Early ballot returns on election night showed a progressive slate of candidates leading in the races for Seattle city attorney and three City Council seats.
The progressive candidates gathered with supporters to watch election results together at Black and Tan Hall in Columbia City. Andrew Lewis, a former progressive City Council member who attended the party, said he thinks Seattle voters are dissatisfied with the current council’s more moderate majority.
“Hopefully we can get back on track with what the voters of Seattle really care about, which is affordability, which is making sure that we are insulating ourselves from the harm that’s coming out of the other Washington,” Lewis said.
More ballots will be counted in the coming days, with the next update expected Wednesday afternoon.
In the race for position 9, Dionne Foster was leading with almost 58% of the vote to incumbent Sara Nelson's roughly 41%.
Nelson was elected to the citywide council seat in 2021. She rose to council president in 2023 after voters elected a more moderate slate of candidates.
As president, Nelson has taken a law-and-order approach, highlighting her work to bolster police hiring and enact exclusion zones for people with drug arrests. She was endorsed by most of the current City Council, and her defeat would represent a shift away from that more moderate direction.
Foster, a former Seattle policy advisor who has worked with several nonprofit groups, is new to elected office. She has criticized Nelson for expanding police surveillance and drug exclusion zones. If elected, Foster said she would push for a city-level capital gains tax and other progressive revenue sources.
The race for City Council position 8 appeared to be over. Incumbent Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck lead challenger Rachel Savage with a commanding 78.7% of the vote.
Rinck, a former policy analyst with the King County Regional Homeless Authority, has been one of the most progressive voices on the council since her election in 2024 to fill a one-year vacancy. A renter and a transit rider, she has advocated for more progressive revenue sources and differed from the rest of the council on issues like expanding police surveillance. Rinck won the primary with almost 79% of the vote.
Her opponent, Savage, owns a crystal and incense shop on Capitol Hill, and campaigned on a more heavy-handed approach to drugs and homelessness. Her candidacy was considered a longshot: Savage has described herself as a Republican — a political rarity in Seattle.
In the race for South Seattle’s District 2, Eddie Lin was leading with 68.6% on Tuesday night. Adonis Ducksworth had about 31%.
District 2 is the only open council seat this year. It was vacated when Tammy Morales abruptly stepped down in January.
The two candidates both have policy experience with the city: Ducksworth is a communications and policy advisor with the Seattle Department of Transportation, and Lin is an assistant attorney at the city attorney’s office.
The two candidates agree that the district has some of Seattle’s most pressing challenges. They’re less at odds than other city candidates this year, but they still diverge on tax policy and some other issues. Ducksworth has cited gun violence as a major priority, and Lin has promised to tackle housing affordability.
In the city attorney race, challenger Erika Evans was leading incumbent Ann Davison with 62.5% of votes cast.
Voters elected Davison to the city attorney’s office in 2021. A former Republican candidate for lieutenant governor, Davison has taken a more aggressive approach to prosecuting low-level crime and public disorder. She helped push for the drug exclusion zones passed by the City Council earlier this year.
Evans is a former federal prosecutor. She has criticized Davison’s tough-on-crime approach as ineffective and has argued that the incumbent is not willing to stand up to the Trump administration.
*Incumbent
