Seven seats on the Seattle City Council were up for election Tuesday. No races have been called. Washington uses a vote-by-mail system, and election officials will continue counting ballots postmarked on or before Nov. 5. King County will certify election results Nov. 26. The races saw record-breaking satellite spending of more than $4 million, which was more than 5 times the amount spent in 2015, the last time the same seven council seats were up for election.
Unofficial, incomplete election returns from ballots counted as of Tuesday night showed the following:
- District 1: Lisa Herbold (incumbent) 51.3%, Phil Tavel 48.3%
- District 2: Tammy Morales 56.1%, Mark Solomon 43.5%
- District 3: Kshama Sawant (incumbent) 45.6%, Egan Orion 54.0%
- District 4: Alex Pedersen 57.8%, Shaun Scott 41.9%
- District 5: Debora Juarez (incumbent) 57.2%, Ann Davison Sattler 42.3%
- District 6: Dan Strauss 52.3%, Heidi Wills 47.1%
- District 7: Andrew Lewis 49.1%, Jim Pugel 50.3%
Amazon contributed $1.5 million to the local chamber of commerce’s PAC, which endorsed candidates in each race, including challengers to incumbents Lisa Herbold and Kshama Sawant. A 2018 head tax proposal, which the council passed and subsequently repealed, met with opposition from the chamber of commerce and Amazon. PACs affiliated with labor groups endorsed and spent in support of candidates opposing those backed by the chamber in most races.
This was the second election in which a voter voucher program was used to provide public funding to campaigns. Participating candidates, including those who did not advance from primaries, received a total of $2.5 million from more than 98,000 returned vouchers. It was also the second election in recent history in which councilmembers were elected by district; from 1910 to 2013, all Seattle councilmembers were elected at large.