This was an anti-tax vote, pure and simple, driven by voters outside King County and Seattle, which roundly rejected the measure. The ballot title made no mention of the measure’s impacts it merely promised to slice car tab fees down to $30. A political opening for tax reform?īut the passage of I-976 was not a vote against transportation or public transit. Ferry improvements, Amtrak service, construction and maintenance of bridges and roads, as well as road safety projects across the state, are all at risk. Sound Transit will lose nearly $7 billion, threatening the long-awaited expansion of regional light rail. Funds for pothole repair and transit capital improvements will dwindle. Access Paratransit service, a lifeline for many disabled riders, will deteriorate. Bus service will be cut in Seattle and other cities. But if the measure is upheld and if the funding lost is not replaced, the consequences will be dire. Now the lawsuits are starting, and we can all hope that victory in court will evaporate our worst fears. Eyman, running no campaign at all, won handily. “Keep Washington Rolling” spent nearly $4.5 million, but it was too little or too late. Many of us who condemned corporate spending in the council races also breathed a sigh of relief when television ads paid for by Amazon, Microsoft and Vulcan finally hit the airwaves, showing voters the havoc this measure would wreak on our transportation system, commerce and communities around the state. Amid the division and rancor, socialists, big business, labor unions, community and advocacy groups, local governments and even The Seattle Times editorial board all locked arms in opposition to Tim Eyman’s car-tab measure, Initiative 976. We won.Īnd yet, on another front, all of us lost together. Instead, Seattle voters planted their feet on the ground, let an unprecedented $4.1 million in political action committee money and independent expenditures wash over them, and selected the candidate more to the left in six out of seven races. Their whole narrative strategy - casting progressive candidates as part of a failed status quo in a city ready for change - simply didn’t work. That same afternoon The Seattle Times editorial board tried valiantly to project a sense of victory, but mainly sounded weak and exhausted. I can only imagine the alarm in their eyes. But at least we got rid of the socialist.” Cut to the following afternoon, same set, right after the dramatic shift of the third ballot drop turned Councilmember Kshama Sawant’s victory from a long shot into a strong probability. Amazon’s “ S Team” convenes to assess the return on their $1.45 million investment in the Seattle City Council elections: “Well, guys, the results aren’t what we hoped. It begins the morning after election night, in a board room on the top floor of an office tower in South Lake Union, no doubt with panoramic views of the city and the mountains beyond. Gloating is not the noblest of attitudes, but since Thursday I’ve been savoring a very particular imagined scene.
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