With a very roughly estimated 50,000 to 60,000 votes still left to count in Seattle and about 140,000 left to count countywide, the latest round of ballots reflects the trademark lefty shift we've come to expect from last-minute voters here in Seattle. But it wasn't a huge shift in most races.
Today's drop represents about 62,000 ballots across the county and a little over 28,000 from Seattle, according to a spokesperson from the elections department.
Let's take a look:
Stranger-endorsed abolitionist Nicole Thomas-Kennedy pulled ahead of three-term incumbent Pete Holmes in the Seattle City Attorney's race, setting up the possibility of an INTERESTING GENERAL ELECTION FACE-OFF INDEED. Republican space cadet Ann Davison still leads the three-way race with 34.5%, a slight decrease from her lead yesterday. NTK is now in second with 33% of the vote. Holmes lowered his share of the vote to 32%. There are still plenty more votes to count, obviously, but there are 1,491 votes separating Holmes from NTK, which seems like a wide river to cross.
A top-two primary between a defense attorney who wants to stop prosecuting most misdemeanors and a Republican mediator who doesn't seem to know what the office does would put Seattle's progressive bonafides to the test.
“I’m feeling pretty fucking elated,” Thomas-Kennedy said over the phone. “This is very promising, and I’m so excited that people are ready to stop doing this horrible thing we’ve been doing for so long that makes the problem worse and start doing something that actually addresses the problem.”
When asked what she’d say to voters who’d write her off as a radical and vote for the person who wants to literally store homeless people in abandoned warehouses, Thomas-Kennedy said she’d tell them, “Mass incarceration is the thing that’s radical and new. We’ve only been doing it this way for about 40 years, and it’s clearly not working.”
She continued: “I understand that people don’t want to be victims of crime. In order to lower crime, we’re going to have to address the root causes of why it happens, which is poverty, disability, addiction, and desperation. The way we treat people now is what’s leading to this. We’re not going to solve this problem by locking more people up for misdemeanors. We tried. We really tried. America tried more than anybody. It did not work.”
That said, Thomas-Kennedy doesn’t claim she can solve this problem alone. “I can only do what the office will allow me to do. But everyone needs to start doing something different, and this is what we can start doing different with this office.”
Holmes’s comms guy didn’t return my call.
Former Seattle City Council President Bruce Harrell's nine-point lead over current Seattle City Council President Lorena González dropped to 7 points. That race now stands at 37% to 30%. If the left-leaning shift holds, González should continue to close that gap. Former Chief Seattle Club director Colleen Echohawk bumped up from 9% to 9.3%.
In the race to fill González’s open citywide city council seat, Fremont Brewery co-owner Sara Nelson now only leads attorney and Creative Justice director Nikkita Oliver 42% to 36.5%. That 5.5-point lead is down from 8 points yesterday.
In the other at-large council seat, Seattle City Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda increased her vote share by a point to 56%.
The race for King County Executive saw a slight change in favor of state Sen. Joe Nguyen, who's challenging three-term incumbent Dow Constantine. Constantine now leads 53.3% to 30.5%, a little over a point less than yesterday.
The levy is still passing, Stranger-endorsed school board candidates Vivian Song Maritz and Michele Sarju are still way ahead in Districts 4 and 5, respectively, and the King County Council races are still looking depressing, save for District 3, where the two Democrats still outweigh the vote share of 19-year incumbent Kathy Lambert.