy.

The voters said NO to BIG money; they elected Sue Peters, District Elections and looks like Sawant has a chance of getting elected.

We also had Prop 1.

I hope the folks that think they can continue to fund our elections and entrenched bureaucrats are watching!
12
Has the story of a newspaper slurping a politician so hard ever turned out well? For the paper
13
What's the delay between a vote being counted and the KC Ballot Tracker saying so?

I dropped my ballot in the Ballard drop box before Halloween and it's been certified, but not yet counted.

That would be two more votes for Sawant, mine and my wife's.
14
@12 Slurping? Mystery word of the week. Do you mean supporting?
15
@13 and my son's. I agree, Luke, it's insane how they try to pretend they don't realize where the vote is coming from.

It's coming from us.

The Citizens of Seattle.

The ones they sweep under the rug and lie to.
16
Conlin should move into one of his micro-units and become a hermit...
17
That drawing fails to capture Sawants giant cottage cheese filled thighs.
18
More pointless rhetoric. It's going to be weeks before all the recounts and challenges are done and the election certified. Grab some hot buttered rum, chill out, and wait for it.
19
@17

Nor does it even pretend to show the firm yet quite biteable shell of crisply baked ciabatta surrounding the thighs.
20
@17, class the fuck up.

It would be really interesting to see what happens if Sawant wins. Worse case she becomes the new McGinn, lots of promise but no results. But best cause we see Seattle move more left. As much as I disagree with her hardcore socialist stances (nationalizing private companies), I think most of Seattle agrees with the majority of her platform.

Also to those who say we can't do "rent control" without fucking over all of Seattle, look at Ontario. http://ontariolandlords.org/blog/how-muc…

Back in Ontario there was much tougher rules on how much rent could be raised per year, who could be evicted, etc. And development is still booming in Toronto/along the 401.
21
Goldy, If there are 12% of the votes left to county, that would translate to 25,000+ votes left to count. That is a lot of votes in a tight race. I am going to wait.

I voted for Kshama. I want to shake up the council, too, and I am in my 60's. Nonetheless, I am content to wait.

Thanks for the report. Regarding the comments about Kshama's physical features, it is time for some people to grow up!
22
@20

You're saying "class up" to a guy whose response to the massacre of children at Sandy Hook was to sell guns at inflated prices to his fellow Second Amendment loons and cheerfully pocket $5,000 profit. On the bodies of children blown apart with rifle bullets. The whole thing put him in a gleeful mood.

He pretended he was gay to spin a fake story about using his gun to ward off a gay bashing. Now he's saying he's really a straight married guy, and he likes to make gender-normative attacks on "sissies" and judge professional women by how attractive their bodies are to his gaze.

So, no. Cascadian "Five Large" Bacon will never class the fuck up. He is a nasty, nasty piece of work.
23
@22 - sorry, I don't follow his posts that much, so maybe "FUCK OFF YOU MISOGYNIST PRICK" would've been a better response.
24
Frankly I'm shocked by the way that Conlin gradually morphed from a man of the people into a shameless shill for developers and other corporate interests. Hopefully Sawant's impending victory signals that voters are starting to wake up and notice that end stage capitalism isn't working for them.
25
The drawing reminds me of Arod's slapping away the ball tag as he ran the bases several years ago. Conlin has shown about as much ethical fiber as Arod has.
26
Sawant is part of the CWI. If you know about them and their history and how they conduct themselves around the world... well then you will know she is one person who means what she says and will not give up the fight.
27
We need a massive red white and blue banner hung over the office of the stranger that says "Mission Accomplished".
28
Greetings from Inside the Beltway in WashDC. Great reporting, good-looking too.

Kshama Sawant has 2 roles -- action and education. Even if there is enough power to block her actions, teaching us to talk economic injustice and social class discrimination is a big step forward.

Beyond "left" and "right" labels/moves, there is an elephant in the room watching. The elephant consists of all the structural faults -- the steady, structural, always-there biases -- that give some power and wealth, and deprive others of both.

Have fun everybody, we are all cheering.
29
@15

Technically a pillow with an image of Captain Planet doesn't actually count as having a son.
30
@22

He also claimed to be Jewish, and someone said he claimed to be black at some point. If he's telling the truth about the guns, he'll probably end up accidentally shooting off his fingers soon and be able to type with just one hand.
31
Two years ago, the same thing happened in a School Board election. The establishment incumbent, Peter Maier, had the lead over challenger, Sharon Peaslee. Day by day, she chipped at his lead, took over and never looked back. She sits on the Board now.

It can be done.
32
under districts in 2015 every seat is sort of open. No incumbent shall have been elected by the relevant district. With 88K folks, maybe 90K by then, and some 40K voting in a little local council race, or 30K, if you have a five way primary with five candidates theoretically one can win with about 30% of 30K votes or 9,000 votes. (likely distributions are often like this: 30%, 23%, 17%, 15%, 10% 5% -- you get the idea). Can a socialist win a primary in District 2 or 4 or 6 or 3 in 2015 if winning a primary takes 9,000 votes? Yes. Expect more socialists real soon. *Hopefully this makes the Democratic party wake up and start advocating for working people instead of Vulcan, paul allen and chris Hansen -- and hopefuly they stop with adding on regressive taxes hurting working people. ron sims was wondering "why is seattle whiter ?" in the last census -- it's because minorities are forced out economically! -- our at large council leaders have worked very hard to turn Seattle into a creative class yuppie nirvana called Amazonia -- so hostile to middle and working class folks. Hopefully, this will change.
33
@17 and @ 19 (Cascadian Bacon Bring_Me_The_Head_Of_Marcie_Sillman): it's good to see you think being sexist A-holes is acceptable in this day and age. You are dumb-ass creeps who think they're funny -but aren't.
34
Mark my words: This is possibly the worst thing for Sawant.

If she wins she will have transitioned from a perfect magical unicorn socialist spirit guide to an ordinary politician who will have to do something and will be held accountable. On the outside she was a valiant agitator, on the inside she will be just another ineffectual schlub.

While her presence will certainly make the city council far more interesting, I'd prepare for disappointment if I were you guys. It would be awesome to be wrong, however.
35
Bacon's your typical trolling keyboard warrior who says all kinds of try-too-hard-to-be-funny shit from the relative safety and anonymity of the internet.

If he said half of what he believed (if he even truly believes this and isn't just dialing it up for trolling laughs) in real life he'd get his head kicked in. I'd say the best thing anyone could do is to ignore him but now I'm part of the problem -- I'm wasting bandwidth on even talking about this asshole.
37
If the complaints of "micro-units and urban density" are driving Sawant's voters then good luck to those folks who certaintly are not able to pony up half a mil for a house or $1800 per month for rent. Enjoy your commute from kent.
38
Even if Kshama doesn't end up winning, the fact that she's made it THIS close of a race is enjoyable for the discomfort it's causing for the sexist, racist, classist "Sawant Sucks" contingent of paid Stranger trolls.

Perhaps in 2017...Sawant for Mayor?
39
watching from the UK and hoping hard for Sawant. We have had real socialists win elections here and they do what they say. Look at Liverpool City Council in the 1980s. We can change things for the better!
40
The establishment will "find" enough uncounted ballots to declare Conlin the winner. Same way Gregoire became governor.
41
@
30

Imma Irish Jewish Hybrid, and am def not black. Though I did get invited to be a member of Students of Color in college becasue I listed my Race as other: Atlantic Islander

@35
Nothing makes me LOL like a good ol' fashion threat of liberal violence.

@22
You are a grown man who watches young children for a living. That is strange.

I assume pedophiles make a conscious choice to enter a field where they have power over children and long periods of privacy (teacher, priest, babysitter)

Besides it is not my fault that the artist who drew the picture chose to fit Kshama into unrealistic modern beauty standards rather than represent her as the exquisite human being that she is.
42
Baconboy, I'm not a liberal, and I wasn't threatening you. Just making a point.

Although if you got the shit kicked out of you I'd probably laugh and laugh hard.
43
@20:she isn't running for mayor,you troll.
44
Every city needs far more voting districts(and every county and state also. http://www.fairvote.org )
45
@43, where did you get that I said she was running for mayor? By the McGinn comment I meant that she'd be a liberal outsider that has a lot of hype but gets little down in office. Sorry if you need everything spelt out for you. Might want to look up the definition of a "troll" to, cause my comment was on point, you'd just need to read the whole comment instead of scanning for "McGinn" and start shouting "TROOLLL".
46
@14: No, I think he may refer to "slurping" as something along the lines of "sticking its collective tongue so far up the ass of a candidate that it comes out the candidate's mouth" ... which would be, in that case, entirely accurate. Actually, I'm happy about the prospect of a socialist active in Seattle politics. Like Ed Koch once said: "The voters have spoken and now they must be punished!" The sooner it all turns "Mad Max," the better ... Hey, it's getting there fast! Yeehaw!
47
Hey, armageddon would be cool! The poor people in Seattle already know how to get by on nothing. It's the rich folks that will be eating their pets and burning their money for heat. Time to get a boat and find a hideyhole up in the Queen Charlotte Islands and survive quite well on shellfish.
48
Check out "The Rise of the New New Left", by Peter Beinart

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/20…

It is these two factors—their economic hardship in an age of limited government protection and their resistance to right-wing cultural populism—that best explain why on economic issues, Millennials lean so far left. In 2010, Pew found that two-thirds of Millennials favored a bigger government with more services over a cheaper one with fewer services, a margin 25 points above the rest of the population. While large majorities of older and middle-aged Americans favored repealing Obamacare in late 2012, Millennials favored expanding it, by 17 points. Millennials are substantially more pro–labor union than the population at large.

Most striking of all, Millennials are more willing than their elders to challenge cherished American myths about capitalism and class. According to a 2011 Pew study, Americans under 30 are the only segment of the population to describe themselves as “have nots” rather than “haves.” They are far more likely than older Americans to say that business enjoys more control over their lives than government. And unlike older Americans, who favor capitalism over socialism by roughly 25 points, Millennials, narrowly, favor socialism.
49
I'm just loving the screeching Chihuahua dogs in the Seattle Times Forums. The Tea Baggists are not yet fully aware that their 15 minutes are over.
50
Look ... a silly Kshama Sawant realtime election status checker robot:

http://kshamabot.com.

It's much better than the KC elections site ... plus making stuff like this is how a nerd like me blos off nervous energy while I wait for a result in this race. I hope she wins -- the council needs it.
51
#40. That comparision doesn't make sense. Dino Rossi wasn't "anti-establishment". A bazillionaire moneygrubber who sells out his own Native American cultural tradition is not a populist outsider.

And a Rossi governorship would have been a tragedy for working people in Washington state.
52
#39. Glad to hear news of Kshama has reached the UK(hopefully, someday you'll get rid of the "K" bit, but that's another discussion).

Some of us here heard about Liverpool council in the Eighties, and also about Ken Livingstone and the GLC, among others. They fought for the people so well and so effectively that their own party, Labour, ended up suppressing them and forcing its municipal wing to stand for nothing. Maybe soon the last dregs of Blairism will drift away and the last Blairites will join the Tories and be done with it(most surviving Blairites in the House of Commons, from what I've seen, are actually to the RIGHT of the Tories).

Like the US, the UK needs a second party.
53
@j2patter:you are a troll(exemplified by your need to have the final word,even after I called your sorry ass out,motherfucker!)And city-council seats don't have the same amount of power as the mayoral seat,you world-clASS political scientist. --- http://www.nlc.org
54
@j2patter:you posted a false equivalence,you master debater/asshole.
55
Notice how the Socialist was ignored by the so-called "local" press (because they knew she has a fighting chance),while far less interesting and less-close races got plenty of corpsepirate coverage:had the Socialist not had a snowball's chance in Hell,then the treasonazinal corspepirate media would've given the Socialistic candidate more attention by saying,every time,"Look at those crazy socialists/communists/Anarchists:they are sooo out of touch with Reality!"Pfft!!! Hell,the foreign press has given this race more coverage than KOMO,KIRO,and KONG combined!!!
56
Kshama means Mercy...All the best..

Please wait...

Comments are closed.

Commenting on this item is available only to members of the site. You can sign in here or create an account here.


Add a comment
Preview

By posting this comment, you are agreeing to our Terms of Use.