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The ballots are coming! The ballots are coming! Calm down.
Mail-in voting is great in so many ways. You can do it in your underwear, or less. But the downside is the wait. We don’t really have election day in Washington. We have election week. We are a state of edging freaks.
Political consultants tell The Stranger the numbers typically don’t move that much with the second ballot drop. “Tonight will tell us almost nothing,” one said. It’s too small. It’s puny. Miniscule. Pathetic.
If there’s movement, it usually comes with the third and fourth drops and heads left, in a progressive direction. As usual, younger, lefty-ier voters likely waited until the last minute to vote. Politics, as life, are unpredictable. But that’s the standing trend. Thanks for the anxiety, youths.
We asked those same political consultants a few questions about the Mayoral and County Executive races so far and what you should, and shouldn’t, expect today.
Will these tight elections be decided by this drop?
Emphatically no.
If progressives are far ahead, why is Katie Wilson so behind in the Mayor’s race? Is she toast?
Katie Wilson is not toast. She’s a woman. And she’s still in this race.
Her big win on primary night, and her eventual 9-plus point lead on Mayor Bruce Harrell, was a surprise. Progressives are expected to lag behind on election night. Kshama Sawant’s first bad night in 2019 turned into a big win over Egan Orion. Her second night wasn’t much better.
Harrell didn’t like losing much, and neither did his independent expenditure. They sunk money into attack ads and some ran during the American League Championship Series while the city was enraptured by the Mariners. That was a huge opportunity for Harrell. His PAC spent more than half a million on attack ads in the month of October alone.
We know some other stuff, too. During the primary, turnout was low in moderate districts. Early ballot returns showed the older moderates undernumbered meddlesome, progressive kids. And while people don’t usually change their vote between the primary and general elections, it’s possible those progressive kids stayed home. Our polling showed plenty of Katie Wilson primary voters didn’t know if they’d vote in the general election (otherwise known as the election that counts).
There are a lot of factors at play and it’ll probably be close. But if political consultant Michael Fertakis were Bruce Harrell (he’s not, he’s Michael Fertakis, and affiliated with the Girmay Zahilay and Stephanie Fain campaigns) he would have wanted a 55 point lead last night. Fifty-three is not comfy enough. Today is likely the last day Harrell will see any gains, Fertakis says. Then it’s all downhill. A slope that leads to defeat, in his opinion.
He’s not one to judge a book by their cover, but the line for his ballot box was 50 people long, and they didn’t look like Bruce enjoyers and Harrell heads.
Prepare to do some ballot chasing, though. Keep an eye on your ballot here.
Why are other progressives ahead, and Wilson is behind?
In Erika Evans’, Alexis Mecedes Rinck’s and Dionne Foster’s races, that’s obvious: their opponents either are Republicans (Ann Davison, Rachael Savage) or really, really seem like Republicans (Sara Nelson), consultants say. It’s not a bellwether for the mayor’s race. (Eddie Lin’s opponent Adonis Ducksworth didn’t read super conservative so much as he read “worse.”)
In Nelson’s case, she ruled on a mandate she didn’t have, says Political consultant Crystal Fincher. Nelson rose to power because people wanted public safety. She attacked the minimum wage for delivery drivers and the ethics code. Nobody wants that shit. In the end, the president of the council falls into the snake pit of the council’s own actions. For all the blaming “the executive” Nelson did, it just wasn’t convincing.
Harrell is possessed by the Chamber of Commerce. He acts plenty Republican, but that’s not as obvious. Harrell’s ultimate political asset has always been that he doesn’t do anything, and then takes credit.
As Stephen Paolini, a political consultant with the Lightning in a Bottle Collective, pointed out, while Harrell may not be progressive to true progressives, he can look pretty progressive to normies. Teaming up with Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck to propose a B&O tax code change to help small businesses and bring in progressive revenue? Those in the know clocked that for what it was: a transparent, political move to help one man keep his job. To people not paying as much attention, that looks like progressive ideology at work. The choice between Wilson and Harrell is a “much more difficult decision for the mainstream voter,” Paolini says.
What about that County Executive race?
It’s tight, but if future drops are more progressive, and Girmay Zahilay is generally considered to be the more progressive candidate, the race is likely to go his way. But, it’s a “weird and funky race,” according to Fincher.
Fincher famously does not make predictions. The race is also too close to call right now, and says that’ll remain the case for today.
Claudia Balducci has closed the gap since the primary by scooping up this region’s moderates. But you can’t carry the county without carrying Seattle, and Zahilay won big in Seattle during the primary, says Fertakis.
He is biased, of course. He works with Zahilay’s campaign.
Additional reporting from Nathalie Graham.
