I’ll admit that I’ve been pretty cynical about this year’s election. I didn’t even vote for a candidate for City Council because they are all so bad on our issues. But candidates who ran on explicitly NIMBY and anti HALA (Housing Affordabily and Livabiliy Agenda) Committee platforms (Grant, Bradburd, and Provine) got a thumping. Their backward, negative, and fear fueled agenda didn’t take off last night. Does that mean we won? Hardly. But the angry neighbors were handed some scalding defeats. Perhaps those left over will heed this lesson and start listening to basic economics and reason instead of capitulating to an angry mob of we-showed-ups. 

Let’s walk through last nights very preliminary results. 

District 1 — West Seattle and South Park 

Shannon Braddock and Lisa Herbold emerged here as the winners. Braddock is favored by the business community and Herbold, Nick Licata’s long time aide (she’s much more than that; I call her “Licata’s brain”) is a champion of a myriad of bad housing policies, including rent control. Herbold is one of the most dedicated and smart people I know in City government. She’s qualified for the job but if elected would do serious damage to efforts to expand housing supply and choice. Is Braddock better? We’ll have to wait and see. I don’t know her well enough. 

District 2 — South East Seattle 

Tammy Morales and current Councilmember Brice Harrell will run here in the general. Harrell has voted for the linkage tax and while he makes serious efforts to cultivate support from builders and developers, his record is mixed. Morales is an unknown to me. This race will need a close review before the general.  

District 3 — Capitol Hill

Councilmemeber Kshama Sawant, the Councilmember many people love to hate, emerged with 49 percent of the vote while leading challenger Pam Banks got 35 percent. I’m highly sceptical of Banks’ knowledge of our issues. She’s made little effort to reach out to builders and she’s been confused on linkage taxes. My instinct has told me that trying to replace Sawant is a waste of our community’s resources; she’s probably going to win. Wouldn’t we better off putting dollars into other candidates that could counter Sawant? 

District 4 — Roosevelt, Green Lake, Ravenna, and U-District 

Good news here. Tony Provine and Councilmember Jeanne Godden, both fought hard for the NIMBY vote, but both are losing. Provine played the NIMBY card hard suggesting that HALA Committee proposals would lead to bulldozers from City Hall flattening single-family neighborhoods. This bombastic appeal to fear clearly failed. The two candidates emerging from field, Michael Maddux and Rob Johnson, are both better candidates than the rest of the field. Johnson has said he’s against linkage taxes. We need to put this race under a close watch. Maddux, oddly, chose to join an anti HALA press conference. He has some explaining to do. 

District 5 — North Seattle 

This was the biggest surprise of the night. Debora Juarez emerges as the clear favorite here with 38 percent of the vote beating former favorite Sandy Brown who only garnered 20 percent of the vote. Brown supports impact fees. Juarez has a rather general statement about housing that doesn’t commit her to much other than expanding DADUs, something we support. I am really hopeful that Juarez, a former judge, might emerge as a sympathetic voice or at least ear for housing supply and the builder community. This will be an exciting race to watch; Juarez is a smart experienced leader that emerged late in the election. 

District 6 — Ballard and Greenwood 

Current Councilmember Mike O’Brien coasted easily through the primary. His opponent has lots of NIMBY supporters that think O’Brien isn’t harsh enough. This district, like 3, is what American soliders in World War II would have called a FIDO; we’re better off trying to blunt O’Brien’s famously bad ideas and approach to land use and housing policy by electing better Councilmembers in other districts. O’Brien seems determined to go down in history as a champion of social justice, but his short sited approach to land use guarantees he’ll be remembered, along with former Councilmember Clark and outgoing Councilmember Tom Rasmussen as an amanuensis for angry neighbors.  

District 7 — Downtown, Belltown, and Magnolia

Current Councilmember Sally Bagshaw took most of the vote here. Bagshaw is a genuine, smart, and even, sometimes bluntly honest Councilmember. But she likes her job, and she’s made bad decisions about microhousing, supporting O’Brien’s destructive legislation. As an attorney, she should be dead set against grandstanding efforts by State Representsive Gerry Pollett to force notification on Lot Boundary Adjustments (LBAs) when the City has zero discretion on granting them. City bureaucrats are horrified at the prospect of having to defend swarms of lawsuits by Pollets wealthy neighbors against land use decisions that are, essentially, inviolate. Why did Bagsahaw play to the mob? And why did she say she supported linkage taxes in an interview with The Stranger after voting against the tax earlier? We’re going to have to find out. Maybe with such a big win, she’ll become a bit more consistent. 

District 8 — At Large 

There is no great outcome to be had here. Current Councilmember Tim Burgess has been impervious to facts when it comes to land use decisions, voting with O’Brien in committee 100 percent of the time and, sometimes, voting with Rasmussen’s strange crusade to turn Seattle into a giant gated community. But Burgess has held the line against rent control. I attribute this almost entirely to his and his fellow Councilmember’s desire to deny Councilmember Sawnant a win. Not exactly a profile in courage, but we’ll take it. And Burgess was likely, as Council President, the one who asked the Mayor to back down on HALA recommendations to increase housing supply in single-family. Sounds like it’s time to call security and have Burgess clean out his desk and be walked to the parking lot, right? However, his opponent in the general is rent control advocate Jon Grant, former head of the Tenant’s Union. I don’t recommend supporting Burgess unless he can explain his views more than just “it’s not a lot of housing being lost,” or he gets a grasp of housing economics and policy. 

District 9 — At Large

I made Lorena Gonzalez, the big winner last night with 60 plus percent of the vote, very uncomfortable when I pressed her to explain her support of linkage taxes. As a lawyer, it seems like she’d be far more skeptical. Instead she committed herself to supporting them through a law suit from our community to test what the courts would say. That is, she said she’d be willing to bog the City down in litigation for years to defend a really, really bad idea. I hope she’s evolved her views on this issue. In any event, it’s worth celebrating her electoral beat down of NIMBY standard barer Bill Bradburd, who has drawn his sense of personal value from using City process and Councilmembers O’Brien and Clark to trash microhousing. He had a pretty good schtick going, but the voters repudiated it decisively. I’m glad he made it through the primary so Gonzalez can dole out another, hopefully, brutal and lopsided defeat. 

So that’s my highly biased rundown on what happened last night. It’s unlikely there will be much change, but we’ll keep our eye on it.