The differences between Kshama Sawant and 30-year incumbent, Adam Smith, are crystal clear. Smith, a U.S. congressman from Washington state’s 9th District, is a careerist Democrat whose top donors are the pro-Israel lobby and weapons manufacturers. Sawant’s contributions come from working-class people across the country.
Smith used his role on the House Armed Services Committee to strengthen ties between the U.S. and Israeli militaries before being pressured to back down. Sawant used her former city council office to call for an end to the genocide in Gaza.
With more people than ever fed up with the status quo, Sawant should be the obvious contender to unseat this relic of the Democratic party. Unfortunately, old habits could hobble her campaign from making it the showdown voters crave.
Radical achievements
Kshama Sawant is a former Green Party member turned Trotskyist who made her mark winning a seat on Seattle’s city council in 2013, representing the Socialist Alternative organization. One of her office’s first accomplishments was helping win a $15/hr. minimum wage — partly inspired by Freedom Socialist Party (FSP) candidate Linda Averill’s 2005 city council campaign, which popularized the call for $17/hr.
During Sawant’s 10 years in office, she helped win renter’s rights, progressive taxes on corporations, and protections for workers. Sawant has consistently fought for immigrant rights, universal healthcare, and a break with the Democratic party.
This made her unpopular with opponents, who hurled racist, sexist and anti-communist attacks at Sawant any chance they got. She narrowly avoided a recall campaign backed by Big Business in 2023.
Opportunism grows
FSP consistently backed Sawant and played a strong role in her first run for city council and the “Fight for 15” campaign. But from the start, Sawant and her organization made it clear they wanted to go it alone. Once in office, they dismissed FSP’s offers of collaboration, despite a shared history in the Trotskyist movement and FSP’s years of labor organizing with Seattle city workers.
Other groups, regardless of their political tendencies, struggled to work with Sawant as well. She and Socialist Alternative insisted on controlling coalition efforts and taking credit for victories, alienating those who should have been their strongest allies.
As Sawant’s profile grew, she and Socialist Alternative became enamored with electoral politics as a shortcut to movement organizing and fell into a pattern of opportunism. Sawant campaigned for Bernie Sanders in his presidential runs as a Democrat. She also endorsed the appointment of Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best, which crossed class lines and had enormous consequences when Best led the crackdown against Black Lives Matter protesters in 2020.
These maneuvers created friction and splits inside Socialist Alternative, and Sawant’s pursuit of movement stardom resulted in her departure from the organization in 2024. Sawant now heads up a group called Workers Strike Back (WSB), and announced the formation of Revolutionary Workers. But her main project has been running for U.S. Congress, and while she calls herself a revolutionary socialist, Revolutionary Workers is invisible in the campaign.
Many are reluctant to work with Sawant this time around. This is exacerbated by the campaign’s ultra-left grandstanding, presenting itself as the pinnacle of radicalism. They lambaste union leadership wholesale, but rarely organize among the rank-and-file, missing dynamic opportunities to push the labor movement forward. FSP has backed Sawant’s campaign but with a critical endorsement that spells out misgivings given her track record of self-promotion over movement building.
Lessons from the past
Socialists inspire not only with fiery words, but through principled action. Eugene V. Debs, pioneer of U.S. socialism, is a model of this. In his many runs for electoral office, Debs never gave into pragmatic deal making with the system and maintained his revolutionary ideas and base in the labor movement. And although he had disagreements with other leftists, he found ways to work with them regardless.
Sawant’s run for Congress provides important lessons on why it’s crucial for socialists to challenge the two-party trap that exists in the U.S. But no one party, much less one candidate, can succeed on their own.
Debs himself knew this all too well when he stated, “I would not be a Moses to lead you into the Promised Land, because if I could lead you into it, someone else could lead you out of it.” Important words for Sawant’s campaign to consider.
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