Our deep dive into the seven Seattle City Council races happening this year started with the three races with incumbents running and followed with hotly contested open seats in Districts 1 and 3. Now we dig into two remaining open races in Districts 4 and 5 in North Seattle.
Jump to your district:
- District 1: West Seattle (New window)
- District 2: South Seattle (New window)
- District 3: Capitol Hill (New window)
- District 4: Laurelhurst, University District
- District 5: Aurora, Lake City
- District 6: Ballard, Fremont and Magnolia (New window)
- District 7: Downtown and Queen Anne (New window)
In last week’s piece, I touched on general dynamics in Seattle municipal races (and laid out how the democracy vouchers program works). The two candidates to make it through the primary typically are a progressive and a centrist. The Stranger endorsement usually signals the progressive who will make it through and The Seattle Times endorsement generally signals the centrist to make it through. Incumbents Tammy Morales, Dan Strauss, and Andrew Lewis all had The Stranger’s endorsement in 2019 and won in that progressive wave year.
District 4: Greater U District
Councilmember Alex Pedersen is thankfully hitting that dusty trail and an interesting race to replace him has emerged. Progressive urbanist Ron Davis and business darling Maritza Rivera appear to be the leading contenders to make it through the primary.
However, Kenneth Wilson has been leading the pack in fundraising and could claw his way through in the homeowner backlash lane. Wilson was shellacked by Teresa Mosqueda running citywide two years ago. He’s recycled the same positions but perhaps gotten a little savvier, more gently couching his anti-housing stances in treehugging this time around. It still boils down to forcing renters to live only along busy, polluted arterials that are legally and physically segregated from the rest of the city’s canopied, single-family affluence. Likely leaning on supporter lists from his ill-fated citywide run, Wilson’s D4 run has received a distribution of $48,050 via 1,922 vouchers as of late last week. The Washington Public Disclosure Commission reports he’s raised more than $64,000 to date.
