Amazon's $1.5 million political gambit backfires in Seattle City Council election
Politics
November 10, 2019 / 10:08 PM / Updated 28 minutes ago
Gregory Scruggs 4 Min Read
SEATTLE (Reuters) - Seattle voters, in a rebuke to heavy corporate campaign spending by Amazon.com, have kept progressives firmly in control of their city council, reviving chances for a tax on big businesses that the tech giant helped fend off last year.
Amazon poured a record $1.5 million into a Super PAC run by the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce to back a slate of candidates in the Nov. 5 council elections viewed as pro-business, or at least more corporate friendly than the incumbent council majority.
Amazon, the world’s leading online retailer whose chief executive is billionaire entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, accounted for more than half of nearly $2.7 million raised by the Super PAC, a group allowed to accept unlimited sums from wealthy donors in support of their favorite candidates. Four years ago, Amazon donated $25,000.
By comparison, labor unions spent more than $1 million on the council race.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-seattle/amazons-1-5-million-political-gambit-backfires-in-seattle-city-council-election-idUSKBN1XL09B