Money Watch: Where Last-Minute Campaign Money is Landing

With a week to go before Election Day, the Seattle mayor’s race is getting most of the ink (see below), but there’s plenty of action elsewhere in Washington and even further down the ballot in the state’s biggest city. Let’s take a look at some late-stage politicking in less high-profile races.

The school board races in Tumwater might seem like a sleepy backwater of politics but there’s apparently a hot progressives-vs-conservatives fight going on as the district struggles with declining enrollment, budget woes, and controversy over trans girls in girls sports.

Enter a PAC called Our Votes Count, which dropped $5,000 in direct mail in support of a slate of candidates. The PAC’s money, about $107,000 overall, comes mostly from the Washington Education Association, the teachers union that is among the state’s biggest political players, and New Direction, another PAC that mostly works to protect and grow the Democratic majorities in the Legislature. It has spent about $45,000 so far in school district races around the state that feature similar dynamics.

In Bellevue, the Eastside Business Alliance put $34,000 into digital advertising for a slate of incumbents on the Bellevue City Council. The Alliance is the political arm of the Bellevue Chamber of Commerce and is thus interested in maintaining the city’s rep as a business-friendly alternative to the progressive metropolis across the lake. Also playing in those races is a smaller PAC called Washingtonians for a Brighter Future, which bills itself as the political arm of the Jewish community and its allies. It put $2,500 behind text messages supporting a similar slate in the council elections.

Back in Seattle, another PAC associated with the Jewish community, The Kids Table, put $19,500 behind a direct mailing in support of a slate of candidates for the oft-troubled Seattle Public Schools Board of Directors.

In the race for King County Executive, United King County, a PAC behind progressive County Councilmember Girmay Zahilay, spent $56,000 on direct mail supporting their guy. Although Zahilay is considered the favorite after a strong performance in the primary, that’s less than a third of the money spent by the Cascade Leadership Fund in support of his rival and council colleague, former Bellevue Mayor Claudia Balducci, who has a pile of property-developer money behind her.

In other lopsided PAC spending, Bruce Harrell for Seattle’s Future, the PAC supporting the city’s incumbent mayor, dropped another $103,000 on 125,000 mailers in its campaign arguing that progressive challenger Katie Wilson lacks sufficient management experience to govern the city. That brings the PAC’s spending on the race to $1.3 million overall, nearly all of which went to try to scrub new-candidate shine off Wilson. The cash, which comes from some of the region’s richest citizens and deep-pocketed political players, is about three times the independent PAC money spent by Katie Wilson for an Affordable Seattle.

This article is drawn from the author’s political blog, The Washington Observer.