As our new Downtown Seattle Council member, Andrew Lewis, is sworn in, we look forward to a New Year with a new City Council that is more responsive to citizens’ legitimate concerns and priorities for a livable community.

After three days of election results, it appears that Andrew Lewis is on the way to victory in our District 7, one of five Downtown Residents Alliance (DRA) endorsed candidates now leading in their City Council races (out of 7).

The Seattle City Council race in District 7 continues to be fierce. Two strong candidates emerged from the August primary with no clear leader (by vote count).

Council Member Mike O’Brien [MOB] seems to have “gone mad” in the last few months, ever since it became obvious that he had no chance for Reelection to his District 6 Council seat. This week, however, his outrageous claims sank to a new low.

After a long and way too expensive primary season, the results are in (at least most of them). While it appears that each of the three incumbents up for reelection made the runoff, none of them received 50% or more of the vote, which has to be somewhat disappointing for their campaigns.

All District 7 Voters are invited to the Candidates Forum this coming Wednesday, July 10, in the Dining Room at Escala, 1920 4th Ave, at 6:00 PM.

After researching all of candidates in the District 7 Seattle City Council race, attending a number of Candidate Forums, and talking with the five we thought were best aligned with our values and downtown livability, we emailed each of them a list of five key questions and asked for short, succinct answers. Below are the answers we received, in alphabetical order, without edits: