Effort to recall Seattle Councilwoman Kshama Sawant has fallen behind in latest vote count
SEATTLE - The effort to recall Seattle Councilwoman Ksahama Sawant has fallen behind as of Thursday's vote count.
With ballots collected Tuesday night in Seattle’s Third District for the recall of Sawant, the results could further shift power in the Northwest’s largest city and deal another setback to leftist activists who saw business-friendly candidates win a council seat and the mayor’s office in last month’s general election.
There are more than 77,000 voters in District 3.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, votes counted were leaning toward a "yes" to recall. On Thursday, the numbers flipped in the opposite direction, with 50.3% voting to NOT recall Sawant.
According to the latest poll numbers, 20,183 people voted to recall Sawant and 20,415 have voted not to recall her.
Mark Alan Smith, a political science professor at the University of Washington, said the reason voter turnout is higher than expected is because Sawant is so polarizing.
Sawant, 48, an Indian immigrant and an economics professor, is the longest-tenured council member. She has had an outsized influence on the tone and direction of Seattle politics since launching her political career under the banner of the Socialist Alternative party in 2012, when she ran unsuccessfully for state representative.
She was elected to City Council the following year, and her threat to run a voter initiative drive for an immediate $15 minimum wage has been credited with pressuring business leaders and then-Mayor Ed Murray to reach a deal raising the wage to $15 over a few years. Seattle was the first major city in the U.S. to adopt such a measure.
But critics say she offers more rhetoric than substance, and that her brash antics are incompatible with good governance.
Seattle and other cities are banned by state law from adopting rent control, for example. And last month, a federal appeals court ruled that two Seattle police officers could sue Sawant for defamation, after she claimed a fatal shooting they were involved in was "a blatant murder."
The recall question on the ballot cites three charges: a minor campaign finance violation that Sawant acknowledged and for which she paid a fine; her alleged leadership of a protest march to the home of Mayor Jenny Durkan, even though Durkan’s address was protected by a state confidentiality law due to her prior work as a federal prosecutor; and her decision to let a crowd of protesters into City Hall while it was closed due to the pandemic.
But to Sawant’s supporters, the charges are merely a pretext for an effort by big business, developer and commercial real-estate interests to accomplish what they failed to do in 2019, when a late, million-dollar push by Amazon to defeat her and other progressive candidates backfired. Sawant was reelected by about 4 percentage points.
Sawant denies having led the march to Durkan’s house, though she did participate in it.
She has defended her decision to let Black Lives Matter demonstrators into City Hall in the wake of George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police. She said the protesters were only inside for an hour and that it was important for them to be seen in the halls of power.
Bryan Koulouris, spokesman for the Kshama Solidarity Campaign, called the attempt to boot Sawant part of a national backlash against the Black Lives Matter movement. Even the timing of the vote is suspicious, he said.
The two groups supporting the recall — Recall Sawant and A Better Seattle — have raised close to $1 million combined, as has Kshama Solidarity.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
PREVIOUS COVERAGE: The fight for and against the recall effort of Kshama Sawant heats up
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