The ONLY Primary 2025 Election Analysis You Need

Tuesday night, some of us drank too much at election parties, some of us continued on with our normal lives. Either way, you’ve been waiting for The Burner to pull out some highlights. Here we go!

Something Good Actually Happened In A Seattle Election

Seattle lefties have the pleasure of imagining our corporatist incumbents waking up Wednesday morning and realizing that the initial ballot drop was not a nightmare. They really all fucking lost. The voters totally rejected the clusterfuck conservative council: The newest, most progressive member, Council Member Alexis Mercedes Rinck earned perhaps the biggest primary election lead in City history and progressive challenger Dionne Foster sailed past 50%, sending a clear message to Council President Sara Nelson to start applying for other jobs. And the City Attorney’s office may soon belong to a Democrat once again: MAGA City Attorney Ann Davison flopped hard with challenger Erika Evans securing more than half the vote, despite a split primary on the left. And most stunning of all, Katie Wilson, a left lane challenger with no institutional support, came out ahead of incumbent Mayor Bruce Harrell on election night, a victory not even Wilson herself saw coming. 

I Don’t Know Why That Good Thing Happened

When progressives win, the knee-jerk reaction is to credit voter turnout, but Seattle did not see an unusually high turnout and young people voted as little as they do in most years. There’s a few theories bouncing around as to why progressives had such a surprisingly strong showing after crushing defeats in 2023 and in 2021.

• Anti incumbent bias: Seattle hates an incumbent and voters sometimes switch sides for no clear ideological reason. Consultants also raised this theory when Rinck won her first election in 2024, which the media framed as a referendum on the newly conservative City Council. 

• Low effort: Harrell, Nelson, and Davison didn’t really do much in the way of campaigning. In his first election, Harrell’s campaign had a more palpable presence and honestly the voters he drew helped carry those other two to a victory. 

• “Trump Effect:” President Donald Trump’s in office, Seattle libs hate that, suddenly they want to be progressives. And really, the incumbents didn’t do much to build voter confidence that they would stand up to Trump. Harrell said he wanted to “work with” Trump earlier this year and then made good on that promise when he ceded the gayborhood to an anti-trans hate rally, or when he bolstered surveillance tech that the Trump administration wants to hack into or when he let the Seattle Police Department help ICE escape from the Federal Building, likely with immigrant detainees. Oh, and Davison literally supported Trump in his first term.

The Conservatives Need New Attacks

In past elections, it was enough to draw any connection between the progressive and socialist Kshama Sawant or the movement to defund the police in 2020. But Harrell and the IE supporting him pulled out that old playbook and it didn’t do the job. These fuckers spent thousands on oppo research just to call Wilson antifa. Please. Ask for a refund.My advice (and I’ll give it to them for free), focus on making your candidate look good before you go on the offense because clearly his record does not speak for itself. And if you must attack Wilson, actually attack her, not some off-hand comments she’s made or a line in a thoughtful op-ed or some boogeyman that’s lost its edge. 

No One Has To Further Moderate

Some consultants advise their progressive candidates to tighten up and shift center for the general after they’ve cleared the field. Afterall, they will still be the lesser of two evils for progressive voters even if they stray. But based on these results, none of them have to do that. In fact, this is perhaps a sign that the challengers should separate themselves from the incumbents further and more often. So, if you see any candidate wandering to the middle, flirting with the Chamber of Commerce, or otherwise mirroring the status quo they sought to stir, call them on it. You can demand more from these candidates. 

I Would Be Super Embarrassed!

The Burner has been clowning on progressive groups like MLK Labor and politicians including Congress Member Pramila Jayapal and King County Council Member Teresa Mosqueda for siding with Harrell in his bid for re-election. It was pretty clear that the progressive establishment felt he was invincible and wanted to keep a positive working relationship with him. Now that Wilson’s won, selling out doesn’t look so strategic. There’s rumblings of some more progressive unions breaking with MLK Labor to back Wilson in the general. But there’s no indication that Jayapal will admit her mistake. She posted on Instagram congratulating Harrell among the other, more successful candidates she endorsed.

Expect good things from Dan Strauss

Rinck is all but guaranteed to win her re-election and Foster is really well-positioned too. If they both win, the City Council will still not have a progressive majority, but Rinck and Foster will be the most popular members among voters. If any of the current members want another term, they should start falling in line with the Rinck-Foster regime. That pressure may hit Council Member Dan Strauss the hardest. He’s one to change with the times. He rode a progressive wave into his first term and then when the tides changed, he pivoted conservative enough to keep the Chamber of Commerce from backing his opponent for re-election. He was so shameless in his flip flop that he sent a mailer that read, in big bold letters, “Defund Was A Mistake.” Not that either Rinck and Foster have touched the issue of police abolition, but it would be funny if for Strauss’s third run for office he sends a mailer that read: “Saying Defund Was A Mistake Was A Mistake.”