General Election 2023 Recap

This year was a local election year with council seats up in every city within King County. REALTORS® from across King County volunteered over 24 hours of their time to properly vet candidates seeking the association’s endorsement. In all, SKCR issued fifty-four endorsements including an endorsement of Seattle’s Prop 1 to renew the Housing Levy. The association is proud to report a 82%-win rate, which includes 4 REALTOR®-endorsed Seattle City Council seats.

In the lead up to election day, SKCR interviewed 48 candidates, issued direct contributions to REALTOR®-endorsed candidates, and mailed out over 15,000 printed Endorsed Candidate Guides to brokers across King County. You can read more about our endorsement process here.

In addition to direct contributions approved by the Governmental Affairs Committee (GAC), we issued independent expenditures (IEs) in support of candidates throughout King County.

SKCR IE efforts supported candidates in Federal Way (Linda Kochmar), Des Moines (Rob Back), and SeaTac (Peter Kwon, Brian Millican, and Joe Vinson).

In the North County we joined forces with the Eastside Business Alliance to issue IEs in support of Bellevue’s Paul Clark, Mo Malakoutian, and Dave Hamilton, Redmond’s David Carson, and Kirkland’s Toby Nixon.

In Seattle, we requested IEs from the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) in support of Tanya Woo in District 2, Joy Hollingsworth in District 3, Maritza Rivera in District 4, and Bob Kettle in District 7. NAR spent $225,000 on IEs for these four candidates, and we are very grateful. Hollingsworth, Rivera, and Kettle prevailed, along with endorsed candidate Rob Saka in District 1.

Election cycles are an exciting time to be involved in the Seattle King County REALTORS Government Affairs Committee (GAC). If you would like to help us vet and endorse candidates next year, email Taylor Shanaman to get on the Government Affairs Committee distribution list. GAC meets the first Thursday of even months at the SKCR building.