Rep. Adam Smith, Washington’s longest-serving U.S. House member, was ahead in Tuesday’s primary, with Republican Doug Basler in second place, putting them on course for a likely November matchup. The result, if it holds, would end the political comeback attempt by Kshama Sawant, the socialist former Seattle City Councilmember, who was in third place.
Thousands more votes remain to be counted in the coming days. In Tuesday’s vote count, Smith, D-Bellevue, had 51% in the 9th Congressional District race. Basler, a perennial GOP candidate, was in second with 24%. Sawant was in third with 13%, barely ahead of Melissa Chaudhry, a Democrat challenging Smith from the left.
Sawant, speaking to about 50 people at the Casa Latina worker center, was defiant in the face of the results. She blamed union leaders for endorsing Smith and Chaudhry for splitting the leftist vote.
“Shame on Melissa Chaudhry,” she shouted, to boos and hisses from the crowd.
Saw this comment elsewhere but it’s incredibly on the nose:
Adam will be there for a very long time if the best Seattle can come up with is Sawant.
She ain’t close to the best, but she did do some good. She’s the main reason Seattle’s minimum wage is pegged to inflation, which is a core part of the cities health. It has also bludgeoned at least some of the surrounding cities into following its lead, so it helped millions in the region.
I’m still salty she left her position to start a podcast, frankly.
We can do better than Sawant. You are correct though, she wasn’t entirely useless.
Sigh. Just fade away Kshama. You had your moment and you fucked it up. If I had known you were going to win, I never would have voted for you on the first place.
Seattle Times, never missing a chance to dance on the graves of progressive idealism.
Sawant was hardly the perfect candidate and I really didn’t hear much of anything from her during this campaign. No rallies that I was aware of, no door-knockers, no signs in the neighborhood. I don’t know where she was campaigning. The district she was running in didn’t even include her Capitol Hill supporter stronghold.
Her people and posters were all over Beacon Hill. Absolutely everywhere.
I think Smith, Pollet, Gluesenkamp Perez, Pedersen, DelBene, Schrier, Jayapal, Saldana, etc. all winning by those margins makes it looks more like a status quo election than anything else and I don’t think there’s much to take away from it.
