Kshama Sawant

In 2019, Sawant ran against Egan Orion, a small business advocate and organizer of the city's annual LGBT pride festival.

The 2019 Seattle City Council election gained national attention after Amazon spent an unprecedented $1.5 million on the campaign. The company, which is the largest private employer in the city, contributed the funds to a political action committee operated by the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce which backs candidates the chamber considers to be more "business-friendly". The PAC supported Sawant's opponent in the race. Amazon became increasingly involved in city council politics after the passage of the Seattle head tax in 2018, which would have cost the company $11 million annually in order to fund public housing and homeless services. Shortly after enacting the tax, the city council voted 7-2 to repeal it, with Sawant being one of the two dissenters.

On November 5, 2019, Sawant was elected to a third term on the Seattle City Council.

On February 20, 2019 she published an article in Socialist Alternative backing Bernie Sanders' run for the Democratic nomination. She spoke at a campaign rally for him in Tacoma.

In a February 2017 article in the socialist magazine Jacobin, Sawant called for a "wave of protests and strikes" on May Day, including "workplace actions as well a mass peaceful civil disobedience that shuts down highways, airports, and other key infrastructure." Her statement was controversial: Seattle Mayor Ed Murray said that it was "unfortunate and perhaps even tragic for an elected official to encourage people to confront and engage in confrontations with the police department" and the Washington State Patrol called the writings "irresponsible" and "reckless."

On April 7, 2015, journalist Chris Hedges endorsed Sawant.

Sawant advanced through the primary election for City Council District 3 representative on August 4, 2015 with 52% of the vote, 18 percentage points ahead of her closest opponent, Pamela Banks at 34%.

Voters returned Sawant to the City Council and made her the first District 3 representative in November 2015, with 17,170 votes counted for Sawant and 13,427 for Banks, or 55.96% to 43.76%. With incumbent O'Brien elected to District 6, and former Licata aide Lisa Herbold elected to District 1, they, along with Sawant, became the new progressive bloc of the Council, which became majority female with the addition of two other women, Debora Juarez and Lorena González. Sawant, as one of the four people of color on the new Council, also became part of a younger and more diverse Council, the first to seat members by district in more than 100 years.

Sawant's victory made her the first socialist to win a citywide election in Seattle since Anna Louise Strong was elected to the School Board in 1916 and the first socialist on the City Council since A. W. Piper, elected in 1877. She was sworn into office on January 6, 2014.

Sawant declared a victory in May 2014 after Seattle Mayor Ed Murray announced an increase in the minimum wage to $15, which was the cornerstone of her campaign for City Council, but she is not pleased that large corporations will be allowed a few years to phase in the wage hike. During a speech at the City Council on the day of the vote she said, "We did this. Workers did this. Today’s first major victory for 15 will inspire people all over the nation."

During her campaign, Sawant said that, if elected, she would donate the portion of her salary as a City Council member that exceeded the average salary in Seattle. On January 27, 2014, she announced that she would live on $40,000 of her $117,000 salary. She places the rest into a political fund that she uses for social justice campaigns.

During the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict, Sawant urged the Seattle City Council to condemn both Israel's attacks on Gaza and Hamas's attacks on Israel, and called on President Obama and Congress to denounce the Israeli blockade of Gaza and to cut off all military assistance to Israel. Sawant's call to condemn Israel's actions prompted a response from Israeli ambassador Ron Dermer, calling for Sawant to retract the statement.

Sawant said she rejects working with either the Democratic or the Republican party and advocates abandoning the two-party system. She has called for "a movement to break the undemocratic power of big business and build a society that works for working people, not corporate profits—a democratic socialist society."

On November 19, 2014, Sawant was arrested on a charge of disorderly conduct at a $15 minimum wage protest in Seatac, Washington. She was released on $500 bail. On May 1, 2015, a SeaTac municipal court judge dismissed charges against her. The judge determined that testimony provided by police demonstrated that it was technically the police themselves, not protesters, who had blocked traffic.

After her unsuccessful run for the House, Sawant entered the race for Seattle City Council with a campaign organized by the Socialist Alternative. She won 35% of the vote in the August primary election, and advanced into the general election for the at-large council position 2 against incumbent Richard Conlin, making her the first socialist to advance to a general election in Seattle since 1991. On November 15, 2013, Conlin conceded to Sawant when returns showed him down by 1,640 votes or approximately 1% of the vote.

Sawant received no endorsements from sitting councilmembers, while Mike O'Brien expressed support of the idea of third party candidates but explicitly declining to extend an endorsement of Sawant. The Stranger alt-weekly endorsed both her State House and her City Council candidacy. Councilman Nick Licata also declined to endorse her but spoke positively of her campaign saying, "she has been able to craft a message that is understandable, simple and eschews most of the rhetoric", and when her eventual election victory seemed unlikely, he expressed his hope that Sawant would not "disappear after the election if she loses. She represents the poor, the immigrants, the refugees – the folks who are not in our City Council offices lobbying us."

The core issues of Sawant's campaign were a successful minimum wage increase to $15/hour, a successful "millionaire's tax" or income tax on wealthy Seattleites, and an unsuccessful rent control program. Back during the 2013 campaign, Sawant had said rent control is "something everyone supports, except real estate developers and people like Richard Conlin" and compared the legal fight for its implementation to same-sex marriage, and the legalization of marijuana in the United States, both of which she supports. Her campaign for a $15 an hour minimum wage has been credited for bringing the issue into the mainstream and attracting support for the policy from both Seattle former Mayors Michael McGinn and Ed Murray. In response to criticism that a $15 an hour minimum wage could hurt the economy, she said, "If making sure that workers get out of poverty would severely impact the economy, then maybe we don't need this economy."

In 2013, Sawant urged other left-wing groups, including Greens and trade unions, "to use her campaign as a model to inspire a much broader movement."

In 2012, Sawant ran unsuccessfully for Position 1 in the 43rd district of the Washington House of Representatives, representing Seattle. Sawant also ran and advanced past the primaries as a write-in win for Position 2. Washington state law allowed her to choose the election in which she would run, but as a write-in candidate, she was not permitted to state her party preference. Sawant successfully sued the Washington secretary of state for the right to be listed as a Socialist Alternative member on the ballot. Sawant challenged incumbent House speaker Frank Chopp in the general election on November 6, 2012. She received 29% of the vote to Chopp's 70%.

Before running for office, Sawant received attention as an organizer in the local Occupy movement. She praised Occupy for putting "class," "capitalism," and "socialism" into the political debate. After Occupy Seattle protesters were removed from Westlake Park by order of Seattle Mayor Micheal McGinn, Sawant helped bring them to the Capitol Hill campus of Seattle Central Community College, where they remained for two months. She joined with Occupy activists working with local organizations to resist home evictions and foreclosures, and was arrested with several Occupy activists including Dorli Rainey on July 31, 2012 for blocking King County Sheriff's deputies from evicting a man from his home.

Kshama became a United States citizen in 2010. Sawant is married to Calvin Priest, who is also a Socialist Alternative organizer.

After moving to the United States, she was shocked by the level of poverty and decided to abandon software engineering. She pursued studies in economics because of what she described as her own "questions of economic inequality". She entered the economics program at North Carolina State University where she earned a PhD. Her dissertation was titled Elderly Labor Supply in a Rural, Less Developed Economy. Sawant moved to Seattle in 2006 and became a Socialist Alternative party member.

Sawant was born to Vasundhara and H. T. Ramanujam in Pune, in the Western Indian state of Maharashtra, but grew up in Mumbai. Her mother is a retired principal and her father, who was a civil engineer, was killed by a drunk driver when Sawant was 13. Sawant's observations of poverty in her native country and her unhappiness with the Indian caste system helped shape her political views before her adoption of socialism. Sawant grew up in Mumbai where she later studied computer science and graduated with a BSc from the University of Mumbai in 1994.

Kshama Sawant (/ʃ ʌ m ɑː s ɑː ˈ w ʌ n t / ; born October 17, 1973) is an American politician and economist who serves on the Seattle City Council. She is a member of Socialist Alternative. A former software engineer, Sawant became an economics instructor in Seattle after immigrating to the United States. She ran unsuccessfully for the Washington House of Representatives before winning her seat on the Seattle City Council. She was the first socialist to win a citywide election in Seattle since Anna Louise Strong was elected to the school board in 1916.