Well, the people of Seattle have spoken and what they’ve apparently said is that they want more socialists on the city council. The sure sign of this is that after an election that looked grim for council member Kshama Sawant on election night, she has now taken a narrow lead over her opponent:
Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant has nearly completed a stunning turnaround in her quest for a third term Friday evening, recovering from a deficit of more than 8 percentage points and taking a 513 vote lead over her opponent, Egan Orion…
If Sawant indeed holds on for another term, an election that was cast by many as a referendum on the leftward lean of Seattle politics has almost completely backfired on the business groups and mainstream Democrats who spent millions in their effort to rein in the city’s progressives…
In the autopsy of Tuesday’s elections, many will wonder if Amazon’s $1 million check to a political action committee supporting more moderate candidates swung close races to the left. Polling around the time Amazon dropped its giant money bomb — about the time voters received their ballots — was reportedly much friendlier for the city’s business-backed candidates than what Tuesday’s results showed, according to multiple sources.
For Fincher, the late money exacerbated the feeling of “people looking around and feeling like they’re not in control of their communities. Amazon now personifies that whole thing.”
The left loves to make Amazon the face of any opposition but it wasn’t just Amazon and the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce pushing for a more moderate City Council. As I pointed out this week, the Seattle Times editorial board was campaigning to oust the far left members as well, including Sawant.
So the left has succeeded in pulling the city further left. The result is going to be more spending, more chronic homelessness, and more taxes. Will we see a return of the head tax on big companies that the council passed and then rescinded last year? I suspect we will.
Amazon should seriously think about moving more of its operations to cities that aren’t looking to punish them for their success. Or they could stay there and let their rich stream of taxes continue to fund a far-left city council full of people who use them as a foil in elections. What’s it going to take for Amazon to get the message and move to a more business friendly climate?
