Hollingsworth (Image: Alex Garland/CHS)

With thousands of votes still to count — including thousands cast on a drizzly election night at the Broadway drop box — the Central District’s Joy Hollingsworth has a major head start in the final lap of the race for the District 3 seat on the Seattle City Council.

With 25% of the district’s votes counted, Hollingsworth marked Election Night with 58% of the vote — a major 17-point lead over her challenger, First Hill’s Alex Hudson.

“We did this,” Hollingsworth said of the positive early results. “We’re going to build Seattle to be our home again. For taking care of folks, we’re safe, we’re healthy. Our kids are protected, y’all. Our kids, our babies.”

“We’re gonna do that job. So look, when you’re from a community you’re accountable to the community, right and no one’s more accountable,” Hollingsworth continued at her campaign’s Election Night gathering at 14th Ave’s First AME Church.

“We’re going to build Seattle to be our home again.”

As he was in the primary, fellow Central District native Mayor Bruce Harrell was at Hollingsworth’s side again on Election Night. Hollingsworth would be the first Black councilmember in Seattle since Harrell left office in 2019.

The big start for Hollingsworth came on a night of success for Seattle’s centrist city council candidates including Rob Saka with a 59% mark in West Seattle’s District 1, Maritza Rivera reaching the 56% mark in Northeast Seattle’s District 4, and Cathy Moore logging a whopping 70% in North Seattle’s District 5 in races not involving incumbents.

The council’s incumbents are in for a fight as centrist candidates also logged the toop Election Night in those races with Bob Kettle leading incumbent Andrew Lewis 56%-44% in downtown and Magnolia’s District 7, Pete Hanning up 51% to 49% over incumbent Dan Strauss in Ballard’s District 6, and, in District 2, incumbent progressive Tammy Morales down 46% to 54% against challenger Tanya Woo to represent South Seattle.

UPDATE: Another council incumbent may be on the way out — but it isn’t because she had a bad Election Night. Teresa Mosqueda is in position to win the District 8 seat on the King County Council after a 51% showing Tuesday night. The Seattle City Council will select her replacement if she wins.

Meanwhile, the city’s $970 million Housing Levy renewal appears headed to sure victory with 66% of Election Night ballots approving the proposition. Harrell’s office says a new Seattle housing levy will create 3,100 new affordable homes, “stabilize supportive housing workforce,” and fund “other tools to prevent homelessness and ensure housing stability for more than 9,000 low-income households.” Part of the new proposal includes funding to boost wages for workers who provide services to low income residents, a first, the Harrell administration says, in the 40 years of levy history.

All King County Election Night totals can be found here (PDF).

The Hollingsworth camp, meanwhile, knows Hudson’s campaign performed well with late voters in the August primary.

“We have a team who’s watching all the ballot returns,” Hollingsworth said. “We have friends and family that are watching as well that are statisticians so we have a bunch of volunteers and a team that are just ready for if that needs to take place for us.”

But it would be the mother of all turnarounds. Even Kshama Sawant’s incredible reversal in late voters in the 2019 race didn’t start with the margin posted Tuesday night. On Election Night 2019, Sawant was down 54% to 46% with just over 28% of ballots counted.

Hudson (Image: CHS)

At her Election Night watch party event held at Broadway’s Olmstead, Hudson said her campaign didn’t hold any resources back in the event of a close race and that the campaign had been “a civil conversation.”

“It’s sad to me that that’s an anomaly now,” the first-time candidate said. “I think that’s what voters should expect and get when they’re making choices about who’s going to run, so i feel like i’ve been really grateful to have been in this race, and not some of the other ones where that’s not been the case.”

“I want to talk about what it took to get here tonight,” Hudson said. “A night like tonight- a campaign starts with believing. It starts with believing that things can be better than how they are. You don’t step onto a trail unless you believe that there is something better on the other side of that.”

Earlier Tuesday, Hollingsworth campaign supporters started the day with enthusiastic sign waving in the Central District at 23rd and Union. Hudson supporters could be found ending the day with sign waving of their own near Capitol Hill Station along Broadway as last minute voters rushed to the ballot drop box outside Seattle Central where a party atmosphere formed to the beat of a funky street drummer.

CHS reported here on counts pushing the district to the top spot in early voting enthusiasm in the city as voters in D3’s wealthier neighborhoods were quick to return their ballots for counting. But across the city, some of that enthusiasm has faded with later voters in the typically, younger less affluent neighborhoods. King County Elections officials have backed off early predictions of turnout as high as 45% as ballot returns slowed. Hopefully no D3 ballots ended up in this weird fake mailbox The Stranger found next to the Broadway drop box Tuesday.

The get out the vote effort of reaching apartment dwellers in areas around Broadway and Pike/Pine was a major challenge for Hudson’s campaign team and volunteers — a stark contrast to Kshama Sawant’s political organizing power seen in past D3 elections. CHS reported here on the door to door get out the vote styles and strategies of the two campaigns.

Sawant stood on the sidelines of Tuesday’s Election Day as she prepares to step down from the council and shift her focus to the creation of a new national political party. The veteran council member found herself standing alone in City Hall on the afternoon in a failed attempt to convince her counterparts on the council to join her in a symbolic resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

Meanwhile, a CHS analysis based solely on the primary results predicted a much tighter race with a narrow Hollingsworth victory the most likely outcome thanks especially to strength in her home turf neighborhoods around the Central District. Polling from the Northwest Progressive Institute think tank predicted a Hollingsworth blowout.

In a CHS survey of voluntary respondents, more than 96% of those who said they supported Hollingsworth in the race said public safety was an important factor in their decision. Just under 30% of Hudson supporters said the same. Instead, Hudson supporters were more likely to be driven by priorities around streets and transit, affordability, and homelessness. 60% of those who supported Hollingsworth also said homelessness was a priority issue in their choice. Overall in in the unscientific, self-selected survey, public safety ranked as the number one priority at 70% of respondents, followed by homelessness (57%), and streets and public transportation (30%).

Corporate money flooded into the race — though nowhere near the spending seen in 2019 in the unsuccessful bid to unseat Sawant. CHS reported here on the massive boost in contributions supporting Hollingsworth supported by independent expenditure committees including a committee from the National Association of Realtors and labor-associated groups.

Hollingsworth and Hudson leapt forward from the August primary, emerging from an eight-way District 3 race for the Seattle City Council. A coalition of progressive challengers joined together to back Hudson. The only candidate to endorse Hollingsworth after the primary was surprising third place finisher Pierce County public defender and Capitol Hill resident Bobby Goodwin who made his strides in the campaign by calling for increased spending on police and more officers on the streets.

(Image: CHS)

Hollingsworth, a Black, queer, business owner and Central District leader was also the mayor’s choice, winning Mayor Bruce Harrell’s endorsement and leading the way with the most financial contributions to her campaign as she championed middle of the road progressive positions and a tendency toward accessible takes and straightforward answers and solutions that veer toward a more centrist approach to the council. She has said she would support Harrell’s plan for increased spending on SPD staffing while calling for more accountability at the department.

“There were 45 candidates running — 45. I only endorsed one,” the mayor said in August. “Because I know that she’s what Seattle needs. Someone willing to put in that hard work. Fight against gentrification. Fight for housing policy. Fight for affordability. Fight against racism. Fight for gender parity. Strong, effective public safety.”

Hollingsworth was also endorsed by the Seattle Times.

Hudson was the D3 Stranger candidate after winning the former alt-weekly’s endorsement and setting up a time-honored Seattle political battle. The Stranger vs. The Times trope will maybe never die.

Hollingsworth beat Hudson to the punch in the campaign on messages around public safety, famously rating her feeling of safety in the city at a “1,” the lowest possible level, at a candidates forum last month.

In a signature moment for the race, Hudson refused to provide her own number during the forum. Instead, the candidate attempted nuance. Depending on the day, she said, she sees too much disorder. Her solutions? In her minute, Hudson described a Seattle social safety net that extended far beyond the walls of the East Precinct with shelters and housing “making sure everyone can come inside,” addiction treatment at “health hubs,” and the creation of an “effective alternative response to police officers.”

Capitol Hill had more than 1,600 violent and nonviolent offenses reported in 2023 at the time of the forum, the highest of any neighborhood. Last year, Seattle marked a 15-year high in its violent crime rate.

First Hill’s Hudson, formerly the leader of the neighborhood improvement association and the head of the Transportation Choices Coalition transit advocacy group, has spent her campaign time solidifying her position as a wonk with first-hand experience shaping legislation and the political process around it. Her advocacy for public transit and “upzones everywhere across the city” has set her apart from Hollingsworth who has also called for the development of more housing in the city but in more moderate forms like ADUs that are, she says, less likely to lead to displacement.

But Hudson has taken punches from the Hollingsworth camp for her tepid rejection of the defund movement — Hudson has said it was poorly crafted legislation and does not support the Harrell administration’s push for more cops. In one forum exchange, Hudson said the answer to lowering Capitol Hill’s crime totals was not more police. The East Precinct is right there, she said. The city needs real alternatives to policing, Hudson said, citing the need for “full, better solutions” like new behavioral health centers.

The candidate have also sparred softly over development with Hollingsworth saying the dialogue in Seattle and, in particular, from her challenger, is tone deaf on issues of displacement, equity, and racism.

Hudson presented a crisp, urbanist approach to growth in the city with full support for universal upzoning and housing. Hollingsworth’s approach has been less definite while still supporting blanket, citywide upzoning but with more “maybe” answers as she has spoken about fighting for policies that include exceptions to help slow displacement or combat the effects of gentrification.

Hollingsworth said her reservations around development stem from experience watching the Central District gentrify and displace Black and older residents.

Both candidates said they would not support any exceptions for housing and upzoning across Seattle allowed in the so-called “middle housing” bill that opens the door to “duplexes or fourplexes in most neighborhoods in most cities throughout the state, regardless of local zoning rules that have long limited huge swaths of cities to only single-family homes.”

Hudson also pledged her full support for density and height bonuses that would allow affordable and social housing developments to build larger — and presumably more cost efficient — buildings in neighborhoods in District 3 and across the city.

Hollingsworth backed off the pledge. Acknowledging that “the least expensive floor is the one built right above it,” the candidate said the city needs to take a “more thoughtful approach” with room for prioritizing preservation of character in certain neighborhoods.

“Capitol Hill is very different than South Lake Union,” Hollingsworth said during the campaign. “People like to come and live on Capitol Hill because of the character of the neighborhood, the legacy of our buildings. I would love for us to do it in a little bit more thoughtful way as we’re developing and building our city.”

Hudson’s platform, meanwhile, called for “on-demand health, housing, and social services to create root cause, lasting solutions,”  a “co-responder model of housing connectors, behavioral and mental health specialists, and social workers,” more spending on community violence prevention programs, and “a reformed and accountable police force.”

Hollingsworth led her messages with public safety and has said she believes SPD’s staffing needs to be fully restored. Her priorities include reducing 911 response times “for all priority calls,” addressing Fire, EMT, Police and CARE team staffing shortages, spending more on Health One funding and treatment resources for the Seattle Fire Department, expanding the community resource officer program. She has also said she will “prioritize police accountability, upholding high standards, and providing transparent oversight” but has not offered specific plans.

Hollingsworth joined the D3 race in January with “cannabis justice,” hunger advocacy, and three generations in the Central District on her side on MLK Day before any other candidate when it was still not clear if Sawant might seek reelection. She co-founded Hollingsworth Farms, Washington’s only major Black-owned cannabis farm. Hollingsworth is the granddaughter of civil rights leader Dorothy Hollingsworth who died last year at the age of 101.

There’s a voting party happening at the Capitol Hill ballot drop box right now. Video courtesy @block_m3 who’s not covering the election tonight but can’t resist a good drum beat pic.twitter.com/eeqd9Q3Dux

— Josh Cohen (@jcohenwrites) November 8, 2023

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