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Based on first night results, and knowing that later votes break progressive, the Amazon takeover of the Seattle City Council failed badly.

They are going from 5 council members endorsed by the Chamber of Commerce, to two or three endorsed by the Chamber.

Full history below
Kshama is the tossup here. She is down 8 percentage points tonight. She was down 9 in 2013 on election night and won.
Morales, Herbold, Strauss and Lewis are in a strong position to win with late ballots.

Chamber alienated Gonzalez, who they endorsed in 2015.

Chamber is left with Juarez, Pedersen and maybe Orion. They went from 5 after 2017, to 2, maybe 3 now.

Big story - Amazon lost
Juarez, like Gonzalez, has always been a tenuous vote for the Chamber. Both were also endorsed by the Stranger. In my experience in City politics I have never seen a council with so few members endorsed by the business establishment.
Just found a picture of Amazon with $1.4 million dollars to spend on elections
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Mike McGinn
@mayormcginn
A lot of reporters working on Seattle City Council election analysis are still stuck at "results are mixed", or putting too much emphasis on Sawant losing (when results aren't fully in). Results aren't mixed - last night was a bad night for Amazon. Follow along to see why.
Imagine the Chamber and Amazon honchos this morning looking at City Council strategy for next year. The labor/social justice bloc starts with Gonzalez, Mosqueda and Herbold. That group just added Morales, Strauss and Lewis. 6 of 9 without Kshama (or an often sympathetic Jaurez)!
Those business honchos are not sitting there clapping each other on the back saying "We killed it last night!" They're saying "crap - how the hell do we get to five votes on anything - we have completely lost control of the council."
Read 8 tweets
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Mike McGinn
@mayormcginn
After tonights election people will ask “Did Amazon win?”

Orion v Sawant is the highest profile race and the media will be tempted to use this as a bellwether.

But there is a more important metric - how many Chamber of Commerce endorsed candidates are on the Council?
That was the goal of business leaders since last summer when they saw an opening after the head tax. Their words:

“What do we want? A new city council,”

“it’s an opportunity to take back our city” 

theatlantic.com/technology/arc…
After the 2017 elections the chamber had endorsed 5 of the 9 members. 5-4 was a tenuous advantage after the 7-2 advantage they held before 2013. (yea, that’s what I had to deal with.) Kshama’s win made it 6-3 chamber. Districts ultimately made it 5-4.
Read 8 tweets
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Mike McGinn
@mayormcginn
Seattle's city pension fund is invested in private prisons and fossil fuel companies. The pension fund chair from 2013-17 who resisted calls to divest? Tim Burgess. The same guy running a massive business PAC to buy this year's elections. seattleglobalist.com/2019/09/18/sea…
Sharing these facts because there are real differences between city council candidates. The business PACs knows that - and will try to hide it. But it's no accident that Seattle remains invested in fossil fuels and private prisons - it's what they want.
As background - in 2013 I committed Seattle to divesting from fossil fuels - the first city in the nation to do so. I had two appointees on a seven member pension board. They suggested the board first adopt an ethical investing policy to address this and related issues. It did.
Read 7 tweets

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Nikki streets 'n Jaymie sheets
@JamesonJaymie
Mutiny on the fascist ship OCF! Conservative prank channel Operation Cold Front once operated by Saleem Juma and Dion Thompson rebranded to "Blackout Media" and "Colored Conservatives" this summer losing tens of thousands of viewers. What happened? A thread/
Original show producer and alleged (former) Proud Boy "Machete" Matt Giles explains in this video what led to the rebranding and eventual channel split as well as the removal of many of Saleems videos from the channel: Spoiler: Saleem is a moron...
Long story short: doxxing works so Giles gave Saleem walking papers for deliberately triggering leftists for views, getting their channel demonetized and being a dick. He and Dion did not take it well AT ALL. Lashing out in their "private" discord channel...
Read 10 tweets
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Lee Fang
@lhfang
Amazon poured $1.4+ million into Seattle city council races, emphasizing commitment to diversity & gay rights, to defeat democratic socialists and left-leaning Democrats who dared raise taxes to pay for health care & homeless services.
This dynamic is happening in SF, DC, NYC & cities across the country. Corporations co-opt identity issues bc identity is ideologically neutral. They know it's an easy emotional trigger to shape Dem voters just as the same corporations use Christian values to influence red states.
The Seattle Chamber PAC designed to take out the leftists on the council was primarily an Amazon project but also funded by Expedia, Lyft, Boeing, Comcast, Alaska Air, AT&T -- almost all firms that tout woke bonafides but will crush any attempt to hike business taxes & min wage.
Read 3 tweets
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Greg Palast
@Greg_Palast
#Amazon has spent a breathtaking $1.5 million total so far in a little #Seattle City Council race, all to defeat council member @@cmkshama who had the audacity to hope Amazon would pay the $275-a-head tax to create affordable housing in the city. geekwire.com/2019/amazon-gi…
@cmkshama Remember, it was #Amazon who created the unaffordable housing crisis to begin with. Other big tech firms including Apple, Microsoft and Facebook have committed over $1 billion for affordable housing. wsj.com/articles/apple…
@cmkshama #Amazon's poison pay out is #CitizensUnited gone nuts, Letting Amazon's cruel greed literally buy a political office. ballotpedia.org/Kshama_Sawant
Read 4 tweets
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Dae Kim #taxtherich
@daedaejr
Amazon confirmed they're spending another $1.05M on the Seattle City Council elections. That brings the total to $1.45 million.

This is how billionaires like Bezos protects their wealth. By buying hyper-local elected seats to prevent any future taxes.
geekwire.com/2019/amazon-gi…
“We are disappointed by today’s City Council decision to introduce a tax on jobs … we remain very apprehensive about the future created by the council’s hostile approach and rhetoric toward larger businesses, which forces us to question our growth here,” Amazon VP Drew Herdener,
Average global Amazon salary is 25k.
1/3 of Amazon employees are on food stamps. Amazon's own employees need the #headtax to help fund affordable housing they don't have access to.

Tax on Amazon would only be paying $20 million/yr. That's less than 1 days worth of Amazon profit.
Read 6 tweets
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Naveed Jamali
@NaveedAJamali
When I’m elected to #seattle city council I will work to bar parents who chose to opt out vaccinating their children for “personal reasons.” My and your Seattle public school children deserve to be safe — and that includes from preventable disease! #VaccinesSaveLives
“Washington State Law allows exemptions to the immunization requirements for religious, medical, or personal reasons. These are recorded on a Certificate of Exemption (COE).” seattleschools.org/departments/he…
* bar the children of parents (but honestly I’d like to bar their parents as well).
Read 3 tweets
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paulbeard
@paulbeard
Seattle City Council to consider repeal of head tax less than a month after approving it seattletimes.com/seattle-news/p… | Of course. The previous mayor sent an apology to Amazon (not a person, a corporation) in case its hurt feelings were why it launched its HQ2 search.
"Seattle hates business!1!" say the pundits and online commenters but that's hard to substantiate when a city government caves so quickly. At the very least, they could have used the head tax as leverage: work with us on something better or we go with what we have.
I still think about the Seattle Times magazine cover story a few months back — "Can Seattle Handle Prosperity?" Betteridge's Law tells us that any headline framed as a question can be answered with "no." And it applies here. Seattle has had 20 years to figure this out.
Read 6 tweets

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