Harger: In Seattle, even the kinda-left Democrats aren’t left enough

On Tuesday, the Democrats of Seattle’s 43rd District endorsed a 30-year-old labor organizer named Hannah Sabio-Howell over Jamie Pedersen for state Senate. She won the sole endorsement. Pedersen didn’t.

Jamie Pedersen. The man who runs the Washington State Senate. Majority Leader. Lead architect of the new millionaire’s tax. A fixture in the 43rd for almost 20 years. And his own district Democrats just told him he’s not progressive enough.

Sabio-Howell’s pitch is that one of the most powerful progressives in Olympia moves too slowly and listens too closely to corporations, and she’s got the endorsement list to back it up.

Now, call me psychic, but when you read the comments on this piece, whether that’s on MyNorthwest, X, or your AOL chat room, somebody from the right of center is going to type some version of this: surely a centrist is about to break through in Seattle. Maybe they vote for a Republican. Surely the pendulum swings back.

The pendulum is swinging, but in the other direction.

Jamie Pedersen championed marriage equality, abolished the death penalty, and passed WA’s first income tax. His own district party leaders say he’s too moderate.

Start with Pedersen, because he’s the clearest case. This man championed Washington’s marriage equality law. He led the charge to abolish the death penalty. He’s been one of Olympia’s loudest voices on gun safety and police reform. And this spring, he shepherded the millionaire’s tax through the Senate, the first income tax in state history.

In most of America, that’s the resume of a liberal lion. In the 43rd, it bought him a primary challenge.

Look at who lined up behind Sabio-Howell. City Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck. State Representative Shaun Scott. The Working Families Party. Run For Something. AFT Washington. The Young Democratic Socialists at UW. That’s the institutional infrastructure of the next generation of Seattle politics, and none of them are backing the incumbent.

Sabio-Howell backs the millionaire’s tax, too. She just thinks it’s too small, too late, and too compromised, since the revenue doesn’t even arrive until 2029. She wants a wealth tax stacked on top of it, the estate tax shielded from any rollback, and Shaun Scott’s corporate payroll tax revived. Pedersen’s response was to call her “a junior staffer, a communication staffer, for people who were not centrally involved in that effort.”

That’s a man who feels the ground shifting under him.

You can run this play at every level of power in the region, and it rhymes every time. The most senior Democrat draws fire from the left for the sin of being insufficiently radical.

We saw the template last fall, when socialist Katie Wilson knocked off normie Democrat Mayor Bruce Harrell. I’ve said plenty about that race already. The pattern is the part that travels.

State Rep. Shaun Scott holds Frank Chopp’s old seat. The first declared socialist in the Legislature in over a century wants a statewide payroll tax on every dollar above $125,000.

Then there’s Scott himself.

He holds the House seat that belonged to Frank Chopp for 30 years. Chopp was Speaker for two decades, the most powerful liberal in the building, a giant of affordable housing. His handpicked successor is the first declared socialist elected to the Legislature in over a century.

Scott didn’t tiptoe in. His signature bill, the Well Washington Fund, would have put a 5% payroll tax on big companies for every dollar they pay an individual employee above $125,000. He’s floated a statewide wealth tax and an excise tax on weapons manufacturers.

And he’s already bending the majority caucus. Earlier this year, Scott authored a letter signed by 13 progressive House Democrats demanding that a $550 million corporate tax break be stripped from the millionaire’s tax bill. The Senate had included a provision phasing out a B&O surcharge on corporations grossing more than $250 million. Scott and the 13 said that was $550 million the state couldn’t afford to give back. The Finance Committee adopted his amendment and pulled the break.

One term in, and he’s writing amendments that strip half a billion dollars in corporate relief from the party’s flagship tax bill. And winning. Analysts expect him to gain real power next session.

House Speaker Laurie Jinkins draws a challenge from April Berg, who was caught on a leaked Zoom saying ‘we’re getting there’ on expanding the income tax.

Climb one more rung.

Laurie Jinkins is the Speaker of the House. First woman to hold the gavel, progressive by any measure that travels outside King County. And she may face a fight for her own job from April Berg, the Finance Committee chair, who muscled the millionaire’s tax through the House and is now pushing the statewide payroll tax alongside Scott.

Berg already tipped her hand. In a leaked Zoom meeting obtained by Future 42, she walked through the progression: “If you remember, we went from capital gains, now we’re at income tax. So we’re getting there, all right.”

Getting there. To what? She didn’t say. But the trajectory she described, capital gains to income tax, only points in one direction: A broader tax that eventually reaches below the million-dollar line.

Then came the follow-up that tells you even more. Berg asked the group, “They say that the income will slide down to other lower taxpayers. Do you think that will happen? How do we fight that idea?”

She wasn’t asking how to prevent the tax from expanding to lower earners. She was asking how to manage the political messaging around the possibility.

Two more Seattle progressives, Liz Berry and Dariya Farivar, are rumored to be weighing leadership bids of their own.

Nobody in that scrum is running to the center. They’re running to see who can claim the tax-the-rich mantle most convincingly. And it’s worth asking what “rich” means to them, because Shaun Scott’s payroll tax kicks in at $125,000 per employee. In Seattle, that’s a veteran nurse, a mid-career software developer, a senior teacher with twenty years in. The word “rich” is doing a lot of heavy lifting.

Seattle’s JumpStart tax, the millionaire’s tax, and a wealth tax. The scoreboard keeps growing.

Pedersen and Jinkins are not moderates by any national measure. Leftists anywhere outside this state. But inside the Seattle Democratic ecosystem, they’re the establishment getting told they aren’t pure enough.

All of this lands in one place: your wallet.

Scott wants a statewide version of Seattle’s JumpStart payroll tax. I wrote about that earlier this week. Since its implementation in 2021, downtown Seattle has lost 30,000 jobs, a third of the office space is empty, the towers have lost nearly half their value, and the homeowners of King County are quietly absorbing the difference on their property tax bills. Former Council President Sara Nelson blames JumpStart for hundreds of businesses leaving downtown.

Berg already delivered a 9.9% tax on income above a million dollars, the first income tax in state history, and she was recorded saying the progression from capital gains to income tax means “we’re getting there.” Sabio-Howell wants every bit of that plus a wealth tax, and treats protecting an estate tax rollback as a betrayal.

Whoever survives these primaries, the winners are competing on one question: How fast, and how hard, to tax.

The candidate promising restraint isn’t on the ballot. He never filed.

When the man who championed marriage equality and passed the state’s first income tax is the establishment moderate in the room, the room has moved. And it keeps moving.

Charlie Harger is the host of “Seattle’s Morning News” on KIRO Newsradio. You can read more of his stories and commentaries here. Follow Charlie on X and email him here. 

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