Campaign Report: Port Commission, Sara Nelson and the County Exec Race

Let’s start in the relatively obscure corner of politics — a suddenly hot race for a seat on the Port of Tacoma Commission. Former House Republican Leader J.T. Wilcox is squaring off against union leader Cyrus Donato in that race, and some notable players are taking interest. Despite the name, the port’s territory includes much of Pierce County, and it operates the Northwest Seaport Alliance in partnership with the Port of Seattle to handle maritime shipping.

Washington Conservation Action, the political arm of the environmental movement recently spent $20,000 on digital advertising supporting Donato, who works for the International Transport Workers’ Federation. Wilcox, meanwhile, got $10,000 in independent support from Concerned Taxpayers of Washington state, the right-leaning PAC founded by trucking magnate and conservative megadonor Steve Gordon.

Wilcox has a lopsided fundraising advantage in direct campaign money, with nearly $75,000 raised compared to Donato’s $36,000. Wilcox’s donor list is a who’s who of maritime and industrial players, with a smattering of Olympia money reflective of his many relationships with the business lobby. Donato’s largest donors are the state Democratic Party and members of his own family. Wilcox finished slightly ahead of Donato in a three-way primary in August.

Ports, especially major ports such as Tacoma, are often hot arenas for a variety of political fights on issues ranging from labor rights to environmental protection. For example, the Port of Tacoma is home to a massive and controversial liquified natural gas terminal. In other jurisdictions, those fights have led to progressive politicians winning port commission seats, most notably at the Port of Seattle, where there has been a generational shift.

Moving to the city of Seattle, it seems we were a tad premature in presuming that embattled City Council President Sara Nelson was being largely abandoned by the deep business pockets who helped get her elected four years ago. Sara for a Better Seattle, a PAC backing the pro-business moderate, just dropped $103,000 on 125,000 mailers supporting her and opposing Dionne Foster, her more progressive challenger. Nelson finished 23 percentage points behind Foster in the August primary. The lion’s share of the money comes from NAIOP, an association of commercial property owners.

In the King County Executive’s Race, the Cascade Leadership Fund, which we noted a few weeks back, put $107,000 behind Claudia Balducci’s bid for King County Executive. Balducci, the former mayor of Bellevue, who finished well behind Girmay Zahilay, her colleague on the King County Council, in the August primary. Most of the PAC’s money comes from the Master Builders of King & Snohomish Counties, who have been politically aggressive this year. It reported spending about $68,000 on digital advertising and nearly $40,000 on polling, which is downright weird at this stage of the race. If anybody took that survey, we’d love to hear about it.