Mirroring Citywide Trend, District 2 Voters Opting for Pro-Police Candidate

by Tobias Coughlin-Bogue

This article contains early results from election night, Nov. 7, 2023. For updated results, visit our "ELECTIONS UPDATE" page.

With about half of the ballots that King County Elections (KCE) expects to receive for Tuesday's odd-year City and County elections already counted, District 2, encompassing the Chinatown-International District (CID) and South Seattle, has a clear favorite to win: landlord and community-safety advocate Tanya Woo.

KCE projected a turnout of 45% of the county's 1,380,914 registered voters and had counted 14,004 ballots from District 2's 65,990 registered voters by Wednesday. After a minor update Wednesday, Woo led her opponent, incumbent Tammy Morales, 54.13% to 45.52%.

The disappointing result for Morales comes after a testy back-and-forth campaign, centering primarily on issues of public safety. Woo is in favor of more police funding and the City's recently passed law criminalizing public drug consumption and possession, while Morales voted against that law and has been skeptical of relying on law enforcement to solve public safety issues like homelessness, drug use disorder, and retail theft.

Woo, whose family owns the Louisa Hotel Apartments in the CID, emphasized her roots in that community and her work organizing community safety patrols. The CID has been a flashpoint of the city's ongoing and increasingly polarized debate around homelessness, as the neighborhood is home to a highly visible population of homeless residents. Woo famously led the charge to block the siting of a 500-bed shelter that would have included space for an RV-safe lot and detox services in a vacant lot where the CID meets SoDo, saying it placed an unfair burden on the historically neglected minority neighborhood.

The CID also includes the infamous corner of 12th Avenue and Jackson Street, the site of a very public and largely unsuccessful crackdown on drug activity during the early months of Mayor Bruce Harrell's tenure. Drug users and dealers, chased off briefly by added police presence ordered by Harrell, recently returned to the corner in force, sparking a new wave of outrage in the CID community and providing Woo with plenty to campaign on. Late in the campaign, Woo held a press conference with local business owners at the intersection, where she publicly accused Morales of not doing enough to reduce fentanyl sales and criminal activity on the corner.

"Why am I here, and where is Tammy Morales?" she asked the gathered TV news cameras, rhetorically.

While Morales is by no means out of the race — departing District 3 Councilmember Kshama Sawant famously recovered from an 8% deficit with a surge in late ballots in 2019 — the deficit she faces matches a general trend in the City's other six council races.

Across the city, progressive and even centrist candidates lagged behind their pro-police opponents. In District 1, Harrell protege Rob Saka enjoyed a nearly 18-point lead over his opponent Maren Costa, all but ensuring victory. Joy Hollingsworth, another recipient of Harrell's endorsement, was up by almost 15 points over Alex Hudson, an avowed progressive. In District 4, progressive Ron Davis trailed Maritza Rivera, the deputy director of Harrell's Department of Arts & Culture, by 11 points. District 5 was a landslide, with the former judge Cathy Moore clobbering progressive disability rights advocate ChrisTiana ObeySumner 70% to 30%.

As for Morales' fellow incumbents, District 6 Councilmember Dan Strauss and District 7 Councilmember Andrew Lewis — both centrists who support police funding and drug criminalization — weren't doing so hot either. Both faced challenges from the right, and both found themselves in a challenging spot after the first drop. Strauss came out the better of the two, with 49.31% to challenger Pete Hanning's 50.16%, while things were looking pretty bleak for Lewis, at 44.12% to challenger Bob Kettle's 55.51%.

Overall, the initial results suggest a strong swing toward law-and-order policies, something the mayor and at-large Councilmember Sara Nelson have been pushing hard. Their support for potential allies in that endeavor seems to have paid off this election.

The more conservative, pro-cop side of Seattle politics also deserves credit for its narrative work, according to at least one local political insider.

"We often forget that these local races, even in Seattle, are extremely low information," said Jake Simpson, a principal at the political consulting firm Winpower Strategies, which represented District 1's Maren Costa. "This year, the candidates who were able to communicate their message the most frequently with voters over a short, but very critical, period of time won their elections."

Late ballots tend to skew leftward, so at only 20% turnout, it's certainly way too soon to tell. A second drop of ballots was due at 4 p.m. on Nov. 8 but was delayed due to the discovery of white powdery substances at three different vote-counting centers across the state.

Tobias Coughlin-Bogue is a journalist based in Seattle. His work has appeared in Vice, The Stranger, Crosscut, and Thrasher Magazine, among other outlets. He was most recently the associate editor of Real Change News.

📸 Featured Image: Tanya Woo (left) and Tammy Morales (right) are two candidates vying for Seattle City Council's District 2 seat. (Photos courtesy of Tanya Woo's and Tammy Morales' campaigns, respectively.)