Local Primary in Seattle Provides Shock and Awe Moment for Moderate Incumbents

By  Jordan Royer, Vice President of External Affairs, Pacific Merchant Shipping Association

Under the best of circumstances, it can be difficult being a moderate elected official in Seattle. In fact, progressives – many who do not even consider themselves to be Democrats - have dominated the local policy agenda for over a decade. But four years ago, moderates gained a majority on the Seattle City Council. It was a time of chaos in Seattle: riots, the takeover of a police precinct by a mob, and the creation of a “no law enforcement zone” called the Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP) in the middle of the city. Throw in a pandemic and parks rendered unusable to the public because of homeless encampments, drug use, and violence, and you can see why voters wanted a different direction.

Four years later, parks are reopened and clean, a new waterfront opened to great fanfare, and businesses and streets feel safer. And yet voters have just rewarded the moderates with a thorough drubbing at the polls. Why? One theory goes that voters just kind of think of that crazy time as an anomaly and that it won’t happen again. Some say it’s because many parts of the city are still experiencing really bad crime – even though overall numbers are down. But this doesn’t explain the across-the-board losses in almost every neighborhood. In the August 5th Primary, Seattle’s moderate incumbent Mayor Bruce Harrell is behind a relatively unknown challenger who has never run a large organization or held elective office 50% to 41% and moderate City Council President Sara Nelson is currently behind her challenger 58% to 35%. These are historically bad numbers for incumbents, particularly when they were brought in to improve things – which they did!

This brings many Seattle political consultants to believe there are much larger issues at play. A possible explanation is that this is a response to the occupant of the Oval Office, and the politics and division he represents, have deeply inspired voters in liberal Seattle to produce an extreme reaction to match MAGA intensity. The fact that the Mayoral Primary in New York City earlier this year looks a lot like Seattle’s  is giving some credence to this theory that this is a national phenomenon spelling big trouble for moderate incumbents.

In this type of political environment, moderation is seen as weakness and capitulation. And this makes the campaign for the General Election in November tricky indeed. Because if things have gotten better locally over the last four years and nobody cares, what exactly do you run on as an incumbent?

Sensing weakness, the Mayor has made a play for progressive votes by tacking left and supporting raising taxes on large businesses and cutting taxes on those with less than $2 million gross revenue. And while it angered his business supporters, it doesn’t appear to have helped him at the ballot box. What’s next? City run grocery stores?

While we cannot predict what the voters will do in November, we have seen what the policies of progressives and moderates have produced before. And for many in the business community, it feels like one step forward, two steps back. The future is clear as mud.