This afternoon, King County Elections will certify the November 3 results with Lisa Herbold holding a 30-something-vote lead in the closely contested District 1 race. There will be an automatic manual recount, but don’t expect the margin to change by more than a vote or two at most. KCE pre-inspects ballots, duplicating those it expects might have trouble scanning, and previous recounts have routinely shown little or no change from the first count.
Congratulations to Herbold, and my sympathies to Shannon Braddock for what must be a heartbreaking loss.
Back when Braddock had a comfortable election night lead and it was Kshama Sawant’s D3 race that looked uncomfortably close (she eventually won by 12-plus percent), there was a rush by some pundits and politicos to judge the election cycle as a loss for Sawant and her socialist/labor alliance. But with Herbold replacing her ultra-liberal boss Nick Licata on the council, the current 6-3 split on the council remains intact. At least.
For the question of who really won this cycle will be answered in the new year, when the issue of 12 weeks parental leave for city employees is inevitably again raised before the council. Yesterday, the proposal went down to defeat, with Sawant, Licata, Mike O’Brien, and Bruce Harrell voting for it. Sally Bagshaw, who voted yes in committee, switched her vote to no before the full council. I’ll leave it to others to speculate on her motives.
But next year, four newly elected council members will have the opportunity to weigh in. If the new council approves 12 weeks parental leave, that will indicate a further shift to left left. If the proposal fails by the same 4-5 margin, that will indicate status quo.
Every member of the council thinks of themselves as progressive. The truth will be in their votes.
Words that come to mind are litmus tests and naivete.
While I certainly support parental leave, there is the issue of fairness to other non parental workers. Also ther eis an issue of pay equity ,, parental leave for a low paid worker and a high paid worker ..are these the same issues?
Another word which comes to mind is relationships. As long as Sawant spends her time haranguing her fellow councilmembers about how they are tools of the establishment they will vote against her.
So either they’re corporate tools or they’re so petty and vindictive they’ll vote against working people in a juvenile attempt to get back at Sawant. I think your ire is misplaced.
No ire, an observation.
@2 So her colleagues’ personal feelings come before the interests of their constituents? That just reflects poorly on them.
@ 5
The interests of SOME of their constituents. Many others won’t enjoy the same benefit but will be paying for it.
There are fewer than 10,000 City of Seattle employees and not all of them live in Seattle. A very good point is made @1 that the benefits would accrue to a subset of these employees, not all. Parental leave would be in addition to these existing benefits:
http://www.seattle.gov/personn.....Glance.pdf
Unionized City of Seattle employees no doubt enjoy additional benefits.
Yeah take a stand against families and children, in favor of single people. Because fairness or something? That’s sure to be a political winner.
This might be a good time to go back about 5 years to when breastfeeding rights was a pseudo controversy for maybe a few months. Until the left and the right realized they were in total agreement about supporting workers and/or families. There was this weird, isolated kind-of-not-quite libertarian sliver of the political spectrum that didn’t think having kids entitled you to doodly squat. Having a kid is like buying a sailboat, they said, and that’s your problem, not society’s.
Anyone remember how that played out? Pretty much if you’re going to be anti-worker, anti-family, anti-child, and anti-parent, then you’ve staked out a piece of ground that nobody wants to defend. You have no friends and you will lose.
The outgoing council members have done nothing but prove that when you put your personal grudges against serving your constituents, you’ll soon be out of a job.