Seattle residents this week began voting in a recall initiative seeking to oust avowed socialist city council member Kshama Sawant for her role in aiding Black Lives Matter protests in the city last year — and as of Tuesday night, the effort appeared to be succeeding.

What are the details?

With 41% of the vote in, 53% of District 3’s roughly 78,000 residents voted to support the removal of the outspoken politician, while 47% voted against the measure, the Seattle Times reported. Leaders of the recall effort touted the early results as “strong and promising.”

Sawant — who was first elected to the council in 2013 as an Occupy Seattle protester advocating rent control and a $15-an-hour minimum wage — would need to win roughly 65% of the remaining vote to fend off a recall, the Times estimated.

While that seems like an improbable comeback, MyNorthwest.com reported that “sizable late swings for progressive candidates” have become “the norm” in Seattle elections and so the end result will likely end up coming down to the wire.

Sawant agreed with the notion, telling supporters that “in every one of our elections, there has been a dramatic swing after election night in our direction. While we cannot be sure of the final result, if past trends hold, it appears working people may have prevailed in this fight.”

The Times noted that the stand-alone election marks the first time a recall effort of a council member has ever made it to a ballot in Seattle. Should Sawant be recalled, it would perhaps signal that beleaguered residents may finally be disenchanted with her brand of far-left progressive politics.

What’s the background?

The recall effort came to fruition in response to Sawant’s inappropriate and dangerous support for Black Lives Matter protests in the city last year. Recall proponents argued that Sawant violated her oath of office by aiding protests on multiple occasions.

In June 2020, the socialist rabble-rouser used her passkey to let hundreds of protesters into City Hall, and later that month she spoke at a protest in front of Mayor Jenny Durkan’s house.

In the past, Sawant has also openly called for the destruction of the “rotten” capitalist system in the United States and across the globe.

While speaking at a rally as a campaign surrogate for former Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Sawant declared, “We need a powerful socialist movement to end all capitalist oppression and exploitation!”

During her speech, she also called for the creation of “a new party of, by, and for working people” in order to “win Medicare for All, to end the racist mass incarceration system, and to win a bold Green New Deal to avoid climate catastrophe.”