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6 out of 7 Council wins ain’t bad, but Scott’s narrow loss was a heartbreaker we could have won

Screenshot of the Seattle City Council District 4 election results. Alex Pedersen 16,776. 52.12% Shaun Scott 15,304. 47.54%
D4 results as of the November 12 count. See updated results here.

A lot has happened since election night. City Council races that looked close widened into blowouts, Kshama Sawant won as late votes leaned heavily in her favor, and Shaun Scott lost by likely fewer than 1,500 votes. I-976 is still going to pass comfortably, but it is not the total blowout it appeared to be on election night. And in King County, which faces some of the worst cuts, the initiative is getting crushed 59–41 as of Friday’s release, a gap that could widen to 19 or 20 points after all votes are counted.

It appears that Scott may end up fewer votes away from Councilmember-elect Alex Pedersen than Egan Orion did to Sawant.


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In the end, 6 out of 7 Seattle Bike Blog’s endorsed Council candidates won, which isn’t too shabby. But Scott’s was the race I wanted to win most (in part because it’s my district), so it’s still sad to see him fall barely short. And with just 1,500 or so votes needed, there are a lot of leaders, organizations and PAC funders who need to do some real soul searching about why they didn’t support Scott’s campaign until a lot of ballots were already in the mail. The big Amazon PAC spending spree just weeks before election day was clearly a big push that convinced people to jump on board, if they supported him at all. But that was a bit too late.

This race was winnable, yet a Scott received almost no PAC spending on his behalf to counter the quarter million PAC bucks spent against him. A Seattle Times graphic shows that labor-backed PACs like the Civic Alliance for a Progressive Economy (“CAPE”) spent $136K supporting Lisa Herbold, who received over 50% of the primary vote and is currently winning in an 11-point landslide. Union-backed PACs also spent $154K supporting Dan Strauss, who is winning in an 11-point landslide of his own (though that result was less certain following the primary than Herbold’s). These PACs spent less than $2K supporting Scott. This Twitter thread from @RiallJohnson should be a wake-up call:

Like Scott Alspach noted, imagine if a PAC had sent an early mailer to every home in D4 that said, “Alex Pedersen opposed light rail expansion.” It’s not hard to imagine that turning a good number of votes, since light rail is extremely popular in D4. And it’s true. Closing a 1,500-vote gap only requires flipping 750 people (and/or getting more supporters to vote at all).

Scott’s campaign did an incredible job against all odds. It’s not easy to counter a quarter million dollars in PAC spending while also trying to come back from a big primary deficit (23–40), and they almost did it even without the help of union-backed PAC money. They ran the best campaign in the city this year, no contest. The gap they closed between the primary and the general election sets a new bar for what’s possible with grassroots power in our city, and we all need to remember this next time an inspiring candidate is down by a similar margin.

To Pedersen’s credit, he has spent at least half a decade getting ready for this race, writing a neighborhood newsletter and gathering support from various neighborhood groups. This is what set him apart from the other less progressive candidates in the other districts. It’s also why his primary win was so much bigger than many people, myself included, had expected. His primary result was enough to convince people the race was over.

And he felt comfortable enough with the base he built over those years that he did not even try to win over people with concerns other than his own. If you met him while doorbelling and said you care about the Bike Master Plan, he would often say, “Then I’m not your candidate.” I suppose he had done the math and decided he could lose every safe street proponent’s vote and still win. And I guess he was right, though just barely.

But hearing your councilmember tell you they don’t care about your safety doesn’t feel great, and people are not going to forget that feeling. I wouldn’t feel very confident about reelection after winning by such a slim margin, especially when the city’s progressive leaders left so much on the table. I hope he rethinks this strategy of ignoring the concerns of people who want our streets to be safe (or want a Green New Deal), because he’s going to need a bigger tent if he wants to win again. Biking, walking and transit is booming in this town and car driving is declining. The math might not be so friendly going forward.

On a recent phone call, Pedersen said, “I don’t think I’m as bad on these issues as you think I am.” I hope he is right, but people are going to need to see it to believe it. And he will have a chance to demonstrate his priorities sooner than the other new candidates because, as a replacement for Rob Johnson’s vacated seat, Pedersen will join the Council as soon as the election is certified. So he’ll be voting in December, a month before everyone else.

Pedersen will be in office when two new light rail stations open in his district. It’s hard to believe D4 voted a Sound Transit levy opponent into office just as we are about to get two new stations, but here we are. He will also be in office during final development and (hopefully) construction of the Eastlake/Roosevelt RapidRide J bus line. These projects all need strong Council support for biking, walking and transit priority and access improvements. And depending on the I-976 fallout, new funding sources.

The Burke-Gilman Missing Link is also facing continued challenges in court. Hopefully, it doesn’t make it back to the Council where Strauss would be in a position to oppose the funded design. We endorsed Strauss, who talked a good game on biking and transportation issues other than the Missing Link. But as always, we will be watching closely.

The big question now is: Who will chair the Transportation Committee? Chair Mike O’Brien and Vice Chair Abel Pacheco will both be gone. Sawant is a longtime committee member and the most senior member on the entire Council, so she has the strongest claim to the Transportation Committee if she wants it. I think that would be awesome. No other major U.S. city has a socialist Transportation Committee chair, and there’s a lot of bold work to be done. And hey, taxing Amazon and other big businesses to help fund walking, biking and especially transit sounds like a pretty good idea to me (Update: A previous version of this post said the MASS Coalition has been pushing such a tax. The coalition has been pushing for new funding sources, though not specifically an Amazon/business tax).

With so many new Councilmembers joining, at least some juicy committees usually reserved for senior members like Transportation will have to go to new members. Tammy Morales had a great transportation platform during her campaign, so I’d also be very interested to see what she could get accomplished as chair of such a big committee.

Teresa Mosqueda would be amazing, too, if she wants the gig. There’s a lot of work to do on transportation right now, and leading the city through a transit crisis brought by I-976 could be a pretty effective springboard to running for, I don’t know, let’s say mayor…


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10 responses to “6 out of 7 Council wins ain’t bad, but Scott’s narrow loss was a heartbreaker we could have won”

  1. ronp

    I gave money to Scott’s campaign but I should have volunteered some time and spoken to my neighbors about him.

    I hope the lack of PAC support was not racially based but more related to them thinking it was too much of an uphill battle given Pederson’s strength in the primary.

    I hope Pederson sees there plenty of bike commuters/urban livability advocates in his district and knows voting against them will mean a strong challenger in the next election.

  2. William

    It did not help Shaun Scott that the anti-Pedersen vote was split in the primary and that the 3rd and 4th place finishers, Tuttle and Myers, did not endorse him. An endorsement from Pramila Jayapal would have helped too.

    1. Andres Salomon

      Myers did endorse him – it was just towards the end, without much press or fanfare:

      https://twitter.com/EmilyforSeattle/status/1187805637289185280

      I think she was the only D4 candidate to endorse him.

      1. William

        Barely – done is a way that was calculated to have minimal effect. For a credible endorsement she would know that she needed to appeared with the candidate and/or made a clear statement on her web site or as a press release, just like Ethan Hunter (https://hunter4seattlecitycouncil.com/) who was I believe the only candidate who endorsed Shaun Scott in a meaningful way.

  3. Sam

    I mean Tom, you know why labor didn’t get behind Scott: because he chose to publicly and dishonestly attack their candidate while working for Jon Grant, who sucked. Did Scott do soul searching when he attacked labor’s candidate so viciously or fib about his role in Jayapal’s office? (was that what happened? or did he make up that Jayapal endorsed him, I can’t exactly remember)

    1. William

      Well Teresa Mosqueda had no problem endorsing Shaun Scott (https://crosscut.com/2019/10/rebuke-amazon-seattle-city-council-members-endorse-sawant) so it is unclear why the unions that supported her shouldn’t either, unless they genuinely prefer Pedersen.

      On his website Scott showed a picture of himself campaigning for Jayapal which she objected to (https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2019/03/29/39762415/sawant-cleared-over-ethics-complaint-jayapal-calls-out-shaun-scott-larry-gossett-is-running-and-more-seattle-election-news).

  4. Pedersen may not be “as bad on these issues as we think he is” (I mean, it’s hard to tell WHERE he stands on pretty much anything), but the people who got him elected certainly are. The question is: Is Pedersen beholden to the anti-cyclist, anti-transit, anti-tax crowd who put him in office? Time will tell…the dude’s an empty blue blazer.

  5. asdf2

    I used to live in district 4, but moved last year, so wasn’t able to vote in this race (but I did, at least, get to vote against I-976). To see Pederson take the seat of Rob Johnson is a big disappointment. Whether it was Amazon money, racism, a split progressive wing, or a previously silent majority of people who oppose safe streets, we will never know.

    One thing I do wonder is if, instead of a top-two primary system, having ranked choice voting and a single election day in November would have produced a different outcome, or at least different campaigning, as “I’m not your candidate” is not going to win very many 2nd or 3rd choice votes of supporters of an opponent. New York City just passed a ballot measure to enable ranked choice voting this year. Seattle would be logical place to do it too.

  6. eddiew

    Councilmember Johnson did well on the land use committee. but on Transportation he had some flaws: he did not allow the use of NE 70th Street for the off-peak Route 62 turnaround loop, so it had to flail around for a year; he led the council to allow the closure of the DSTT to bus in March 2019 instead of September 2019 (5-4 v. O’Brien); the University District Saturday market is on the Ave instead of another site without transit; he was the leading champion of the stupid City Center Connector Streetcar (do we cyclists really want more dangerous tracks and for scarce funds and right of way to be used for that monument rather than better transit or sidewalks?).

  7. […] PACs but they did spend heavily–just not in Scott’s race, as Seattle Bike Blog highlighted. “[L]abor-backed PACs like the Civic Alliance for a Progressive Economy (“CAPE”) spent […]

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