Goodbye Republican Congress! Try not to let the tsunami hit you on the way out. Oops! It hit you? Hm. Maybe that’s because you did zero to help Americans with basic problems—food prices, gas prices, housing prices, the list goes on and on—while at the same time opening the door and laying yourselves down as eager doormats for a cabal of corrupt He Man cosplayers who started a war, broke their promises on the Epstein Files, and spent a stunning amount of their time telling us all that the wannabe emperor was well clothed.
We woke up with that special, slightly dizzy feeling that comes from sampling too many mojitos at the Nilu Jenks party up in Ravenna, listening to the mayor ask permission to curse (permission granted now and forever, your honor!), and mainlining at least three airhorn blasts. So while the incoming Democratic majorities in DC are (hopefully!) preparing to make good on their cost-of-living promises and smartly wield their new subpoena power, let’s turn to what Election Day brought us here in Seattle and around the Pacific Northwest:
A Dem supermajority in Olympia: Democrats needed to pick up seven more seats in the House and three more seats in the Senate to gain a supermajority in Olympia. As things stand right now, the Dems are up in nearly all those important races.
In Washington State Supreme Court land: For the most part, the more progressive judicial candidates are running away with this thing. Colleen Melody, former head of the civil rights division at the attorney general’s office and current justice, left tax attorney Scott Edwards in the dust, winning 60 percent of the vote. It’s the same story with former ACLU attorney and current King County Superior Court Judge Jaime Michelle Hawk and Antonin Scalia fan and Mason County Superior Court Judge David Stevens. Hawk secured 57 percent. It’s a closer contest, but not by much, between former lawyer and current justice Theo Angelis and retired Federal Way Municipal Court judge and staunch Republican Dave Larson, with Angelis winning 55 percent to Larson’s 44 percent. Chief Justice Debra Stephens will be allowed to keep up the good work. She won 64 percent of the vote. The only close race is between Washington State Court of Appeals Judge Ian Birk and King County Superior Court Judge Sean O’Donnell who have 49 percent and 51 percent, respectively. The later returns should be more progressive, which could help Birk since O’Donnell is the more conservatively-aligned judge.
What does this mean? Voters clearly do not want a referendum on the courts and do not want to see Republicans get their sticky fingers on any branch of government in this state, no matter how much money conservatives funnel into a low-information race. This bodes well for the future of the Millionaires Tax as it faces down its next challenge: a legal fight that will eventually lead to our state supreme court justices weighing in on the constitutionality of the Millionaires Tax (and income taxes in general) in Washington State.
Speaking of those initiatives: Voters rejected the Millionaires Tax repeal and the resurrection of the bad Parents’ Bill of Rights, but the trans sports ban is still alive. We’ll have to keep an eye on the next ballot drops to see if voters really are this dumb and transphobic.
But we also elected the first openly trans state legislator in Washington: Jaelynn Scott won 87 percent of the vote last night. She’s the first Black trans legislator to hold office in the US. Scott will join Shaun Scott as the second socialist in the halls of Olympia (note: you do not need to have the last name Scott to be a socialist representative). Here she is speaking to Hasan Piker:
Seattle loves transit: The Seattle Transit Measure passed handily with nearly 73 percent of city voters approving it. Seattle fucking loves the bus.
Pierce County loves the bus, too: Our neighbors down south approved their own transit measure. That will give them a 47 percent increase in bus service.
In city news: Seattle’s District 5 finally elected a progressive to the city council. Nilu Jenks, the political and partnerships director with FairVote Washington, looks like she’ll be kicking Deborah Juarez (who was appointed to fill Cathy Moore’s seat) off the dais once and for all. Jenks won 58.5 percent of the vote last night, beating out Julie Kang. If these results hold—and they should—Jenks will take office later this month and provide a crucial progressive voice to the council and help with Mayor Katie Wilson’s agenda.
The stock market? It’s apparently cheering last night’s results, which were a disaster for the leader of MAGA. Presently, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 1,000 points. Analysts at CNBC interpret the surge as a result of the Dems’ clear victory, which makes it difficult, if not impossible, for Trump to stir his usual political chaos. But the markets were also never pleased about Trump’s imperial tariffs. They put a real drag on the economy, which has probably been in recession since late last year. So it’s very likely that the investor class sees the Dems control of both houses as a potential check on Trump’s ability to wake up and declare insanely sensational tariff hikes on Truth Social.
Now that Trump has been deflated, we need to turn to our next big problem: Moderate Dems! Already, there’s this talk by Hakeem Jefferies, the next speaker of the house, about looking forward not backward. No. We need to look back and fix a whole bunch of shit. It’s not about retribution. That’s not the right word. It’s about the nuts and bolts of our democracy, which Trump removed and tossed willy-nilly on the floor. You can’t give this monster one more inch after today. Remember, the biggest concern among American voters, according to Fox, was not the price of gas or groceries but corruption. Looking only forward means not dealing with this mountain of corruption that’s right behind us.
Idaho voters reject restoration of abortion rights: They lost them to a trigger law when the US Supreme Court released its Dobbs decision, and progressive organizers fought an uphill battle against the farthest-right state Republican Party in the Northwest to get reproductive rights back on the ballot. The polling was good, with most Idahoans supporting abortion rights, but the campaign failed big time, 44-56 at latest count. This suggests a failure of organization on supporters’ side, a failure to mobilize, and that ultimately, for now, Idaho’s gonna Idaho.
Blue wave saves doomed Oregon governor: Tina Kotek was polling dismally, but secured a second term last night. Her strategy? If you’re unpopular, find someone even more unpopular to bully, in this case President Trump.
Blue wave didn’t save Florida. MAGA republicans survived strong challenges from the left. Byron Donalds will become the Sunshine State’s governor, and Ashley Moody, who faced DSA’s Angie Dixon, will fill the senate seat left by Marco Rubio. It looks like Florida will become a permanent bunker for America’s billionaires.
Alaska’s Senate seat is too close to call: Democratic challenger Mary Peltola leads incumbent Republican Dan. S Sullivan 48.18-47.88 by latest count, less than 700 votes. We have to include Sullivan’s middle initial because Democrats recruited a doppelganger of his to run in this race, Daniel J. Sullivan, as a potential spoiler. This chicanery led to threats to invalidate the election from the Trump administration should Peltola win, but the courts have so far blocked that nonsense. The other Sullivan sits at 1.68 percent of the vote, behind a second Republican, Gerald Heikes, whose 2.26 percent has not earned the ire of the president.
Farmworker Democrats are ahead in Yakima Valley state House races: Legislative District 14 was redrawn by the courts to stop the suppression of the region’s Latino majority electorate, who ran two candidates this cycle from the farmworker movement to dethrone Republican legislators beholden to the latifundistas. As a carefully redrawn district, LD 14’s borders stretch into four separate rural counties, meaning this race may take a while to play out—but as of right now, Democratic challengers Chelsea Dimas and Ezequiel Morfin are both beating incumbent Republican legislators, by about 10 points.
Idiotic Montana conservative Democrat “Independent” Senate campaign fails: After Democrats in previously purple Montana who ran to the right lost every important statewide election two years in a row, followed by a US Senate seat, they had to come up with a plan: and they picked a really stupid one. Blame the Democratic party branding for looking too woke to the state’s chud electorate, and run a right-wing Democrat for Senate as an Independent instead to trick them. But there was someone party leaders forgot to ask: primary voters who elected a Democratic nominee who refused to bow to pressure from Blue Dog threats and party leaders to step down and clear the way for Seth Bodnar, the “Independent.” The result is a split vote on the left resulting in another Republican seat in the Senate in what otherwise should have been another blue wave victory. Had Montana Democrats simply run Bodnar as a Democrat, he would have won, as Sam Forstag did, winning one of Montana’s two Congressional seats for Democrats on a progressive affordability campaign endorsed by Bernard Sanders.
Tacoma LOVES their far-right sheriff who threatened the legislature: Voters in Pierce County had the opportunity to rid themselves of their “constitutional” sheriff this election, but appear to have decided not to. That means an ex-Seattle cop who doesn’t recognize the authority of the state legislature will still be big dog in the county that hosts the Pacific Northwest’s largest immigrant concentration camp. An amendment to the county charter would have changed the office of sheriff from an elected to an appointed position (as it was until 2006) but current results have it failing 33-66. That’s a big deficit to make up over this week’s count.
Things look bad for Democratic opponents of the Millionaires Tax: Not only did voters reject repealing it last night, but income tax reform’s highest profile Democrat is currently losing reelection. Eastside Rep. Amy Walen went into yesterday having already lost her primary to progressive challenger Jessica Forsythe by a handful of votes, and she’s behind again as of last night by 4 points. Microsoft spent a Yes,small fortune backing her up, so it’s one to watch for tax reform nerds.
Georgia is certainly on our minds. First, Sen. Jon Ossoff crushed MAGA’s Mike Collins (the former got 60 percent of the vote). And Atlanta’s former mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms soundly defeated billionaire Republican Rick Jackson (he spent $200 million of his own cash on his campaign). And in case you didn’t know, Bottoms will become the US first Black woman governor.
Abdul El-Sayed won Michigan, despite (or because of) all the bullshit. We’ll give Seattle Rep. Pramila Jayapal the first word on this.
“Abdul was up against millions of dollars in dark money from Republican donors — and today Michigan voters sent a clear message that their state and their votes are not for sale. Abdul ran a strong campaign on Medicare For All, refused corporate PAC money, and stayed focused on working families from day one to Election Day.”
Jayapal recently told us that a big Democratic majority can help her pass legislation to block military aid to Israel, or at least make it contingent on human rights reforms. We imagine El-Sayed will be working closely on that.
Texas’ first Hispanic governor will be a rebuke to at least one homicidal white supremecist. Democrat Gina Hinojosa beat incumbent Gov. Gregg Abbott handily, on a platform for supporting public schools and lowering household costs.
El Paso won’t miss you, Gov. Gregg Abbott. Cedar covered the Walmart massacre in El Paso in 2019, when a white supremecist drove to Dallas to murder 23 people in the border city, part of a bid to start a race war. Abbott diagnosed the problem, as the Texas Tribune quoted him “In this case, we’re dealing with domestic terrorism. We’re dealing with a white supremacist. We’re dealing with racism.”
He failed to diagnose the cause. Abbott’s own racism, his own white supremecist ideology and embrace of Great Replacement Theory, mirrored that of the young man who authored the massacre. “If we’re going to DEFEND Texas, we’ll need to take matters into our own hands,” Abbott said in an Aug. 2, 2019 fundraising mailer, “In just six months (of illegal immigrant crossings), we’d add the population of Arlington.” For some, Abbott’s legacy is that he oversaw around 60 state executions in his three terms, killing around the same number of Hispanic people as that of the Walmart shooter. The shooter, meanwhile, managed to get life in prison.
The border is now blue, and has its first indigenous Governor, Laguna Pueblo tribal member Democrat Deb Haaland. New Mexico is more than 10 percent indigenous, the most native population in the US after Hawaii and Alaska. Haaland was born in the 1960s when tribal residents in New Mexico didn’t even have the right to vote (tribal addresses were considered outside the US). Now she’ll lead the state, and grapple with how to treat oil companies who are destroying the planet (and her legacy as Secretary of the Interior under Biden) and also funding the state’s education and childcare programs, Mother Jones reports.
LA could get its own Mamdani: The mayoral race between incumbent Karen Bass and DSA-backed City Councilmember Nithya Raman was nearly a dead heat on election night, but Raman has pulled narrowly ahead. Raman should get most of the late ballots, so this doesn’t bode well for Bass despite police unions and business groups funneling millions into PACs against Raman.
Billionaire-loving Californians cocked this one up: It is not looking good for the California ballot proposition that would impose a one-time 5 percent tax on people and trusts with over $1 billion in assets. Currently, 55.6 percent of voters rejected the measure and 44.4 percent approved. California is a majority vote-by-mail state these days, so later returns could skew left, but that’s a lot of ground to make up.
Let’s end AM with an immortal track by the father of techno, Detroit’s Juan Atkins. The genius died on Saturday after spending 64 years on this, our one and only dark star.
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