Washington 2020: The Calm Before the Drizzle

[Crumpets]

Bump for primaries tomorrow.

Anybody send in their ballots yet?

[Crumpets]

Bump for primaries tomorrow.

Anybody send in their ballots yet?

Yep.

Are you in Seattle?  I didn't expect our new City Council elections to be game-changers for turnout, but I didn't quite expect the near record low showing we're getting either.

Yes. Where are you getting turnout numbers?

[Crumpets]

Bump for primaries tomorrow.

Anybody send in their ballots yet?

Yep.

Are you in Seattle?  I didn't expect our new City Council elections to be game-changers for turnout, but I didn't quite expect the near record low showing we're getting either.

Yes. Where are you getting turnout numbers?

https://info.kingcounty.gov/kcelections/ballotreturnstats/default.aspx

I'm in D7...hopefully your Council race is more interesting than mine!

I'm also in 7, so sadly, no.

[Crumpets]

So after last night's ballot count, it looks like:

- LD 30 is neck-and-neck between Carol Gregory (D) and Teri Hickel (R), which is almost certainly good news for Gregory, even if she's about 100 votes behind at this point.
- Courtney Gregoire will skate to re-election as Port Commissioner position 2, and will probably go against Goodspaceguy in November
- Fred Felleman and Marion Yoshino will move on to the general election for Port Commissioner position 5
- Julie Wise is leaving her competition in the dust for Director of Elections, in an impressive showing for an open seat.
- Seattle City Council District 1 (West Seattle) will likely have Shannon Braddock and Lisa Herbold move on to the general election.
- Bruce Harrell will in all likelihood win re-election in District 2 (Southeast Seattle)
- Comrade Sawant is barely below a majority in District 3 (Capitol Hill), but leading her closest challenger, Pamela Banks, by over 14 points - good news for Sawant.
- Incumbent Jean Godden may not even make the general in District 4 (Wallingford, U-District, Ravenna, Sand Point). Rob Johnson and Michael Maddux are currently in first and second place.
- Deborah Juarez and Sandy Brown will move on to the general in District 5 (North Seattle, Lake City).
- Mike O'Brien will likely face Catherine Weatbrook in District 6 (Ballard) and looks well-placed to win re-election.
- Sally Bagshaw is dominating in District 7 (Magnolia, Queen Anne, Downtown) and will probably face Deborah Zech-Artis in November
- Tim Burgess will be held to a plurality for Position 8 (city-wide), but still leads John Grant by 20 points.
- Lorena Gonzales is pulling over 60% in Position 9 (city-wide), an open seat with 5 other candidates in the race, so hats off to her!

[Crumpets]

I didn't have a lot of time in Seattle during my trip, but spent most of the run up to the election north of Bellingham. There were lots of signs there, and one aspect of them caught my eye. A large number were mounted on wooden posts and frames. That's virtually unknown in the Midwest except for amateur posts. Almost all campaign signs in my home area are on wire frames (for plastic bag or folding paper) or wire posts (for corrugated plastic).

PS Bummer that the election kept me from meeting Alcon.

Interesting, I had no idea.

[Crumpets]

Bumping for results tonight.

[Crumpets]

Polls closing. Remember early results in Washington, and especially Seattle tend to skew conservative because of the mail-in system.

[Crumpets]

First results:

I-1366 (Tim Eyman's thing): Yes 60.4-39.6
I-1401 (Endangered Animals): Yes 67.8-32.2

No results from King County yet, so probably not too much to draw from these numbers.

[Crumpets]

Seattle City Council

1. Braddock 52.92-46.48 Herbold
2. Harrell 54.87-44.93 Morales
3. Sawant 52.56-47.12 Banks
4. Johnson 54.8-44.7 Maddux
5. Juarez 63.08-36.43 Brown
6. O'Brien 58.8-40.93 Weatbrook
7. Bagshaw 79.85-Zech-Artis 19.38
8. Burgess 57.88-41.57 Grant
9. Gonzalez 75.97-23.54 Bradburd

[Crumpets]

Seattle's campaign finance initiative is ahead 60-40. It'll be interesting to see how that pans out.

[Crumpets]

Is Inslee expected to have a close race or is this going to be the first blowout in 16 years?

I suspect he'll win easily. If Reichert or McKenna run for his seat (both of which I doubt) it might be within single digits. But he's had a fairly innocuous tenure so far, and hasn't really done much to upset anybody, so I say he probably wins with around 15% of the vote.

[Crumpets]

My ballot:

I-1433: Yes
I-1464: Yes
I-1491: Yes
I-1501: No
I-732: Yes - This was one of my toughest choices.
I-735: Yes
R-8210: Approved
King County Charter Amendments 1 and 2: Yes

US President/Vice President: Hillary Clinton/Tim Kaine
US Senator: Patty Murray
US Representative: Pramila Jayapal - Last minute decision, I'd be happy with either.
Governor: Jay Inslee
Lt Governor: Cyrus Habib
Secretary of State: Tina Podlodowski
Treasurer: Duane Davidson
Auditor: Pat McCarthy
Attorney General: Bob Ferguson
CPL: Hillary Franz
SPI: Chris Reykdal
Insurance Comm: Mike Kreidler

Justice Position 1: Mary Yu
Justice Position 5: Barbara Madsen
Justice Position 6: Charlie Wiggins
Judge Position 14: Nicole Gaines Phelps
Judge Position 26: David Keenan
Judge Position 31: Helen Halpert
Judge Position 44: Cathy Moore
Judge Position 52: Anthony Gipe
Judge Position 53: Marianne Spearman

Seattle I-124: Yes
Seattle Prop 1: Yes

[Crumpets]

My ballot:

I-1433: Yes
I-1464: Yes
I-1491: Yes
I-1501: No
I-732: Yes - This was one of my toughest choices.
I-735: Yes
R-8210: Approved
King County Charter Amendments 1 and 2: Yes

US President/Vice President: Hillary Clinton/Tim Kaine
US Senator: Patty Murray
US Representative: Pramila Jayapal - Last minute decision, I'd be happy with either.
Governor: Jay Inslee
Lt Governor: Cyrus Habib
Secretary of State: Tina Podlodowski
Treasurer: Duane Davidson
Auditor: Pat McCarthy
Attorney General: Bob Ferguson
CPL: Hillary Franz
SPI: Chris Reykdal
Insurance Comm: Mike Kreidler

Justice Position 1: Mary Yu
Justice Position 5: Barbara Madsen
Justice Position 6: Charlie Wiggins
Judge Position 14: Nicole Gaines Phelps
Judge Position 26: David Keenan
Judge Position 31: Helen Halpert
Judge Position 44: Cathy Moore
Judge Position 52: Anthony Gipe
Judge Position 53: Marianne Spearman

Seattle I-124: Yes
Seattle Prop 1: Yes

Can I ask why Duane Davidson rather than the other GOPer?

Can't speak for Boko, but Davidson seems to have less of a partisan agenda than Waite, who wants to get rid of the capital gains tax. Davidson seems like he'll focus on doing his job rather than spouting GOP talking points.

I just went with the Stranger's endorsement on that one. I assumed they would go for the relatively saner one.

[Crumpets]

Clinton ran up the numbers so much in eastern King County. I doubt there will ever again be so much polarization between King County and the rest of the state. Also, did Johnson win a few precincts in the Yakima Valley?

[Crumpets]

Clinton ran up the numbers so much in eastern King County. I doubt there will ever again be so much polarization between King County and the rest of the state. Also, did Johnson win a few precincts in the Yakima Valley?

He won three small precincts in Benton County -- two of them 2-0, and one of them 2-1 over Trump.  "Write-in" also won two precincts, one in Benton County (4-1 over Trump) and a one-vote precinct in Yakima County.  A lot of them are coincidentally clustered in same general part of the middle of nowhere.

Awesome. Any chance you have a link to the raw data for this map?

[Crumpets]

That SPI map is pretty crazy. Is there any discernable pattern apart from Jones doing well in Native American areas?

[Crumpets]

Did Hillary end up winning Walla Walla?  I heard she was leading at some point before all the votes were counted.  

I wouldn't be surprised if she won Walla Walla proper, even if she lost the county as a whole.

Ravens lost. Dude was always a dick when I emailed them.

How so?

[Crumpets]

So, it looks like Seattle is getting a new left-wing populist party: the Seattle People's Party. They're nominating attorney and activist Nikkita Oliver to run against Ed Murray for Mayor.

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/activist-nikkita-oliver-to-run-against-mayor-ed-murray/

http://seattlepeoplesparty.com/

[Crumpets]

So, it looks like Seattle is getting a new left-wing populist party: the Seattle People's Party. They're nominating attorney and activist Nikkita Oliver to run against Ed Murray for Mayor.

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/activist-nikkita-oliver-to-run-against-mayor-ed-murray/

http://seattlepeoplesparty.com/

Hmmm.... might need to ping my sibling on this one, since she is right down the road from Rainier Beach in South Seattle, and has been working three jobs for Seattle Indivisible over the past few months throughout the City and Metro, and living up there for about 15 years now.

Still even if she plays well in South Seattle and the U-District, not convinced that she'll be able to take down a fairly popular Mayor in North and West Seattle precincts....

I don't know. I think Murray's weaker than he looks. Pretty much every neighborhood has seen a big increase in homeless populations. Homelessness is now probably the number one issue in many seemingly strong Murray neighborhoods like Ballard and Queen Anne. While each has it's own proposed solutions to the problem (usually based on income/wealth), pretty much thinks the buck stops at Murray. It'll depend a lot on who makes it to the general, and it doesn't look like any of the candidates so far are particularly formidable, but I can see someone taking down Murray if they play all their cards right.

[Crumpets]

(continued)

As for what I would do to help solve homelessness, I think expanding the amount of housing drastically would help. An upzone, maybe not in the entire city, but in most of it. Seattle is too suburban in character for such a large metropolis. But of course, we can't do that, because "evil developers!"

Utah has a program where they basically put homeless people in apartment housing, for free. Better they have somewhere safe to stay than sleep in parks or under bridges. If there were, say, more microhousing, there could be places to help place vagrants during transitional periods. It would of course take a few years for all of this housing to come online, so it's not a perfect solution. Seattle is innovative, though, that I truly believe. Cleaning up the infamous "Seattle process" is step one. Everyone and their grandma doesn't need to have their opinion heard four times with an extra study for good measure.

I agree with this exactly. I think one of the biggest economic problems in Seattle is that, while there should logically be a small number of expensive housing options, more for middle income, and lots for low-income, there's a huge drop-off when you go below $2,000/month. I mean, places definitely exist, but demand is so high, and most are in middle class neighborhoods like Wallingford, rather than low-income neighborhoods. One solution to this is to just raise the minimum wage, although there's only so much that can be done in that realm. The other theoretical solution, which King Sweden articulated is to just build thousands and thousands of houses and apartments to push supply up and prices down, so maybe those $2,000/month places might lower their prices. Of course, housing prices rarely actually go down except for during a recession, so there also needs to be a comprehensive subsidy program.

Now, there's also the issue of those who don't want to be moved into an apartment if it comes with strings attached, such as a curfew or drug testing. And I am also of the belief that people have a right to be homeless if they so choose, and you cannot forcibly relocate law-abiding people to a new home against their will. But, I think if we can get prices down low enough to help those who want to buy/rent on their own with a subsidy, and get those who have drug problems the option of going to rehab for free, in conjunction with cracking down on the definitely not-homeless drug dealers operating out of RVs, the number that remain will only be a tiny portion of what we see today, or even what we saw five years ago or so.

[Crumpets]

If Murray was hypothetically forced to resign over this, who would theoretically take his place? Hyeok Kim? Does anybody know anything about her?

[Crumpets]

Yikes. This could be big... I hope this doesn't mean Nikkita Oliver comes out as the front runner in whatever happens next.

Wow--- this sounds potentially huge....

Not sure what your issue is with Nikkita, but my sister finally met her a few weeks back in one of the Indivisible meetings and/or Homeless activist meetings she has been involved in, and her street cred is definitely expanding in leaps and bounds among the energized base of the Democratic Party in Seattle...

Do you really think a Republican will will win the mayoral election in Seattle, or do you have legitimate concerns regarding her capability to lead the City compared to the other contenders?

It's nearly impossible for a Republican to win city-wide in Seattle nowadays. The establishment Democrats and the lefties have pretty much squared off their respective corners of city politics, and the runoff is pretty much inevitably going to be one from each wing. The only question is whether the "left" candidate will be someone more in the Jayapal mold or the Sawant mold.

[Crumpets]

Just voted. Here's my ballot, mostly so I can remember my votes for Port Commissioners when the tallies come in tonight.

King County Prop 1: Approved
King County Executive: Dow Constantine
Port Commissioner Position #1: Bea Querido-Rico
Port Commissioner Position #3: Ahmed Abdi
Port Commissioner Position #4: Preeti Shridhar
Mayor of Seattle: Cary Moon*
Seattle City Council Position #8: Teresa Mosqueda
Seattle City Council Position #9: Lorena Gonzalez
Seattle School District #1 Director District #4: Eden Mack

*More or less a dart throw with the Stranger's Endorsement tipping the scale (I was convinced they'd endorse Oliver, but they gave Moon a pretty passionate endorsement, which tells me they saw something pretty darn promising to risk upsetting their probably 70% pro-Oliver readership). I have a feeling the runoff will be Oliver vs. Durkan, and I figure I'll reevaluate things then.

[Crumpets]

Left wing candidates tend to perform very well in the post-election day tally. I wouldn't be surprised if Oliver still pulls it out in the end. But I'm very happy to see my last-minute decision might actually have not been a thrown away vote!

[Crumpets]

May be my wishful thinking, but I think that Moon could also do well with late returns. Almost regretting my Farrell vote, but she's keeping it reasonably close.

Let's hope

Are you guys not Oliver fans?