Seattle residents will be seeing more campaigns in City Council and in the streets to fight inequality and build social justice after the re-election of socialist City Councillor Kshama Sawant in the city’s high-profile municipal election on Tuesday.
“We have accomplished something historic,” Sawant said to supporters on Capitol Hill Tuesday night as election results came in. “We have had an open socialist re-elected to City Council.”
Sawant, who secured a municipal minimum wage increase in her first term in City Council, won Seattle’s District 3 area by 5 percentage points over challenger Pamela Banks, who has been known to align herself with the business community.
.@cmkshama supporters cheer her 52% to 47% majority in ballots counted so far #seaelex https://t.co/dpZpfvE98p pic.twitter.com/vTDyPfSYY2
— Bettina Hansen (@bettinahansen)
November 4, 2015
Sawant declared the win “a strong victory for all working people, for the socialist movement,” and said that the re-election signaled that “socialist politics are here to stay” in Seattle.
In November 2013, Sawant won a seat in the city’s then at-large voting system as a Socialist Alternative candidate. She became the first socialist City Councillor elected in Seattle in over a century.
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During her first year in office, Sawant won a major campaign for working people with the vote in May 2014 to increase Seattle’s minimum wage to US$15 per hour. Despite the achievement, Sawant remained firm that the approval was a partial victory because it allowed big corporations to phase in new wages over a few years. She vowed as a councillor and an activist to continue her fight for poor and low-income people.
"Socialist politics are here to stay," says Kshama Sawant, who appears on her way to reelection. pic.twitter.com/I2FE61ssbw
— Jacobin (@jacobinmag)
November 4, 2015
Sawant has alsopushed a “millionaire tax” on the wealthy and rent control as key policyissues. She has campaigned for workers’ and unionrights, an end to corporateinfluence in politics, affordablehousing and tenantrights, environmentalpolicies and greenjobs, and expansion of publictransit, amongotherissues.
Seeking re-election, Sawant ran on a platform of making Seattle affordable for everyone and building a city “free of discrimination and poverty, with racial and gender equality, where all people can work and live in dignity,” according to her campaign website.
Before running for office, Sawant was involved in Seattle’s Occupy movement, which she credited with bringing issues of class, capitalism, and inequality into the political debate.
Dr. Jeffrey Perkins, Jr. C community activist, getting people fired up at @cmkshama #seaelex pic.twitter.com/NejMAH5UQq
— Bettina Hansen (@bettinahansen)
November 4, 2015
The City Council race was one of Seattle’s most closely watched elections, according to local media. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer described the election as a kind of “referendum” on Sawant’s “working class agenda.”
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The election was also the first to be run on a district voting system in over a century. While the nine City Council seats have represented the whole city in the at-large system in use since 1911, now seven of the seats are elected by district. Sawant’s District 3 represents the Central Seattle area, including the Capitol Hill neighborhood.
A majority of women councilors make up Seattle’s newly elected City Council.