Big Changes for Seattle after November Election

Jordan Royer, Vice President & External Affairs

Last week, Seattle voters elected a bunch of new faces to the Seattle City Council, a body that was criticized by many for being ineffective and driven by Far-Left ideology. In polling leading up to the election two things became obvious: 1. People did not like the City Council. 2. They wanted something done about crime, disorder, and homelessness. They also told pollsters that they wanted more police and were concerned with the mass exodus from the Seattle Police Department and long response times (if a response ever came at all).

So, in that context, the results of the election were not all that surprising: in open seats, moderates carried the day. For the three incumbents up for re-election, one survived a scare, another denounced his own call to defund the police by 50 percent and survived, while another lost after flip-flopping on a vote to make public drug use illegal.

The bottom line is that six out of nine council members will be new in January. And the ringleader for the last decade of dysfunction – Socialist Kshama Sawant – will be gone, making it far easier for common sense policy solutions to take root. At the very least, the Council Chambers will be far more welcoming to diverse viewpoints.

But the challenges Seattle faces are huge. Like Portland and San Francisco, conservatives nationally have made Seattle the poster child for all that is wrong with progressive-left governance. And while the new Council will still be made up of liberal Democrats, there is a sense that the voters were finally heard and the City needs moderation and a new approach.

Some of the biggest challenges will be restoring downtown to a place where businesses thrive and people feel safe, making investments in roads and bridges, and working with the legislature and other cities to tackle the drug addiction crisis and lack of affordable housing. The new Council needs to follow the Mayor’s lead and continue to support a diverse economy with the help of the Port of Seattle and the University of Washington. Making sure high-paying blue-collar jobs in the maritime industrial economy are supported is just as important as supporting the tech sector and others.

The hope is that collegiality will return to City Hall, doors will be open, and ideas will be shared. With new faces and a new year there is hope. And right now, that will have to do.