Decoding the 2025 Elections in Seattle and WA: An Insider's Analysis

Hacks & Wonks 2025 Post-Election Roundtable Livestream | November 11th, 2025

[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Hey everybody! Welcome to this Hacks & Wonks Post- Election Roundtable. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm your host tonight. On Hacks & Wonks, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work, with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it.

Tonight, we're bringing you an insider's view of the recent Washington state election results. By bringing together a panel of seasoned political strategists, we hope to provide a unique and informed lens through which to view these results. Our experts have been in the trenches, crafting messages, crunching numbers, and reading the electoral tea leaves for years. They'll cut through the noise and spin to give you insights you may not find in other typical coverage.

We're excited to be able to live stream this roundtable on Facebook and YouTube. Additionally, we're recording this roundtable and it will be available with a full text transcript on officialhacksandwonks.com.

Our esteemed panelists this evening are Stephen Paolini, Principal at Bottled Lightning Collective. Stephen is a progressive political strategist that has helped candidates in issues win at the local, regional, state, and federal level. originally from Orlando, Florida, he was motivated by the horrific Pulse NightClub shooting to work in politics. Over the next decade, he has helped pass taxes on the rich, accountability for law enforcement, stronger gun laws, innovative responses to hate and extremism, and much more.

Stephen is a Principal at Bottled Lightning Collective, working across the country to elect and re-elect Democrats, including frontline Congressional members in some of the toughest turf in the country like Congressman Chris Pappas and Congresswoman Marie Gluesenkamp Perez.

Outside of politics, Stephen serves as the Chair of the Board for Community Passageways, a community violence intervention organization serving youth and adults in Seattle, King County, and across Washington State. He lives in Greenwood with his partner Tati and their cat Waddle Dee.

Lexi Koren is a Communications Consultant with PowerHouse Strategic. Lexi is a communications consultant. She's been a campaign manager for federal, state, and local campaigns across four states and has more than 15 years of experience in campaigns, communications, and research. Before becoming a campaign manager, she was Vice President at Hickman Analytics, where she worked on polling for U.S. Senators and Representatives, and major independent expenditure programs including the DSCC and Senate Majority PAC.

Recently, she led communications strategy for a landslide defeat of the statewide initiative that would have repealed the state's capital gains tax. Currently, she is working on advocative and legislative strategy - advocative and communications strategy - for progressive organizations, including Child Care Aware of Washington and Invest in Washington Now.

Welcome to both of you!

[00:03:06] Stephen Paolini: Thanks so much for having us - I'm excited.

[00:03:08] Lexi Koren: Hi! Thank you for having us.

[00:03:10] Crystal Fincher: Well, we have got a lot to cover tonight, but let's start with the race that we just actually got clarity on a couple of hours ago. The mayor's race in the city of Seattle has been too close to call for just over a week now. We've talked before - we have an Elections Day, but a Results Week in Washington. And we finally have enough ballots counted to be able to comfortably make the call. I believe we all agree that Katie Wilson is the next Mayor-Elect of the city of Seattle. So I guess the first question I have - starting with you, Stephen - is how did Katie win? And why do her race results look different than the other races that we'll talk about in a little bit in the city of Seattle - the City Council races, and the City Attorney's race - which were all won by the more progressive challengers? How'd Katie do it? And what was the difference?

[00:04:10] Stephen Paolini: Yeah. Well, first of all, I'm just like so stoked, obviously, for these election results. For folks that aren't aware, I feel like it's relevant for me to share that I was a general consultant for the PAC that supported Katie Wilson. So obviously, I feel like I had a horse in this race, certainly, and have been supporting Katie throughout. So I'm not objective.

But what I will say is - I think there's a lot of bad takes out there about this race right now. You know - takes like Bruce Harrell lost this race, rather than Katie Wilson won it. Or that it was all about Trump. I think at the end of the day, what people listening to this show should really hone in on is, Katie Wilson is an incredible candidate. From the beginning, everyone in our industry thought she had almost no shot at winning. Back in the primary, pretty much everyone wrote her out. But she is an organizer that is used to that. And she organized the crap out of this election. She mobilized a very broad coalition in her support - of her. She articulated a bold, ambitious, progressive vision that resonated with Seattleites who are feeling priced out, who are feeling forgotten, who are feeling unheard. And she got that message out there really effectively. She knocked a ton of doors - over 50,000 was the count that I heard, which is a lot. I cannot remember a mayoral campaign that knocked that many doors. And so she won this race on that prowess.

I think it's very fair, and but somewhat misleading to sort of compare this race to the other races that had extremely different dynamics. Elections are not - they're not short answer questions. They are multiple choice. You choose between option A or option B. And in the case of many of the other races we'll talk about tonight, the choices were a lot clearer and more obvious to voters. For example, you've got Erika Evans, an extremely qualified woman of color with strong progressive values who has been an assistant U.S. Attorney running against a Republican that switched to the party under Donald Trump. That is an extremely clear race for most voters here in the city of Seattle, which is an 80 plus percent Democratic city. That is not a hard decision. Similarly, you know, in the City Council race which of course we'll talk more about as well. You know, Dionne Foster - extremely qualified, strong values, really in alignment with with Seattle voters versus the most unpopular Council president probably of all time in Seattle city history.

And so again, these choices were not very difficult. As much as I believe in Katie Wilson and I'm not a huge fan of Bruce Harrell, he is a much stronger politician than all of those folks that we just named. He has more progressive credentials. He has delivered more for people - although clearly not enough. And i think justifiably voters went in a different direction. But i just feel like people are sort of being a little revisionist and trying to compare that race - you know Katie Wilson versus Bruce Harrell, which is a tough difficult race.

And i'll just say one last point before i give up the mic which is - there's another thing that's very different in this race, which is that Bruce Harrell benefited from $2 million of independent expenditure money that the other folks did not. And that money was able to very persuasively put out strong attacks against Katie - around her experience, around some of her policy positions. That money absolutely makes a difference. It is the most money that we've seen in a Seattle municipal race ever. And so, you know, I think it's a mistake not to understand these results in that context. I'm so glad that was not enough, in part because it would have been really - just like, it would have been so cynical for that to work. And it would be so frustrating to me as a practitioner in this industry that that kind of negative, overwhelming, sort of big money campaigning would pay off for them. That would have just been like personally very frustrating. So I'm glad it didn't happen. But it's hard to discount. I think we can't discount the impact that had in this race.

[00:08:35] Crystal Fincher: I think you're absolutely right. We can't discount that. I know a number of us found it notable how much campaigning was being done by Bruce Harrell and his allied PAC - not on Bruce Harrell's record, just on attacking Katie Wilson. Which is pretty notable for an incumbent who made a lot of hay, who made a lot of promises on his way in - just not revisiting that, wondering that. And - who made a real big deal and basically said to the city of Seattle - I need an aligned City Council. If you vote for these more moderate people on the Council, I'll be able to fast track and enact my agenda. And that wasn't revisited. He certainly got that, but it didn't seem like he had the results to speak of, or was able to deliver on the promise of making progress in a way that made a difference in the minds of Seattle voters. Lexi, how did you see this race? Do you have anything to add from what Stephen said for why - how and why Katie won, why this race was so much closer than some of the other races, and why this race was closer in the general election than in the primary.

[00:09:56] Lexi Koren: Yeah. So first of all, I will say also not objectively neutral in this because Stephen - I gave your PAC a little bit of money. I didn't have a - didn't have a ton, but I gave a little money to your PAC and maxed out to Katie, which is 500 something dollars. Not a - a lot of money for a lot of people, actually, but not a huge sum in the grand scheme of politics. Comparatively speaking, our contribution limits are pretty low here in the city of Seattle, which is all the more reason that these independent groups, you know, kind of take a big, such a big part of this.

One thing, you know, just some tactical things that I did think were really remarkable in addition to the - what Stephen pointed out about the doors knocked. Katie actually raised roughly as much - I haven't looked in the past week or two - but by the end of it, it looked like she had raised roughly as much as we did when I ran Lorena González's race in 2021. But she was able to do it without hiring a fundraising consultant. I didn't see that item on her PDC, which means that the contributions that did come in - both whether they were Democracy Vouchers or money - as far as I could tell, were pretty organic. Which is, and I will say that on a race where we have these Democracy Vouchers - all these races we have Democracy Vouchers - candidates don't spend nearly as much time as they would doing call time and soliciting donations as they would in other races where we don't have these public financing systems - county, state, federal. And that's good because they can use their time towards other things. But my observation - maybe I'm wrong about this - was that this was - pretty much every dollar to her was organic, if you don't have that kind of fundraising consultant person helping you really solicit the money.

One of the things I think is, really that I get a sense with Katie is that - as Stephen alluded to back in the, around when she declared, I mean, everybody pretty much wrote her off. People who, and people who wanted her to win, you know, were skeptical. I was certainly skeptical. And I think that some of that is - I think that insiders and consultants have a lot of recency bias because we lived through, you know, 2023 and 2021 and have watched these last few elections just go so far to the right. And when you're so in it, I think that sometimes it's hard to see that things could change. And they could change way sooner than you think - so much sooner that you might not even notice it. And I think with Katie, too, the other piece of it is I think she had her finger on the pulse a bit in ways that a lot of insiders didn't. But I also think she just wasn't afraid to run without the establishment validators. And it's a risk and that - and it's a risk that really paid off because it's really hard to run when everybody, all the establishment validators are backing the other guy. So really, it's some foresight, but I think a lot of grit, too, on her part.

[00:14:12] Crystal Fincher: A lot of grit. I realize I didn't introduce myself really tonight. I'm Crystal Fincher, host of Hacks & Wonks - I did say that at the front, at the top. But I was a consultant for the past 15 plus years. I worked with a lot of state, local, regional candidates up and down the West Coast. I'm now the Executive Director of a community radio station in southeast Seattle, KVRU 105.7 FM. But obviously still, you know, in it.

But I, you know, one of the things I would say is - we, on Hacks & Wonks, had interviewed Katie before, have talked to Katie a lot over the past several years. And, you know, I think I was - I think you were too, Stephen - saw it as possible for Katie. And when she announced - seeing the path there from the beginning, seeing a path there for her to run for office probably before she saw that path, I think - for both of us, probably. And the reason why, I'll just share from my perspective, a lot was made about whether Katie had the right kind of experience, and a discounting of the experience that Katie had - which I think was really off the mark and unfair.

Because what Katie had done repeatedly was essentially turn needs voiced by people on the ground into policy. Doing that not with the blessing or with the financial backing - starting out - of the establishment. But by marshalling a coalition of groups on the ground, of people on the ground, knocking on the doors of thousands of people across communities in King County. And passing initiatives like renter protection initiatives, minimum wage initiatives in a number of suburbs here around King County. The social housing initiative - played a big role in that passing. And I just can't express how hard that is to do. How to, without the money coming up front - without upfront funding, which drives a lot of these initiatives and movements, and, you know, it's necessary. But putting together a lot of people who were willing to volunteer and do a lot of legwork. And listen to people at the doors and use that to shape policies in coalition with people in communities, with businesses in communities into something that was essentially undeniable. In opposition - that was opposed by local city councils, kind of establishment politicians at that level, who weren't listening to people on the ground and saying - We're doing it anyway. To be able to do that repeatedly, successfully, to pull together the coalitions that she was able to pull together there - that's a skill.

And I would argue that she has been one of the most effective lawmakers - if we're talking about passing laws that actually materially help people, especially those who need it the most, in Washington, certainly over the past five years and more. So that experience, I think, is invaluable, is really useful. But that really comes from being in touch with people on the ground. And I think a lot of this election had to do with being in touch with what people were really going through and out of touch. So I guess-

[00:18:04] Stephen Paolini: I want to piggyback just a little bit on that point, right - which is like just trying to underscore - because so many of us doubted Katie's ability to win this race, that cognitive bias will continue to stick with us. And in the way that we analyze why she won and whether it had more to do with Harrell making mistakes or her doing well. But what you just said is just so incredibly important. And I want to just encourage everyone to kind of like try to check their cognitive biases at the door a little bit and just acknowledge like - Katie is obviously not a typical politician. She is a organizer and a campaigner. And to your point, Crystal, her experience is really different than a politician's experience because it's focused on skipping all of the nonsense and directly calling the question with voters. Like when you regularly run initiatives, your success and failure is based on whether you are right about the kinds of messages that actually resonate and work with voters. A lot of a politician's success or failure is actually not about voters at all - which is not a good thing, obviously, but it's just the reality. A lot of politicians succeed or fail based on their ability to organize specific stakeholder groups. And that is how they've always won office, and how they've always cleared the field, or gotten endorsements, or gotten money. And it's frankly a different skill set than what Katie brings as just - and I mean this in the best possible way as an organizer myself - as just an organizer. So the bottom line I hope that people take away with this - more organizers running for office is an awesome thing. They can do amazing things. They can shock people. And that's really what Katie did.

There is this question in the chat - I think is really interesting that people are bringing up - about kind of the way that the city is a little divided. And folks are right that the city is divided - less so, I would actually argue, on kind of class lines and more so on homeownership lines. Where you have folks who are homeowners on the waterfront and traditionally wealthier places, who had the benefit and gained a tremendous amount from Seattle's growth as a city. And they have traditionally - and they did so this year - supported more moderate candidates like Bruce Harrell, supported more of the status quo, really seeing through the lens of what is policies and candidates that are good for property values going up. And in many ways, the rest of the city - and the reason I say it's not all class is because you actually have a lot of people who are quite rich by normal standards. Like folks who are making 200 grand a year who are tech workers who voted in droves for Katie - but they're actually renters and they might be wealthy. And part of the absurdity in some of the conversation we're having about affordability is we're used to thinking of affordability as sort of like - Oh, that affects poor people, right? Which is obviously true. But the reality of affordability now is it affects everyone. If you are not in the top 10% of earners in this country or the top 10% of wealth in this country, you are feeling the affordability crisis in a substantial way every single day - whether it's in your rent, or in the cost of childcare, or even in the cost of groceries, literally. And that is like a thing that I think traditional politicians and mainstream establishment - sort of both elected officials and institutions - have not wrapped their heads around. They think affordability mainly impacts poor people. And that's actually just not true anymore. That's part of what I think they got wrong about the New York race, you know, with Mamdani. But I also think it's what they got wrong here about Seattle. It is the bottom 90% of voters in Seattle that are feeling this affordability crisis that are pissed off about it. And that - and they voted in droves for Katie. Really, the fault lines we're talking about in Seattle are about homeownership, and those that have benefited from the scarcity of housing and the suite of policies that really prioritize property values over quality of life.

Sorry to go on that rant. I just-

[00:22:18] Crystal Fincher: No, I think that that is an absolutely necessary and correct point. Now, we'll talk more about the Mayor's race later, I'm sure. But I want to turn to another race where we didn't know how it was going to turn out before Election Day. The polling was very close. It's a huge race in Washington - the race for King County Executive. This is the second largest jurisdiction in the state looking to elect the executive who's going to run it. And so between Girmay Zahilay and Claudia Balducci, Girmay ended up winning the race. Lexi, I want to start with you here - you worked on this race. Why did Girmay prevail? And what do you think voters were weighing in this race?

[00:23:11] Lexi Koren: I think that at the very end of the day - whether you are an insider or somebody that's kind of flipping through their voter pamphlet trying to decide, doesn't necessarily know a whole lot about politics, may not even know that much about what the County Executive does. I think a lot of people - a lot, a lot of people - looked at both these candidates, Claudia Balducci and Girmay Zahilay and said - Can we have them both? They, you know, they, people really, really liked both candidates. And I think when you have that sort of race, there are a couple of, you know, it comes down to the little details.

And I haven't looked at the - I've only seen the Election Night data, but these things usually hold in, you know, and the results have gotten a little more favorable for him since then - but the trends sort of tend to hold. Girmay's strength was generally in Seattle. And Claudia was much stronger in the suburbs, particularly on the Eastside, but in the suburbs. And Girmay was really strong in Seattle, as well as Vashon and Shoreline. And I think that a lot of that Seattle really comes down to, you know, I like both of these candidates. But one of these candidates grew up in Seattle, represents part of Seattle - I mean, lived in Seattle 'til pretty recently. Like, this is a Seattle guy. Whereas she, you know, she is from Bellevue, represents Bellevue. And, you know, I think people were saying - Yeah, I think she'd do a great job, but this guy is Seattle. And you look at - you just look at the precincts in Seattle and whether it was a Bruce Harrell precinct or a Katie Wilson precinct, Girmay did very well there. And the interesting thing about this - you know, not that I see any kind of rematch on the horizon, although Claudia Balducci, just have to take a moment and say, you know, one of the most amazing candidates that I have worked for. Truly, truly an amazing candidate. And I think everybody is just, you know, is like - We're really glad she's still on the Council and still going to be doing all the advocacy for transit and housing in particular. But I think that, Girmay, it was this - yeah, it was just this really, whether you're for Bruce Harrell or you're for Katie Wilson - that that Seattle thing was really, you know, really a deciding factor in a race where things were so ideologically pretty close.

And I think, you know, some people - we haven't heard a lot of criticism, I will say - a lot of people are really like, you know, again, we, we, she's great. Like, like you guys ran a great campaign. Just wasn't her, just wasn't her year. But I think there are some people who might, you know, look at this and go - Well, you know, what if she had drawn more contrast? And I think the - you know, at the end of the day, having been there through all of this campaign, Claudia wasn't going to draw contrast with Girmay in ways that she didn't actually believe. There were a lot of - you know, I mean, consultants throw ideas on the table. And we, in those rooms, cooked up some ideas that - yeah, he would probably end up on the other side of such an idea if it were proposed, or go on the attack more about this or what have you. But at the end of the day, she was like - Guys, I don't believe in that. Like, I'm going to run a campaign that I believe in. And as a result, you know, they're pretty - it was a campaign where they're pretty close together and there were just these little deciding factors.

The other thing I will just - you know, I want to give Girmay and his team their due here. One of the most impressive political operations I have ever seen. And when I say political, I mean, just the ability to garner endorsements. It is not typical that a sitting governor picks a side in a race like Claudia Balducci and Girmay Zahilay, because they're going to have to work with either one of them. And typically, the folks that are higher up on the food chain, unless you have really close ties, are pretty reticent to get into a race like that. And so just the sheer number of endorsements that, you know, that Girmay was able to pull. I don't think that was the, you know, I don't think that was the deciding factor for voters, but at the end of the day, it makes a campaign, you know, running against him much hard, much harder because you are communicating with these insiders, trying to fundraise, trying to build up your operation. And when they have that strength, it is really hard to run against that. So I give Girmay his due for being an incredible politician on that front.

And I think we're all wishing him the best, the most success. He's assembled an interesting transition team. I think in some cases, you know, was seen as a little more progressive than Claudia. But again, the way i saw it was they're really close on the issues. And he's got some really progressive people on his transition team and some folks that are a little more friendly toward the business community. And so there's kind of both there and i'll be interested to see what he does.

[00:30:00] Crystal Fincher: I think you raise a number of good points - one of them being just the strength that he has, how talented he is as a campaigner. But both as a campaigner - and these are people who are not new to politics - he has been a councilmember for a while now. And being able to both kind of garner the endorsements, but also, there's a lot of passion just from the grassroots for GIrmay. And it's not that often that we see both of those come together. I think that really speaks to his strength as a campaigner and his strength in just connecting with people, communicating with people. He's traditionally been more active in connecting with constituents via social media - you know, showing up in community, showing up at protests, different things like that. He's been a visible member. Now, Claudia has also been visible. I mean, particularly, I don't think that we see light rail to the Eastside - you know, certainly not under this timeline and, you know, as well as it is turning out without Claudia and that has garnered a lot of support for her. I share your evaluation that a lot of people really felt like this race was picking between two good choices and a lot of it had to do with what they saw their preference being. How do you see this, Stephen?

[00:31:41] Stephen Paolini: Yeah, I feel like I have a lot of hot takes on this race. And I should disclose - my firm did do the independent expenditure for Claudia Balducci. So I'm, again, also not impartial. There's very few races that I'm actually impartial on at this point. I will say - I voted for Girmay in the primary. I think he's an awesome candidate - one of the most talented communicators and politicians in Seattle and King County and the state of Washington, full stop. I mean, I think somebody put in the chat - Brenton said, you know, that race where he ran against Larry Gossett, a long-time civil rights kind of hero and long-time elected official, the level of energy that he galvanized just as a - you know, in some ways kind of non, not a political entity before that, right? Like he ran as a lawyer, as an immigrant rights activist, as really a passionate member of the community - and just immediately caught fire in a way that was just amazing to see. And then he governed that way and really built himself a brand on making government a little sexy. You know, I think the way that he elevated issues like unincorporated Skyway and unincorporated King County and the lack of investment in those communities - I see this race as kind of the consequence of a longer term brand that he was able to build, really from his first Council election, that kind of paid off in his race for County Executive.

Because I'll be honest, my hot take in this race is - in some ways is a bit anti-campaign, in that the campaign itself - there wasn't a ton of communication with voters and there wasn't a ton of - the campaign was not really about issues. It was also not about personality. It's not like they were bickering with each other and just attacking each other over personal nonsense. But it wasn't as if there was a huge amount - relative, especially to the fact that we're talking about a County race - you actually dig into the numbers here. It's like both campaigns - and this is not meant as a shot at anyone - both campaigns spent less than half of their money actually talking to voters, or around half the money talking to voters. Like the actual numbers here - it's, it pencils out to be like a little bit less than what the mayoral candidates spent just talking to voters in Seattle. And I would still argue that was like objectively not enough money to get your message out even in Seattle. And they were basically like - yeah, there was an independent expenditure for Claudia. It was like $200,000 - which sounds like a lot of money but we're talking about 800,000 voters in an election. You're really not penetrating any reasonable level of communication with voters to kind of get something to stick.

So I would just say like - yeah, on the outside, Lexi, I think I'd be guilty of being one of those people that would be like - there's more contrast you could have drawn. But I don't know that that's actually true or fair. And I think being on the campaign, you have better insight into like - these are the actual differences between the candidates and there's just simply not enough daylight that we even - I applaud that tremendously, like ethically feel like we're going to try to make a mountain out of a molehill here. Which would be the cynical campaigning thing to do and I'm glad you didn't do it.

I'm curious about it ultimately - the thing that, and you guys brought it up because you brought up the transition team - the thing that's been most surprising to me as kind of, I would say, a long time Girmay fan is the level of coziness that his campaign for County Executive has had with the business community broadly. There were a lot of folks in the business community that would traditionally have been Claudia Balducci supporters that sat the race out and did not put in the kind of money into an independent expenditure that you would otherwise expect. I think in part because they were actually supporting Girmay or just didn't feel like they wanted to play and risk, you know - I guess I should also add, sorry to keep going on, but it's like one of the dynamics here is that both councilmembers were going to continue to be councilmembers after the election regardless of the result. Which does actually sort of tamp down on some of the negativity that you can get into as either an independent expenditure or even the campaign itself, because sort of worst - best-case scenario, they're still one of seven votes that you need on the County Council. So you can't really like tear somebody down in a way that - you beat Katie Wilson for Mayor of Seattle, she is an advocate at a nonprofit organization that you've never cared about anyway. Like she's not sort of politically relevant in the same way that Claudia Balducci continues to be, or Girmay Zahilay would have been had he lost that election.

So I guess - and I just I will just take my last point to say like, I'm kind of somewhat skeptical of - he's always been to me kind of a transformative politician in the way that he's focused on - my personal experience with him has been around community violence intervention investments, which is really near and dear to my heart. And the way that he has leaned in - not just in getting those organizations money, but in being a partner and making them successful is like incredible. And it's why I really like him. But I am kind of - I will be honest - like a little skeptical when you add, you know, high-level leaders in some of the largest corporations in our county to your transition team and put them in a place to be a part of that administration. And it does make me question like - will this be as transformative of a role for him as I might have imagined? Or will it be more of a continuation of the status quo, which is maybe not the worst thing in the world. But it's just like, it leaves me like a little - you know, you wet my whistle a little like I would have like, you know, can you deliver? But we'll see, obviously - maybe I'm just being too hard on him and it's not fair.

[00:37:48] Crystal Fincher: It's raising a lot of eyebrows. I think it's notable to mention the largest, the largest corporations in our county are some of the largest corporations in the world. You know, we're looking at a former executive from Microsoft here - I think Brad Smith - that's raising a lot of people's eyebrows. And it, you know, is it that he's signaling that he's willing to listen to everyone and is presenting a big tent? Is this a signal that - hey, this is a direction that we're going. I think it's up in the air and really we're going to see. Transitions can look a lot of different ways and mean a lot of different things. And we'll have to see what this equates to in terms of policy.

I do think whoever would - you know, even if this race would have turned out the other way - both of them, obviously, Girmay wins, he's going to be the Executive. I think Claudia did well for herself. I think they both conducted themselves in this race in a way - well, look, I'll just say I was kind of dreading the contrast in this race. I was dreading how ugly this could have potentially gotten in the way that Seattle races - whether it's, you know, LD races, within Seattle LDs or others - they can get really ugly, really divisive over some relatively minor contrast when you look at them in context. And I actually think it was a good decision in that Claudia - you know, is going to continue as a King County Councilmember. But obviously I think has raised her profile in a positive way - countywide and statewide. And so it'll be interesting to see what she chooses to do in the future. But I think she has more options today, certainly, than she had several months ago.

Now I want to shift and go back to the other city of Seattle races. I want to talk about the City Attorney race to start off. Erika Evans beats Republican Ann Davison, the incumbent. Why did Erika win? And what does this say about where Seattle is in terms of what they want with public safety? Stephen?

[00:40:13] Stephen Paolini: Yeah, I think I just want to go back to a point I made earlier, which is like - elections are choices. They are not short answers. You don't get to fill in the bubble with whatever you want. Your write-in vote actually doesn't count - really, you know. And we interpret too much a lot of the time from election results. Like when Ann Davison got elected, the interpretation was - Oh, Seattle wants this like return to the War on Drugs, like Giuliani-esque sort of tough on crime approach. And I don't think that was ever true. And so when a lot of folks I've seen - whether it's on X, or Bluesky, or in The Seattle Times - talking about like, Oh, Seattle voters are like yo-yoing, I think was a phrase I heard, between extremes. Not really. Like, I personally don't have an issue with NTK. I think they had a lot of really interesting ideas and, you know, really somebody who cares deeply about this city. And I think it was, like, comparatively for a lot of mainstream Seattle voters, like, a bridge too far - mostly on personality. And so, they had option A or B and they ended up very narrowly really in the end going with Ann Davison, who frankly from my perspective never represented Seattle's values and was never going to be people's choice if not for what was ultimately a pretty fluky election result in that Pete Holmes at the time got - the incumbent got kind of pushed out and then you had this sort sort of weird race between NTK and Ann Davison.

So that - sorry, that was a lot of negative on Ann Davison. I do want to give Erika Evans her flowers. She's a phenomenal candidate. She is a really talented communicator. She is extremely experienced. I think people forget, like - just sort of look at the resume comparison. This is a former assistant U.S. Attorney who has been a part of, you know, Nick Brown's U.S. Attorney Office - which had done a tremendous job addressing civil rights issues, on hate crime issues, on tackling right-wing extremism. Like they were one of the best U.S Attorney's Offices in the country - from my perspective - here in the Western Division of Washington. And so like just a resume standpoint - the competition here between Erika and Ann Davison, who has literally outside of her City Attorney office now the last four years has never prosecuted a criminal division case. It was just like not a - it's not comparable. Like it sort of goes to the trope of Black women are like got to be 30 times better just to be seen as just a little bit better. And it's like Erika really is like 30 times the attorney that Ann Davison is, to say nothing of the candidate. So yeah, that's like my take on that. I think Ann was always on borrowed time and Erika was an S-tier level recruit for progressives. I hope she governs really effectively. I think she is - her values are really strong, and we had a lot of great options in the primary too, so.

[00:43:40] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Do you have anything to add to that, Lexi?

[00:43:44] Lexi Koren: Only thing I would add to - I mean, I agree with everything Stephen said. I think it's important to remember, too, that I think voters - most voters don't know what a City Attorney is until about two weeks before the election when they get their ballots. And then they remember - every four years, so, yeah, we have this, we have this City Attorney thing, right? And, you know, NTK's full name is Nicole Thomas Kennedy - for anybody that is watching this, who is not a complete political junkie, but I know that's our audience here. She - what I thought was so striking about, Stephen, the thing you said that she lost on personality, which I think is very true. And in particular, really went after her for her previous, for her previous tweets. And campaign was about, was really about that in this very low information race where it's like - I don't know what the heck a City Attorney does, but oh, I know about these tweets, right? It's not even the fact that Nicole Thomas Kennedy - who I voted for, by the way, and ran on a platform of not prosecuting any misdemeanors except for DUI. And I am pretty left on criminal justice, and I'm not certain that I totally agree with that. I agree with a lot of the sentiment of it - don't get me wrong. But I don't know the list of all the misdemeanors, I guess I would say, to really know for certain - Okay, I agree with you about all of them, right? But it was a pretty lefty platform. And that wasn't even it. It was those tweets. And in this office that people don't know a whole lot about - that really defined the race. And so, as you said, Ann was on borrowed time. Erika is an unbelievably qualified candidate. She'll do a great job. And then in four years, voters will remember what a City Attorney is and probably reelect her.

[00:46:18] Crystal Fincher: Now, I do want to go back to Erika Evans because you are absolutely right. This is about Erika winning this race. And she did so because she was an excellent candidate in touch with where Seattle residents are. Talking about bringing back Community Court, shortening the time that it takes to move cases through the system and arrive at justice and resolution for everybody involved. At a time when people are looking for someone who's going to stand up against the federal administration here. We, you know, Ann Davison was absent - conspicuously absent - from press conferences that were addressing standing up against the administration and the potential of them sending troops into Seattle. I don't think Erika Evans is going to be a no-show when it comes to that. She has talked about how important it is to stand up for Seattle residents' rights, to stand up for people who are marginalized and under attack in the community. Certainly looking at addressing root causes, looking at preventing more crime and not just responses, looking at more effective responses to keep people safer - and not things that get glitzy headlines, but that don't really deliver in terms of making the streets and communities more safe. So I think we're headed in a different direction here.

I think to your point, Stephen, it doesn't mean that Seattle voters are flip-flopping. I felt like I had been screaming into the void for years that it's not that Seattle voters are changing their minds. There's choices at play here. There's a lot of money influencing these elections. And I also want to bring up - a number of these candidates who have been ousted, who we know as moderate candidates and who, you know, the insidery insiders and the weirdos who pay really close attention to elections. Important to acknowledge we are not the normal and regular ones. The regular people are like you know, just trying to get dinner on the table and the kids fed and homework done and not paying close attention to all this kind of stuff. They want to see safer communities. They want to be able to afford rent. And they were also sold a bill of goods by a number of these candidates. A number of these candidates ran using progressive messaging, saying that they were going to move in a progressive direction. And for people who had been paying attention the whole time, who had the luxury of paying attention the whole time - we could see that that didn't hold any water, that runs counter to everything that we've seen from these candidates' past. But most of the people who were voting in a general election in Seattle realize there's an election when they get their ballot in the mail. And then they're going - Okay, I need to familiarize myself with who these people are. Part of the reason why so many people wait until the deadline to vote. It's not late. It's just closer to the deadline. But I can absolutely see how we make those turns. People want to see results. You get people saying - I'm a progressive who's going to get results, even though their past doesn't lend any credence to that they're actually progressives.

Now, shifting to the City Council races, we had Dionne Foster win handily over Council President Sara Nelson. Alexis Mercedes Rinck, an incumbent, win handily over her opponent, who is actually a Republican in Seattle. What do these Council races say about what Seattle voters want? Stephen?

[00:50:31] Stephen Paolini: Yeah, I will say - a lot of Alexis, I'll just start there, was sort of decided before the campaign. I think the testament there is that she has governed so well and so effectively and communicated so well that frankly, no one credible wanted to run against her. And that's really quite rare. The business community has a lot at stake with the direction of this Council - the desire for more progressive taxation, taxes on the wealthy corporations and ultra rich. If they could find a candidate and they felt like they would have a chance, they would. And they didn't against Alexis because that's how good she's been on Council. And as somebody who worked on her first race on the independent expenditure, you know, we're super proud to have helped elect Alexis, but not nearly as proud as we are of how she has governed since being elected. And so that's just like incredible. She's clearly direction of the city. I think both her and Dionne really represent - and I think it's objective when looking at these election results - like the 70% of Seattle that I would call like the mainstream core Seattle values, which are very progressive - continue to be on public safety, on homelessness, on housing, on wanting to address affordability, on wanting taxes on the rich. And they are both also really qualified and smart and strategic thinkers. Like they're really A+ candidate quality, which is not always what we get for what has kind of been a bad job the last couple of years to be on Seattle City Council.

And so - so lucky that they both ran. Alexis won before this election based on the quality of her governing. Dionne is a little different, I think. I loved your point, Crystal - like, I think you're a thousand percent right, which is that Sara Nelson and much of the 2023 "more moderate Council" ran on - sorry, 2021 and also the 2023 more moderate council - ran on being progressives. Like if you go back and you look at their answers at forums, and you go back and you look at their answers on questionnaires - they all said they wanted to tax the rich. Now they use some like dog whistles around - we want to find inefficiencies in the budget. That's usually kind of the dog whistle that you use if you're moderate. But they absolutely had very similar answers on affordability, very similar answers on wanting alternatives to policing. And they sold themselves in opposition to people they were able to successfully paint as being kind of more far left - mainly on the issue of defunding the police, right? And that's how they got elected. Then they governed as - I mean, I think conservative is fair in the case of Nelson. Like, I really question why she felt like she had a mandate to go after cutting the minimum wage, to go after rolling back protections for gig workers and for tenants, and, you know, trying to weaken ethics rules to make it easier for councilmembers to vote in their own financial interest. Like, I don't understand why that was ever the way you interpreted your race against Nikkita Oliver and the mandate that voters were asking you to do.

That being said, Dionne is also, again, an S-tier recruit from a candidate. This is a woman who helped pass the capital gains tax on the sale of stocks and bonds statewide. This is somebody who has been a part of fighting for reproductive health care rights, fighting for affordable housing. She has a long resume of really delivering in ways that I think voters do remember. It helped her that the capital gains was on the ballot. She had a lot to do with that. That was a part of her campaign's talking point and something voters just voted on. You know, I think that's an answer to your question, Crystal. A lot of this actually - hot take - whether you win a re-election actually has a lot to do with how you govern. And in the case of Alexis, she governed phenomenally well. And in the case of Sara Nelson - I'm surprised and shocked at the broad way that she unified our city in really not liking her. This was the first time - the independent expenditure ran for Dionne - this is the first time the Maritime Unions have ever given to a political candidate, ever, like to - through an independent expenditure. So you're unifying like what has been a traditionally more moderate bloc of labor against you, just out of like, you know, people probably are not following this much. But just the other day, you know, she really pissed off these Maritime Unions over an issue around housing on industrial lands. Just the other day, a judge comes out and says it was actually illegal. And so she actually pissed them off in a way that was incompetent, right? And that actually turned out to - I can respect hard fights, but the juice was not worth the squeeze on that one. So long-winded answer, like about - I think you have to govern the way that you campaign. That's my best advice to Dionne. Alexis doesn't need my advice - she's crushing it, so.

[00:55:56] Crystal Fincher: Well, and I'm going to ask you about another race - that's the District 2 race. The other two races that we just discussed were citywide. The Seattle District 2 race deals with essentially southeast Seattle. For a candidate who you consulted for, Stephen - how did Eddie Lin beat Adonis Ducksworth in winning the District 2 race?

[00:56:22] Stephen Paolini: Yeah, so I really - I think Eddie is a unique candidate in how hard he works. He personally knocked 8,000 doors in this election, which is a lot of doors for a candidate who's also raising money and attending a thousand candidate forums. And, you know - I don't know if it was quite 8,000, but it was several thousand doors that he personally knocked. Our secret weapon also on the campaign is that his wife has been a long time president of the teachers' union, a really active labor organizer. I think somebody just put it in the chat - Eddie was everywhere - and that is absolutely true.

But I think more broadly, what he was able to - sort of the message that he was able to put out there that really resonated with people is a kind of - mainstream makes it sound like it's not ambitious, but that's not really what I mean. I think there is a sort of message that resonates with 70% of voters in Seattle around how do we go maximally hard on building more affordable housing, on making Seattle more affordable. But also have, I think, some pretty common sense sort of thinking on public safety, rapidly expanding alternatives to policing. And it took a lot of discipline for him because it wasn't always super popular with like everyone in the political sort of ecosystem. There were times in the primary where people were really annoyed with him and really angry with him, because he was always trying to find that sort of diagonal lane is what I would call it, that's trying to speak to - there were a lot of people who voted for Bruce Harrell and also voted for Eddie Lin. And so I think he was able to really stay focused on affordability and brings a lot of awesome experience with that. And that clearly - it was interesting, right? When I would knock on doors - and I went out to some of the more waterfront areas in the South End - Seward Park area, where Bruce Harrell lives actually. And I would hear from voters sort of a frustration with Katie around the experience arguments that the independent expenditures were making. And so, of course, I would try to you know work with them on that. But it actually in some ways, it was like it almost backfired in the D2 race - because then people were like, but Eddie's the most experienced and I'm voting him for that reason. It was kind of an interesting logic, but i think actually worked in our favor a little bit. Not taking anything away from Eddie, like he is truly really experienced.

And one of the ways we showed that, I think, is something i'm trying to share with other candidates as well. This is kind of a long-winded answer, but I hope it's interesting. But when I heard - one of the last pieces of comms that Bruce Harrell did is he was talking about how he got a billion dollars for housing. And for us consultants, that probably sounds great. Got a billion dollars for housing. Like voters are going to love that. But most voters are like me, and my rent doubled in the last five years. And so when you tell me you spent a billion dollars on housing, I'm like - Well, what did you spend it on? Like, didn't help, didn't build more housing. My life didn't get better. Like, did you waste it? You know. And so we could have done a very similar thing with Eddie, where he has been a city attorney working in the Office of Housing for seven years and we could have contextualized his experience as - He's worked on a billion dollars of housing in the city of Seattle. But instead what we did is we mailed everyone a picture of one of the buildings that he built And it's this beautiful building off of Columbia City called Four Amigos. It's a partnership with El Centro de la Raza, a non-profit organization in the South End. It's got childcare on the bottom floor. It's got this beautiful cultural mural out in front. It has counseling and therapy on site. And we just sort of painted that picture for people - about this is something Eddie worked on and achieved in our community. This is what he wants to do more of. Don't you want more of that? And I think that style of campaigning - again, my best advice to like, folks who are either campaigning or who are actually elected officials at this point - don't talk about your accomplishments as like dollar numbers. Talk about things you built, people you helped, you know, how many buses you funded, how many people you got reduced fare. Like try to actually talk about things in terms of the ways you've actually materially improved people's lives. And I think that's just so important. And many candidates missed the mark on that. I think Bruce missed the mark on that. And I really hope that progressive folks lean into - nobody cares about how much money we spent. You actually have to do something with the money for it to matter. And I think Eddie did a great job of that. And that's one of the reasons he won.

[01:01:10] Crystal Fincher: I think that's an excellent point. Now, we could talk about all of this for three more hours, and I'm sure we will be debriefing with each other and others for hours more over the coming weeks. But we are trying to get through a number of things today. So Lexi, I want to turn to you and talk about results in the region - beyond Seattle - other results that we see around King County, particularly statewide. Is there anything that sticks out, in your mind, and what trends do you think we're seeing across the state here?

[01:01:51] Lexi Koren: Yeah, I mean, business spent big to try and move the Legislature a little to the right, particularly on taxes, and they didn't get any return on their investment. And I can't say I'm sad about that. I think that - look, I think the, and when I say taxes, by the way, I mean specifically taxes on them - the wealthiest few and big corporations. Taxing the wealthy few and big corporations is extremely popular. I think it's also an issue that's really gotten a boost in the, a little bit of a boost in the Trump era as you watch the heads of these tech companies - you know, they're at Trump's inauguration, and capitulating to him in every single way, and going along with this alleged culture shift because they see it as good for business. When, you know, when just a few years earlier they were - Oh, we're so friendly to the LGBTQ community and we care about Black Lives Matter and DEI and all these things. And well, all of a sudden they're a little MAGA. And, you know, Seattle and Washington in general are relatively - Seattle, obviously, King County, obviously - but I think Washington in general certainly is a more progressive place culturally than the rest of the country is. There are certainly some areas that are not. But on average, that's well - beyond just King County, certainly is.

And I was particularly - you know, I was heartened to see in that LD5 race that the final argument, the closing argument for the Republican candidate was very similar to the kinds of things you saw not work in the Virginia, New Jersey gubernatorial races - attacking teachers, attacking schools, and attacking trans kids in particular. And I had a suspicion that - I've talked about this. I've talked about this quite a bit - I did a whole podcast on this - on why there are reasons that with the Trump-Harris race, that issue and the way it was presented dug into some bigger issues that I don't even think really were so much about trans people, but made for effective ads. But they went - I mean, I got to tell you, Republicans went all in on that thinking like - Oh, we've found the magic playbook. And they got pretty creamed as I suspected they would - because at the end of the day, the thing that they were, the thing that they were not doing is they weren't using this - Oh, this, this. Republicans, when they are effective at this - and you got to give Donald Trump, I, it's like, I don't want to give Donald Trump credit for a whole lot. But just in terms of - unfortunately, part of the reason where we are right now in this nightmare is he has been effective at turning these cultural anxieties into this is why things are the way they are and you feel this malaise. And translate that into the broader questions of unaffordability, especially when you have a Democratic president who is the incumbent and the Vice President who was running to succeed him. And Republicans have done this for a very long time. It's what Ronald Reagan did. It's find scapegoats for all of your anxieties about what's going on. And again, that worked in that particular election, but they're just going all in thinking - that's the issue. And it's like - Guys, no, what the heck do you stand for, right? And I - it didn't surprise me that it fell flat on its face, but I was very glad to see that it fell flat on its face.

[01:06:37] Crystal Fincher: I think that's absolutely worth reinforcing. We say LD5, it's the 5th Legislative District. We're talking about the Issaquah area and surrounding area. Also, in the 26th Legislative District, which is, I want to say-

[01:06:58] Stephen Paolini: Gig Harbor, Bremerton

[01:07:00] Crystal Fincher: that area around there. Those have traditionally - you know, the 5th District, probably before, like race before last one, had been a very, very purple area. Up until now, essentially, the 26th District, a very purple area. They elect both Democrats and Republicans. And like you said, they ended up, especially late, thinking - Okay, we're going to attack trans people. We're going to play this whole school angle. And we are seeing now some of the largest margins of victories by Democrats over the Republicans who did that, that we've seen. These races are opening up a gap and these places are becoming bluer off the backs of repelling those kinds of attacks. Those traditional anti-tax, now this contemporary anti-trans new playbook that they have are just failing. They were rejected. And more people are voting for Democrats than Republicans than essentially ever have in those districts. They're failing harder making those kinds of attacks. So, you know, there have been people - including in the Democratic ecosystem, some sitting representatives and congressmen - who have said, Well, maybe we need to move further to the right. Maybe we do need to throw trans people under the bus and people really are concerned about that. Voters say no. Voters reject that. And, you know, I always found it fascinating and, you know, I would say laughable, but it's pretty disgusting that people were saying that. Meanwhile, people who are in actual battleground districts in Washington state weren't saying that at all. These are people who were in safe Democratic districts trying to advance this argument and it just failed. We have yet again more evidence. You do not need to throw immigrants, trans people, poor people, anyone else under the bus. In fact, when you do that, it hurts you. And it's time that we really start standing for that and not letting people get away with suggesting that that's a way to victory when all of the actual evidence and votes that people have made show the opposite.

I do also want to talk about - well, you know, I also want to just cover - in the 41st District race, we had a Democrat beat a Republican by a really large margin. The 48th District and the 33rd District - so over on the Eastside, and then in South King County - featured legislative races between two Democrats - more moderate kind of anti-tax, more open to throwing people under the bus, more hostile towards homeless people versus more progressive candidates. And those progressive candidates ended up winning - certainly in the 48th District, pretty handily. And a growing margin in the 33rd District, which is where I'm located. So just kind of overall, like you were saying, Lexi - I think this says that our Legislature is getting more in favor of taxing the rich, which is going to set up an interesting dynamic with our Governor, who for some reason is not quite there at this point in time. There's room to move. Maybe he can take in more information that we see from this election. But certainly, I think the Democratic base continues to demonstrate - but also independents. We saw a pretty broad - 65% of the entire state said - Actually, we like taxing the rich. We want to keep this. - when we had a statewide referendum. And so our state's tax code and the health of a lot of cities and school districts are really going to be hanging in the balance with a Legislature that is more ready than ever, I think, to look at rebalancing our state's tax system. You know, I would say that rebalancing does have to ease the load on the lowest income people. We do not want to stay as regressive - we want to get less regressive - but certainly more progressive in terms of right-sizing - people who make more paying more.

Now I do want to turn to some of the other cities - from Burien in South King County to Bellevue, I think had great progressive results. Kirkland was a little bit different. But also in Tacoma and Spokane, we saw big progressive gains there. What are the big themes that you see, Stephen, throughout some of these races and in the state?

[01:12:08] Stephen Paolini: Yeah, I really think that this is - across the board, there is a lot of interest, certainly among the Democratic base, but as you're pointing out, Crystal, a lot of independents as well. Like, let's look at Tacoma as an example. One of the things that was really interesting to see about that race is you kind of had - folks probably weren't watching that super closely. You had kind of the more moderate business community focused mayoral candidate, who was much more in the same vein as the last two mayors in Tacoma - really came from that, the same kind of like cohort and group of folks. And then you had kind of a - more of an outsider progressive - had worked on the minimum wage in Tacoma that, you know, in our Seattle context is like - Oh that's like the mainstream idea. Well back then, actually, they scaled it back and fought really hard against having a $15 minimum wage. And that was not the position of the Mayor and the Council at the time. And so, you know - but what was really interesting about that race is like a lot of more mainstream validators actually switched and ended up supporting the progressive in that race just out of pure frustration. Like the Tacoma News Tribune, which has endorsed like the last, you know, six mayors of Tacoma and has always chosen the much more moderate option, went out on a limb and endorsed the much more progressive or lefty candidate in the race. And basically, the reason they said is like - We're not getting progress. We're just frustrated. Let's try something new. You know, this candidate is more of a bull in a china shop, whatever the right metaphor is. Like they're going to mess things up, but like, maybe that's a good thing. And I actually just sort of broadly think that that's like a bit of the right tone.

Now, people falsely associate that with anti-incumbency. Which is not true. Because as you just mentioned, Crystal, we got a bunch of incumbents reelected across the board in a bunch of state legislative races. So I don't know that I agree that it's just like an anti-incumbent bias. You can be an incumbent that people do associate with an ambitious, bold - sort of, for lack of a better word, like aggressive change. And I think the Legislature - I don't find the Legislature perfect by any means, lots of gripes, lots of complaints. But I do think by and large, they are trying. I'd like them to go further. But I think the caucuses, for one, would prefer to go out and pass a higher earner's income tax and a wealth tax. They've actually sort of been reined in, I think, to your point, Crystal, by the Governor in some ways saying - I'll veto that if you do it, right? And so in a lot of ways, I think we currently have a caucus that's like, going out and trying to do those things. And I think voters are responding really positively to it. And I think they're just responding broadly to candidates across the board that are coming up with sort of more aggressive, more bold plans, particularly around affordability for sure.

And it's been super interesting to see that in Tacoma and Bellevue. Bellevue unelected a long-time sort of - moderate might be a even kind, I think he ended up donating like $50,000 to Donald Trump's inauguration, so I think at that point, you can say conservative. But had been a long-time figure in Bellevue City Council, sort of a fixture there. And he had been in elected office there longer than I've been alive, so that should give you some of a standpoint of that - and lost to a more progressive younger challenger. So we're seeing a lot of really exciting - just in general, I would just try to back it up to like candidates who are coming forward with bold, ambitious plans to address affordability, to kind of mix things up a little bit - whether they're incumbents or not - are winning.

[01:16:04] Crystal Fincher: Yep. We don't have much time left, but I do want to talk about a number of questions that we received kind of before this - put out, Hey, what kind of questions do you want us to ask? A number of people had questions around the length of time that it takes us to get election results here in Washington state. You know, one - hey, given the delays that we have, is there any better way to do it? Also, given postal delays, do we need to change something, rethink something? And also, you know, challenges with some of the reporting of these results. We saw an erroneous call that was later retracted from Decision Desk HQ, calling the race for Bruce Harrell a few nights in. They rescinded that call the next day. But a lot of people not really engaging or reporting - like we have a small percentage of, relatively small percentage of ballots counted on Election Night, and we can expect a lot more. And if races are within 10% on Election Night, we need to stay tuned. How can we improve this process? Stephen?

[01:17:27] Stephen Paolini: Yeah, I think there's a simple answer - which is unpopular, I guess - but just hire more election staff. We have sort of starved our election system with not enough people to count all the ballots as quickly as we would want them to be. And so the result is they are prioritizing being right over getting you complete election results on Election Day. That is the right call. I still believe - as much as it's cost me some money to go buy Tums and deal with the anxiety of the election results dropping - we have the best election system in the country, bar none. We are more accurate, we are safer, we are more reliable, we are more accessible. Our election system is the pinnacle of the country. It is not the fastest election system. That's okay. If you want it to be faster, pay for overtime, pay for more election staff. It's not that complicated.

Now, I do think there's - I think you brought it up, Crystal, and it's something I have a lot of frustration with - because let's use the mayor's race as an example. On Election Night, I had a ton of people call me and say - What do you think about this race? Is it over for Katie? And from the beginning, I've said - Absolutely not. And I'm not trying to toot my own horn. Like, it was never over. It should never have been treated as it was over. And so many people - I call it like Election Night fever - like, it's just a, it's an illness that we come down with every single November, you know, first week of November, where we just forget how the elections work. And it would have been - I said this from the beginning- it would have been a historical anomaly, frankly, for Katie not to come back, even knowing what we knew on just Election Night. Which is why actually, Crystal, that like Decision Desk call for Harrell is so personally infuriating to me. Because there's no reason. You did not have to make a call. Nobody needed this. It has no value. It helps no one for you to try to jump the gun and try to call a race over when it's not. Just wait, chill out. Weed's legal here. Like, it's all good, right? And I think, again, if we want to decide as a state, as a city, as a county - Hey, we really want 100% of the vote to be counted on Election Day. All right, hire more election staff. They do it in Multnomah County. They do overtime just across the pond, you know, and they get a lot of their election results called on Election Day. We could do the same thing here. Nothing's stopping us but money, which we have plenty of.

So I don't know. I think this is all kind of like, I do just wish, I think the last thing I'll say is like, the reporting has got to get better on this. Like, please just put a little note and just have a little alert on your phone that just goes out to everyone at the media desk to be like, It's election season again. Let's remember - here's what happened last time. Like we're not going to call this race on Election Day. We're not going to be pessimistic about it. We're going to understand the historical trends. Or we're going to call somebody who does. I just think it's ridiculous that like mainstream media outlets have not adapted to just like basics here. Like this was not even a - from Katie's standpoint, it's not even like an above average progressive shift for her. I think she actually underperformed the progressive shift by like two or three points.

[01:21:12] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, we've seen larger shifts, yeah.

[01:21:14] Stephen Paolini: Like not even just for Kshama Sawant. Like i'm actually fairly certain, Lexi - Lorena, it was like a 12 or 13 point shift. She didn't end up winning, but I'm ranting. It's just annoying to me that we keep doing this and I think it - just let's just do better.

[01:21:32] Crystal Fincher: And a quick last word from you, Lexi.

[01:21:38] Lexi Koren: Stephen, I agree with everything you're saying, but I think also I just want to remind people that the people who count ballots are human beings. And I think that a lot of people look at other states, particularly, you know, particularly some of the swing states, because those are the ones you're kind of seeing get so much focus on presidential election nights and, and blah, blah, blah. And it's important to remember that, like, we have strong public employee unions in this state. And that's actually really good for workers because you shouldn't have to stay all night counting ballots as part of your job working for the election, you know, King County Elections or Pierce County Elections. Like people have kids to get home to. They have families. They have lives. If there is going to be, you know, to your point about overtime - yeah, there might be folks that want to do that want to, you know, totally fine. Like, yeah, I got, you know, I love pulling all nighters. I want to get some overtime pay. Yeah, that might be totally a thing. And I'm all for that. But I feel like some of the discourse around that, it just feels like a little bit of I want to say like entitlement, like we should be entitled to have this like they do in these other states where they have weaker public employee unions and I think their workers get absolutely screwed. And so that's my little soapbox on that. You can wait for the election results. It's not going to kill you. I agree.

And then the one thing I do want to say about this - I agree totally with the media problem, But I want to just - there's one thing I do think we need to be thinking about in terms of the collection part. And that is this pending Supreme Court case about ballots arriving after Election Day. In Washington state right now, if your ballot is postmarked before election on or before Election Day, if it is postmarked, it is counted. The Supreme Court is set to hear a case where that may be deemed that we can no longer do it. And we can no longer do that. And I don't know what their logic is. And frankly, I don't think it matters what their logic is. This Supreme Court finds every single way to create advantages for conservatives and Republicans in pretty much every single electoral case that they hear. And if I were betting, I think they are going to find a way to do that. And with the logic that this is maybe not even necessarily in Washington state, but somewhere that that is going to benefit conservatives and Republicans. And so I do think that is something we are going to have to really think about in terms of how we collect those late ballots.

[01:24:57] Crystal Fincher: I think that makes a lot of sense. I'll just say I do, I think King County Elections is like you said, Stephen, you know, among the best election administration organizations in the country. Our method of voting is elite and I wouldn't trade it for any other. I think King County Elections has done an excellent job when it comes to accuracy. It's been shown even in recounts before how recounts don't change results here. They do an extraordinarily accurate job of counting, and that's reinforced in our recounts here in King County and in Washington State. So I think they've been operating in an excellent way within the constraints that they're given, and particularly within the budget that they have. I do think it's in the public interest to have quicker results in elections. And I think that we have to talk about what it would take, if possible, to get those elections quicker. Is it more machinery and more staff, you know, what does that look like? I think even, you know, the mix of mail to dropbox ballots and, you know, potentially in the future, looking at a much bigger dropbox mix and being able to staff up for that and prepare for that are things that we need to talk about. But I do think that it should be a conversation that our new incoming King County Executive, King County Council, King County Elections Department should have - to say without compromising accuracy, because we absolutely cannot do that - is it possible and how do we try to make it through these ballots in a quicker way? I certainly would be open and eager to see that conversation.

And with that, this roundtable comes to a close. I want to thank our panelists, Stephen Paolini and Lexi Koren, for their insight and making this an engaging and informative event. To those watching online and commenting in the chat, thank you so much for tuning in and engaging. If you missed any of the discussion tonight, you can catch up on the Hacks & Wonks YouTube channel and the Hacks & Wonks podcast.

Special thanks to essential member of the Hacks & Wonks team and our coordinator for this evening - she's backstage - Shannon Cheng. And I want to talk about Shannon just for a moment. Shannon is currently battling breast cancer. Some of you are aware of that. She's going through it. She has good and bad days. She's incredible. She's going through this with so much grace and strength. I am just in awe of her every day. She's probably feeling embarrassed because, you know, she's very humble - right now with me talking about her - but the Hacks & Wonks podcast, the show, this livestream literally is not possible without her. She's also one of the smartest people I've ever met in my life and just one of the best. One thing that she really wants to impress upon people repeatedly is get your preventative screenings. It was a preventative screening that caught her cancer. She didn't have any signs or anything before. And, you know, it makes such a huge difference. So for all of the different types, for, you know, all of the ages and being on schedule, get checked, whether it's, you know, for breast cancer, testicular cancer, colon cancer - do your preventative screenings, stay on time. It makes a difference and keeps people like Shannon and so many others with us.

Moving on, if you missed voting in this election or you know anyone who missed voting, make sure to register to vote, update your registration, or find information on the next election at vote.wa.gov. And as a reminder, even if you've been previously incarcerated, your right to vote is restored and you can re-register to vote immediately upon your release, even if you're still under community supervision. Be sure to tune in to Hacks & Wonks on your favorite podcast app for our topical interviews and our Friday week-in-review shows or at officialhacksandwonks.com. Our schedule is a little bit different now, just depending on what folks are going through around cancer treatments and how people are feeling and all of that. But we appreciate you tuning in and love to hear your feedback. I've been your host, Crystal Fincher. Thank you and see you next time.