Kshama Sawant ( kə-SHUM-ah sah-WUNT; 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. 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 1996 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. 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."
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