By Jason Del Rey | November 11, 2019
Amazon poured nearly $1.5 million into last week’s Seattle city council elections, aiming to defeat local, progressive politicians who supported a tax on big business that Amazon opposes.
It didn’t work.
On election night, Amazon’s key political nemesis, Kshama Sawant, originally trailed by 8 percentage points — but over the weekend, she declared victory after ballot counts put her ahead of her Amazon-backed rival by more than 3 percentage points. Election tallies indicate that only two of the seven candidates Amazon backed will win, meaning the company’s efforts will fail to tilt the council in a pro-big-business way that would benefit Amazon.