After the first ballot count Tuesday night, former U.S. Prosecutor Erika Evans held a commanding lead over incumbent Ann Davison in Seattle’s top-two primary election for City Attorney.
Evans received 51.1% of the vote to Davison’s 37.2%.
Though there are still months of campaigning ahead of November’s general election, Tuesday’s results appear to be a rebuke of Davison’s approach to the City Attorney’s Office, or at least a confirmation that Seattleites are in a very different place today than they were four years ago.
Davison was elected in 2021 with a tough-on-crime platform and a promise to focus on cleaning up the city’s post-pandemic disorder. Her message to voters is that things are better now than when she took office, but she should continue leading the department to work on public safety.
Evans argues that Davison’s approach to the office and her focus on prosecuting low-level misdemeanors like shoplifting and trespassing is expensive and ineffectual, and has come at the expense of prosecuting the more serious crimes that fall under the City Attorney’s jurisdiction, such as cases of domestic violence or driving under the influence.
All three of the City Attorney’s opponents have hammered Davison for joining the Republican party in 2020 to run for Washington lieutenant governor.
Evans was an assistant U.S. Attorney under President Joe Biden but resigned from the position in March. Prior to that, she was an assistant city attorney under Davison’s predecessor Pete Holmes.
If elected, Evans wants to clear the DUI and domestic violence case backlog, rebuild Seattle’s community court alternative to help break the cycle of recidivism and proactively defend the city against Trump administration policies and funding cuts.
On Tuesday, employee benefits lawyer Rory O’Sullivan received 6.3% of the vote and public defender Nathan Rouse had 4.9%.
