The 2023 election is looking good for Washington state voters who want to see their cities or counties beef up law enforcement. In Whatcom and Thurston counties, a jail tax and a law enforcement tax have strong margins. City council candidates in Seattle who support hiring more cops are all leading.
Meanwhile in South Tacoma, it’s a different story: Black Lives Matter activist Jamika Scott — endorsed by the local Democratic Socialists of America — has a strong lead for city council.
Spending was a key factor in the elections, especially in Seattle, where business and realtor groups spent over a million dollars on pro-police candidates. They filled TV breaks with ads criticizing candidates who didn't fully support Mayor Bruce Harrell's plan to add more police officers, whereas labor unions, who usually support more left-leaning candidates, spent very little.
"In 2020, you had seven members of the city council pledge to defund the police by 50%, only to never really do it," said Sandeep Kaushik, a political consultant. He worked for one of the candidates, Alex Hudson, who's far behind in the race to succeed Kshama Sawant on the city council. Hudson is trailing Joy Hollingsworth, a Black cannabis business owner who supported the mayor's plan to add police.
Kaushik pointed out FBI statistics that show Washington's violent crime rate is coming up to where the national average is — whereas a decade ago it was 23% below.
"In an era of rising crime, once people started to think about what does that actually mean, the public really turned against it," Kaushik said.
A caveat: procrastinating voters in those races are usually left-leaning, so the late counts could save an incumbent who stood by the defund pledge: Councilmember Tammy Morales in South Seattle.
Kaushik said this is not some conservative backlash: leading candidates also support more alternatives to police.
Take Bellingham, for example. In the last decade, Whatcom County voters have said no to building a new county jail twice, even though the current county jail was built when the population was roughly half of what it is now.
County leaders knew the measure that could build a new larger building in Ferndale wouldn’t pass without progressive Bellingham voters on board. So the proposal on the ballot this year would also use money from a retail sales tax to fund social services and behavioral health treatment. It's leading with more than 60% of the countywide vote.
"What we learned from the community was that — treatment over incarceration," said Satpal Sidhu, the incumbent Whatcom County Executive who is leading his reelection race. "They never said that 'we are against a new building for a jail.'"
But detractors say the initiative — which was supported by many elected officials — will be too expensive and doesn’t guarantee any improvements to the social service system.
"They know that building a big new jail is unpopular," said Josh Ceretti, a college professor and part of the NO campaign, "but they know that a lot of expansion of behavioral health services is really popular."
