Former Indian American socialist Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant is running for U.S. Congress to unseat Democrat Adam Smith, who has represented Washington’s 9th Congressional district for nearly three decades. The district stretches over portions of Seattle and Bellevue, as well as Seattle’s southeast suburbs.
Pune, Maharashtra, India-born, Sawant, 51, served on Seattle City Council from 2014 to 2024. She left that role last year to launch Workers Strike Back, a national labor movement.
“Most of the time, working people have no political representation under capitalism,” Sawant said announcing her run at a news conference on Monday,. “Both the Democrats and Republicans serve the interests of the billionaires, and both are war-mongering parties down to their bones.”
Sawant, who is listed as an Independent in a Federal Election Commission document filed last week, also touted her accomplishments during her 10-year stint on the council.
“Less than six months after my first election, we won the nation’s first major-city $15 an hour minimum wage, a wage that is now the highest in the country at $20.76 an hour because we also won inflation increases. It was after our victory here that the “Fight for 15” spread around the country.
READ: Seattle activist Kshama Sawant accuses Indian consulate of assault after mission alleges unauthorized entry (February 7, 2025)
“In 2020, we won the Amazon Tax, which raises hundreds of millions of dollars annually from the city’s wealthiest businesses to fund affordable housing. So yes, it is possible to defeat Amazon, even on their home turf,” Sawant said.
Sawant claimed if she is elected, she will only be paid “the average worker’s wage” and would donate the rest of her six-figure salary to workers’ and social justice movements.
In a news release, she referred to Smith as the “warmongering incumbent,” who has “blood all over his hands,” and has “fully backed the genocide in Gaza.” Sawant said she will use her election campaign to help build the antiwar movement.
Sawant also condemned other progressive Democrats. She took aim at U.S. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders, accusing them of having long since yielded to their party’s “corporate and war-mongering agenda.”
“Working people need elected representatives willing to use their positions to help build mass movements in order to end the genocide and all U.S. military funding to the Israeli state, defeat the attacks on public funds for our basic needs, and win offensive demands like Medicare for All and a $25 an hour federal minimum wage,” she said.
A former software engineer, Sawant became an economics instructor in Seattle after immigrating to the United States from 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. Sawant narrowly survived a Dec 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.