Kshama Sawant ( ; born October 17, 1973) is an American socialist politician and economist who served on the Seattle City Council from 2014 to 2024. She was a member of Socialist Alternative and the first and only member of the party to date to be elected to public office, until part of the party split to found Revolutionary Workers.
A former software engineer, Sawant became an economics instructor in Seattle after immigrating to the United States from her native India. She ran unsuccessfully for the Washington House of Representatives in 2012 before winning her seat on the Seattle City Council in 2013. She was the first socialist to win a citywide election in Seattle since Anna Louise Strong was elected to the school board in 1916.Seattle elects first socialist City Council member . KING 5. Retrieved November 15, 2013. Sawant narrowly survived a December 7, 2021 recall election for her position on the council by a margin of 310 votes, or 0.76%. It was the first held in Seattle since 1975.
In January 2023, Sawant announced that she would not seek re-election, and would instead promote the Socialist Alternative campaign Workers Strike Back to unionize workers. In 2024, Sawant announced she had left Socialist Alternative and formed her own party Revolutionary Workers. She launched her candidacy for the 2026 United States House of Representatives election in Washington's 9th congressional district as an independent in June 2025, but failed to advance to the general election.
Early life and career Kshama Sawant was born into a middle-class Tamil family in Pune, Maharashtra, India. She was raised mostly in Bombay. Her mother was a school principal and her father, a civil engineer, was killed by a drunk driver when she was 13 years old. She describes her family as well-educated but not especially political.
Sawant graduated with a bachelor's degree in computer science from the University of Mumbai in 1994. After moving to the United States in 1996Elderly Labor Supply in a Rural, Less Developed Economy: An Empirical Study Kshama Vivek Sawant, PhD disertation, 2009 with her husband Vivek Sawant, a Microsoft software engineer, she decided to turn her attention to economics following a year and a half stint as a programmer. She received her PhD in economics from North Carolina State University in 2009.Rob Mackay, , KCPQ (January 6, 2014). Her dissertation was titled Elderly Labor Supply in a Rural, Less Developed Economy.
After moving to Seattle, Sawant taught at Seattle University and University of Washington Tacoma and was an adjunct professor at Seattle Central College. She was also a visiting assistant professor at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia.
Early political career Sawant has indicated that the genesis of her becoming a socialist began in India and was reinforced upon her arrival in the United States, which she described as "the wealthiest country in the history of humanity", yet is subject to poverty and homelessness. In 2008, she attended a Socialist Alternative meeting after reading a pamphlet and became a member.
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 Democratic House speaker Frank Chopp in the general election on November 6, 2012. She received 29% of the vote to Chopp's 70%.
Seattle City Council
2013 election 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'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 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; she was not pleased that large corporations would 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."
Several Democrats endorsed her candidacy. Celebrity endorsements included Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello and System of a Down frontman Serj Tankian.
Sawant received no endorsements from sitting councilmembers, while Mike O'Brien expressed support of the idea of third-party candidates but explicitly declined 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."
2015 election 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. 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." She is also a supporter of expanding public transit and bikeways, ending corporate welfare, ending racial profiling, reducing taxes on small businesses and homeowners, protecting public sector unions from layoffs, living wage union jobs, and social services.
Sawant's platform of non-local Seattle issues, like rent control, income tax, corporate welfare, supporting the minimum wage outside Seattle, in SeaTac, and other cities, and participating in the Seattle Arctic drilling protests drew criticism from Sawant's opponents and favor with her leftist supporters. Her District 3 opponent Pamela Banks criticized Sawant's status as a national figure as a distraction from her primary duty to serve her constituents. The Seattle Times, in their endorsement of Banks, said the City Council "isn't a job for an ideologue" and that "the District 3 seat is more than a podium", that it "needs a collaborative leader to work with other districts and balance resources and investment." On April 7, 2015, journalist Chris Hedges endorsed Sawant.Kiley, Brendan (June 6, 2015) A Quick Interview With Journalist Chris Hedges . The Stranger.Connelly, Joel (June 7, 2015) Kshama Sawant: I represent "aspirations of tens of thousands of people" . June 7, 2015
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 56% to 44%. 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.
2019 election
In 2019, Sawant ran for a third term and was one of three incumbents running for reelection that year. She had five challengers, including Egan Orion, the head of a local chamber of commerce in Capitol Hill, Zachary DeWolf, a Seattle School Board member, Ami Nyguen, a public defender, and Logan Bowers, a local marijuana shop owner. Sawant did not participate in the city's Democracy voucher program, but raised nearly three-times the amount of her nearest opponent, Bowers who primarily raised money through the program.
In the August primary, Sawant came in first, with 36.71% of the vote, and advanced to the general with Orion, who earned 21.49%. She received the lowest voting percentage of the three incumbents running for reelection.
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 Civic Alliance for Sound Economy (CASE), a political action committee operated by the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, which backed candidates the chamber considers to be more "business-friendly." The PAC supported Orion in the race, who said that he "didn’t realize CASE had political positions." The race would become the most expensive race in Seattle.
On November 5, 2019, Sawant defeated Orion in the general election, 51.8% to 47.7%, and was elected to a third term.
2021 recall election
In August 2020, petitioner Ernie Lou submitted a petition to the King County Elections Office to recall Sawant, charging that Sawant "used her position in violation of the law or has recklessly undermined the safety of others," including open city council to protests, the march on Mayor Durkan's home, and encouraging people to occupy the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest. The charges that was argued and approved by the court were: 1. Delegated city employment decisions to a political organization outside city government, 2. used city resources to support a ballot initiative and failed to comply with public disclosure requirements related such support, 3. disregarded state orders related to the COVID-19 pandemic and endangered the safety of city workers and other individuals by admitting hundreds of people into city hall on June 9, 2020, when it was closed to the public, and 4. led a protest march to Mayor Jenny Durkan's private residence, the location of which Sawant knows is protected under state confidentiality laws.
Sawant responded by denying the charges in the petition and claiming that right-wing billionaires backed the recall effort. Sawant would appeal the district court's ruling allowing the recall effort to move forward, and in April 2021 the Washington Supreme Court ruled that the recall effort could move forward. Sawant's legal defense was funded by the city council using taxpayer funds.