A dozen Eastside city council races are on the primary ballot

On the Eastside, more than half the races for city council and mayor this year have two or fewer candidates and automatically head to the November election. Several candidates are running unopposed. In Bellevue, for example, voters will only see the four City Council races on the November ballot.

But about a dozen contests will be on the primary ballot. which voters must place in King County drop boxes by 8 p.m. Aug. 1 or have postmarked by that date.

Top issues among Eastside candidates include housing affordability and rising rates of homelessness, public safety, and transportation as some cities prepare for the arrival of light rail within the next few years.

The primary election has 174 candidates in 46 races throughout King County on the ballot, according to King County Elections. For the first time, ballots with Russian and Somali translations are available for voters, along with Chinese, Korean, Spanish and Vietnamese ballots.

There are no Eastside mayoral races in the primary for cities where voters elect a mayor. Clyde Hill mayoral candidate Steve Friedman, a city councilmember, is running unopposed and in Redmond, incumbent Mayor Angela Birney is being challenged by City Councilmember Jeralee Anderson.

All fundraising numbers are as of Friday.

In Bothell, Carston Curd, a licensed geologist; Mark Swanson, a retired engineer, and Ann Aagaard, a retired teacher, are running for the City Council Position 4 seat occupied by James McNeal, who is running for a different council seat. Only Curd shows any fundraising, with $5,775 so far.

Three people are running for Clyde Hill City Council Position 2: Ashley Eckel, who was appointed to Position 2 in May; Spencer Hamlin, the president and CEO of King Turtle Properties; and Steve Sinwell, vice chair and senior partner at Deloitte & Touche.

Issaquah City Council incumbent Victoria Hunt is running against three challengers for Position 6: Marc “Marquez” Lazzara, a Navy veteran; Katie Zakharoff, a small-business owner; and Sam Sheehan, a welder and fabricator. Hunt has raised $7,234.

Kenmore has two primary races for City Council. Mark Prince, a reverse logistics supervisor, and Jon Culver, a technology analyst and small-business owner, are running against incumbent David Baker for City Council Position 5. Culver has raised $2,257. Nathan MacDonald, a rail-labor advocate, and Nathan Loutsis, a University of Washington student, are challenging incumbent Corina Pfeil for Position 7. Pfeil has raised $6,971, Loutsis has raised $3,878 and MacDonald has raised $4,180.

In Kirkland, incumbent Kelli Curtis is running against Zoltan Szilagyi, a research physicist, and Catie Malik, associate director of finance for the UW School of Medicine’s Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology. Curtis has raised $30,833 and Malik has raised $725.

Three people are running for the Newcastle City Council Position 1 seat occupied by Mayor Linda Newing, who isn’t running for reelection. Leo Trautman is a self-employed contractor, Kevin Turner works in IT product management and Sun Burford is a teacher. Burford has raised $8,162.

Redmond has two primary races for council, one for an open seat and one with an incumbent. Osman Salahuddin, a King County community engagement manager, Nate Niederhausern, a principal at Sunstone Media Group, and Paul Stepanov, a business owner, are running to replace City Councilmember Varisha Khan, who isn’t running for reelection for the Position 1 seat.

Salahuddin has raised $55,395 – the most of any Eastside candidate in a primary election – and Niederhausern has raised $7,126. For Position 7, incumbent David Carson is running against Amit Gupta, a Microsoft group engineering manager, and Angie Nuevacamina, a financial services professional at New York Life. Nuevacamina has raised $13,045.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect that Bothell City Councilmember James McNeal is running for a different city council seat.