Bland is back? In Seattle the fiery far left is barely on the ballot

It appears the revolution has petered out.

Or maybe it’s just on pause. But Seattle’s great civic experiment of the past decade, dabbing in socialism and far-left progressive experiments in public policy, is all but a no-show in the current City Council campaigns.

It wasn’t long ago that candidates for public office here would routinely declare things like, “We’re going to make Seattle the most progressive city in America.” The campaigns were movements, centered around first-in-the-nation policy ideas involving wages, tenant law, anti-corporate campaign finance measures or such utopian fantasies as completely abolishing the police.

Seattle became one of the only cities to elect a real-deal socialist, of the type that wants to end capitalism — the outgoing Socialist Alternative Councilmember, Kshama Sawant.

Now candidates are talking about potholes. Building sidewalks. Hiring more cops. Fixing stuff.

There are 45 candidates running for seven seats. I can’t say that none of them are socialist at heart, and I definitely wouldn’t say that progressivism is on the run. We’re all liberals here, after all. But the mojo of the once-rising left sure seems missing.

The local chapter of Democratic Socialists of America did find one candidate to endorse, Matthew Mitnick, for the 4th District of Seattle’s Ravenna and University District area. Mitnick had a vision of running a slate of seven socialists, one for each district. But he has already dropped out, the socialist slate nowhere to be seen.

Sawant’s party, Socialist Alternative, hasn’t fielded any candidates. The Peoples Party that ran police abolitionist Nikkita Oliver twice between 2017 and 2021, along with other candidates, has disbanded.

In this vacuum, Seattle politics may be returning after a decade of tumult to its natural state: polite and boring.

It’s less ideology, more local community stuff. It’s neighborhood jousting, not full-throated class war.

So far it’s the candidates with the more moderate profiles — the kind Sawant would deride as bland sellouts — who seem to have a lead in organizing, fundraising and scooping up democracy vouchers (publicly funded campaign contributions).

The top five fundraisers for council as of Tuesday, according to the state Public Disclosure Commission: 1) Andrew Lewis; 2) Joy Hollingsworth; 3) Tanya Woo; 4) Ken Wilson and 5) Rob Saka.

The first is an incumbent council member, so no surprise he’s up there. But the other four are all moderate-ish community-oriented Democratic challengers who are running, they say, because the city has obviously broken down in its basic effectiveness and needs some repair.

There’s no “defund the police” experimentalists in this crowd. Typical is Saka, of Delridge, an African-American lawyer running in West Seattle’s 1st District. When asked whether it was a mistake for Seattle to toy with defunding police by 50% back in 2020, he answers, unequivocally, yes, it was.

His burning question about cops is more prosaic: Do they come when you call them?

“Are we meeting response times now?” he asked in a video at the West Seattle Blog. “I think the answer to that, today, is no. … And nobody needs to see a color-coded map to know the crime situation is getting out of hand.”

Hollingsworth, who works at Northwest Harvest and is involved in one of the few Black-owned cannabis businesses in Washington, has attracted more individual donors, 1,235, than any other candidate in the city (as of Tuesday). She’s running to replace Sawant in the Central Area’s 3rd District, and presents herself as a sort of anti-Sawant – a mediator instead of a fighter. Even her campaign slogan – “Joy for Seattle” – has a page-turning ring to it.

Woo, whose family has been in Seattle since the late 1800s, is a Chinatown International District community advocate running against incumbent Tammy Morales in the South end’s 2nd District. To date, Woo is outgunning the socialist-adjacent incumbent in both donors and dollars raised.

Finally, Wilson is an engineer running on a platform of “deliver the basics” in District 4.

“So far, the left is getting out-hustled on democracy vouchers,” the Urbanist publication summed up last month, referring to the early trends above.

Early energy like this doesn’t always translate into votes, though. Some of these candidates could turn out to be voucher-fueled mirages. Or they may wilt in the summer vetting before the Aug. 1 primary.

There also are progressives mounting strong campaigns, such as Ron Davis, a tech entrepreneur and urbanist in the 4th who is grabbing Democratic endorsements. And Maren Costa in the 1st, a climate activist who was illegally fired from Amazon for organizing there (and who maintained, in a recent debate, that defund the police was actually the right call. It will be interesting to see if that stance hurts her or helps her in 2023?)

Whether all this adds up to some big change a’ coming to City Hall, it’s too soon to say. The old rule for most of these Seattle district elections — that a progressive and a moderate candidate will make the final, which the progressive will win – may still hold come November.

But before any votes have been cast, something has already shifted. That far, far left, such an uproarious force in Seattle politics this past decade? It’s barely on the ballot.