For as long as there has been a District 3 seat on the Seattle City Council, it has been held by Kshama Sawant, the city’s only elected socialist and one of the most polarizing figures in Seattle politics.
As Councilmember Sawant prepares to leave at the end of the year, nonprofit workers Joy Hollingsworth and Alex Hudson are pitching new political identities to voters ahead of the Nov. 7 election.
District 3, which includes Eastlake, Capitol Hill and the Central District, is one of four districts with an open seat on this year’s ballot.
Hudson and Hollingsworth had the smallest vote gap among all-district favorites in the August primary, beating six other candidates. Hollingsworth received 36.9% of the vote, leading Hudson by less than 90 votes with 36.5%.
While turnout was down in every district compared to the 2019 primary, without the appeal of Brandon Sawant, District 3 saw the biggest drop, from 46% to just 36.3% of voters. participating registered voters.
To reengage the district, Hollingsworth and Hudson say voters need to see action on big issues like public safety and housing, but also emphasize local government services.
In interviews last week, both candidates pledged to focus on potholes rather than politics, they said.
“People are asking us to focus on local issues, being hyper-focused on neighborhood issues, block by block,” Hollingsworth said, noting that many residents feel the need for a “reintroduction” to local government after a controversial council mandate.
Hudson also said she doesn’t think politicizing the City Council has done much good in recent years and that she will stick to the basic needs of the district.
“I have no greater political ambitions in any case. And I’m smart enough to know that if I did that, the Seattle City Council wouldn’t be the place to start,” Hudson said.
Repay the debt to “good government”
Hudson is a 38-year-old transit advocate, born in King County and “raised in the church of NPR,” devoting her young life and career to progressive politics.
While attending Western Washington University, Hudson began her activism by founding a chapter of the ACLU club on her campus. After graduating, Hudson was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma, an experience that highlighted the value of government to her.
Without insurance, Hudson relied on Medicaid for treatment, noting that “good government saved his life.”
“And it’s a debt of gratitude that I’m just trying to repay,” Hudson said.
Since then, Hudson has spent her career working for groups like the First Hill Association and recently spent five years as executive director of the Transportation Choices Coalition, a nonprofit that advocates for public transit. In 2015, she was named by Seattle magazine as one of the most influential people in Seattle.
During the pandemic, Hudson became the legal guardian of a teenager. She and her family are carless renters in First Hill, where Hudson has lived for more than a decade.
Helping Seattle Become an “Adult”
Hollingsworth, 39, has lived in the Central District most of his life and works on the Food Access Network team at Northwest Harvest.
After a career in basketball, including playing at the collegiate and professional level in Greece and coaching at Seattle University, Hollingsworth helped run the family business: Hollingsworth Cannabis Company.
Hollingsworth is a third-generation Seattleite whose late grandmother, Dorothy Hollingsworth, was a civil rights leader in education in Seattle and the first black woman to serve on a school board in Washington.
Her political motivations are tied to helping Seattle through what she calls its “teenage years,” between its past as a growing city and its future as a thriving city.
“We’re awkward teenagers trying to figure out how we’re going to become adults and what path we want to take,” Hollingsworth said.
Noting that she believes the city has “failed” in many ways in choosing this path, Hollingsworth said her community relationships and lived experiences qualify her to chart it.
Hollingsworth and his wife rent in the Central District with their dog.
The big issues
Hollingsworth and Hudson agree on the main issues: housing, public safety and better basic local government services.
Both candidates also say they’re willing to add incremental revenue streams to help close the city’s projected $500 million deficit by 2026, but first want to optimize current spending and increase support for businesses in the city center in order to generate existing revenue.
Hollingsworth said she could support increasing existing JumpStart payroll taxes or adding taxes on capital gains, CEOs or high earners, but did not commit to supporting an income-specific solution .
Hudson also said she would consider different ideas, but said the city would likely need a capital gains tax, which she considers a “reasonable tax on the wealthiest people in our city.”
Both also support aggressively adding homeless shelters, tiny houses and, as Hudson says, “working with, frankly, anyone who will help us find places where people can go.”
The candidates begin to differ on how they would sort through the big questions.
For Hudson, it’s housing and affordability first, then public transportation and public safety. Hollingsworth firmly believes that public safety is the number one issue, followed by homelessness, housing and youth development.
When it comes to housing, Hollingsworth wants to see more small multifamily units, including duplexes and quadplexes, and wants to provide technical assistance to homeowners looking to develop accessory dwelling units, or ADUs.
Hollingsworth wants to prioritize converting unused downtown office space into housing — something Hudson also supports — not only to add housing stock, but also to create a “future proof” downtown. pandemics” that does not rely on a traditional five-day in-person work week to achieve sustainable foot traffic.
Hudson’s housing priority is cutting red tape to encourage more housing by quickly permitting developments and broadly rightsizing the city to encourage density.
Hollingsworth thinks zoning should be done more on a case-by-case basis in different neighborhoods.
The most significant policy difference between the two candidates lies in grocery store parking.
In separate interviews, Hudson and Hollingsworth used grocery shopping to illustrate their stance on public safety — the only issue now tied with homelessness as voters’ top concern, according to a poll released Tuesday by the House Seattle Metropolitan Commerce Department.
Hollingsworth said she realized how bad public safety was in Seattle when her mother, who was from a housing project in New Orleans, asked her to accompany her to the grocery store in 2022 .
“People are standing at bus stops with people smoking fentanyl and on buses. We have camps everywhere, it seems. There are people who are afraid to go to the grocery store,” Hollingsworth said.
The solution, Hollingsworth believes, lies in a faster response to 911 and an aggressive response to Seattle’s drug crisis.
Hollingsworth said she would have supported a recent bill allowing the city to prosecute public use and knowing possession of drugs and was also in favor of increasing the number of police officers.
Hudson prefers to prioritize alternatives to policing, which Hollingsworth sees as adding more officers, and does not support arresting people for drug use.
Instead, Hudson says the city’s first public safety priority should be providing shelter and care to people who need it.
“No one should have to experience a mental health crisis in front of the QFC. And I also don’t think you should have to pass people who are going through a mental health crisis when you’re trying to go to QFC,” Hudson said.
“If you get help from that person in crisis first, both problems are solved,” she added.
Who supports who
Hudson is the candidate of choice for many community activists, transit groups like the Transit Riders Union, and left-leaning local news sites like The Stranger, PubliCola, and The Urbanist, who considered her “clearly the most likely to be able to implement progressive urban planning policies. »
With Sawant’s shoes to fill, Hudson says she is the most progressive candidate and the right choice for District 3.
“We are a very progressive district and voters want a candidate with strong progressive values. I can give them that,” Hudson said.
Hollingsworth rejected the idea of being the more centrist of the two candidates.
“What does progressive really mean?” Hollingsworth said, emphasizing that she “doesn’t like labels.”
“When did a Black, queer woman whose family owns a cannabis farm become a moderate? she joked.
Hollingsworth received the endorsement of the Seattle Times editorial board, which operates independently of the newsroom, and was the only candidate supported by Mayor Bruce Harrell in the primary. Harrell said Hollingsworth would be “invaluable to the City Council” as the city addresses public safety, affordability and other issues.
On Wednesday, Hollingsworth surpassed Hudson by almost $40,000 — Hollingsworth’s $186,000 came from 2,394 individual contributors, while Hudson’s $147,000 came from 1,758 individual contributors.
