Still, Spear and Chopp con­trast sharply. He’s an earnest, tie-and-slacks pro­fes­sion­al. The fresh-faced Spear, often inter­viewed in a t‑shirt and sun­glass­es, would just as much fit in drink­ing beer at an indie rock show. A career leg­is­la­tor, Chopp boasts of bills he’s sup­port­ed over the years, although Spear believes much of his time hasn’t led to sub­stan­tive change. Spear has gained recog­ni­tion for fac­ing arrest dur­ing an anti-fore­clo­sure action.

While her col­league in Social­ist Alter­na­tive, Kshama Sawant , was suc­cess­ful last year in her third-par­ty insur­gent cam­paign for Seattle’s city coun­cil, 33-year-old cli­mate sci­en­tist Jess Spear will like­ly lose her bid to unseat the state’s 10-term House Speak­er Frank Chopp, a lib­er­al Demo­c­rat. In a par­ty whose cen­ter is drift­ing steadi­ly right­ward, Chopp is an unde­ni­able pro­gres­sive who holds the sup­port of Wash­ing­ton lib­er­als who fear the con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal forces from the east­ern part of the state — not a neolib­er­al Democrat.

The pop­u­lar think­ing in Seat­tle is that Jess Spear is not going to win in her run as a social­ist for Washington’s state house.

In debates with Chopp, Spear has chal­lenged the incumbent’s lib­er­al cre­den­tials — in par­tic­u­lar high­light­ing the cor­po­rate wel­fare mea­sures that have passed under his watch, such as the $8.7 bil­lion sub­sidy pack­age for Boe­ing that came with no guar­an­tee to keep new pro­duc­tion jobs in the state. She not­ed that it was easy for him to make that give­away, yet Chopp ​“could not come up with mon­ey for pub­lic schools.”

And as might be expect­ed of a social­ist, Spear demands a more struc­tur­al change to Washington’s econ­o­my. With decrim­i­nal­ized mar­i­jua­na and a gen­er­al­ly strong union pres­ence, the state is con­sid­ered a bas­tion of lib­er­al­ism, yet it lacks a state income tax. Vot­ers reject­ed a bal­lot ques­tion to tax indi­vid­u­als earn­ing more than $200,000 per year, but she claimed that Democ­rats’ inabil­i­ty to use class lan­guage like ​“tax on the wealthy” allowed for the Right to scare work­ing- and mid­dle-class vot­ers into think­ing that a new ​“income tax” would be imposed on them.

“They see it in a very cyn­i­cal way,” Spear says of the Democ­rats, who she said wouldn’t use such lan­guage against cor­po­rate fun­ders in the state. ​“That’s the dif­fer­ence between us and them.”

To Spear’s sup­port­ers, the regres­sive tax struc­ture has vir­tu­al­ly ensured aus­ter­i­ty bud­get­ing, no mat­ter the polit­i­cal sen­ti­ments of legislators.

“When the state isn’t get­ting mon­ey, they cut social ser­vices,” said Local 1488 Pres­i­dent Paula Lukaszek, who bucked her par­ent union, the Wash­ing­ton Fed­er­a­tion of State Employ­ees, and is pub­licly sup­port­ing Spear. ​“I believe in every­one pay­ing our fair share to keep the social ser­vices, infra­struc­ture, edu­ca­tion — the things peo­ple want the state to fund.”

These cuts are exac­er­bat­ed by the chang­ing nature of Seat­tle, no longer a periph­er­al Amer­i­can city. Com­pa­nies like Ama­zon and Microsoft dri­ve the bud­get pri­or­i­ties in Olympia, Spear and her sup­port­ers allege. Worse, with these com­pa­nies attract­ing employ­ees resid­ing in new, high-end con­do­mini­ums, hous­ing prices have sky­rock­et­ed. Chopp boasts of giv­ing state funds for low-income hous­ing devel­op­ment, but Spear wants to go beyond that and impose rent control.

“If the best hous­ing advo­cate we have is the per­son who’s over­see­ing the eighth worst afford­able hous­ing in the coun­try, that fact speaks for itself,” Spear said. ​“He says he’s for rent con­trol, but he’s not cam­paign­ing on it. We have a plan for get­ting that done.”

The state’s labor lead­ers — some of whom cred­it Social­ist Alter­na­tive for liven­ing the nation­al dis­cus­sion about inequal­i­ty — are for the most part stay­ing loy­al to Chopp and the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty. Wash­ing­ton State Labor Coun­cil Pres­i­dent Jeff John­son explained that Chopp had worked close­ly with unions on try­ing to raise the state min­i­mum wage to $12 per hour (SA is demand­ing a $15 per hour wage floor) and man­dates against big com­pa­nies forc­ing their work­ers onto Med­ic­aid of the Afford­able Care Act.

“I like Jess a lot as a per­son,” John­son said. Her cam­paign ​“cre­ates a rich­er dia­logue. The polit­i­cal real­i­ty, apart from Speak­er Chop­p’s rel­a­tive­ly pro­gres­sive posi­tion, is that things are very vul­ner­a­ble in our state. We have a rel­a­tive­ly pro­gres­sive gov­er­nor who is being stymied by a state sen­ate in Repub­li­can hands. More­over, they’ve been push­ing a lot of anti-work­er, anti-poor peo­ple, anti-com­mu­ni­ty of col­or, so we need a real­ly strong speak­er in the House, and Frank has done a pret­ty amaz­ing job at that.”

Spear says of the union lead­ers who have not backed her, ​“They were still look­ing at the make­up of the leg­is­la­ture and thought they need­ed to hold back the Repub­li­cans.” Adding that Chopp had failed to push hard for a statewide $12 per hour min­i­mum wage or pass the Work­er Pri­va­cy Act, ​“we talked to them about how that’s a failed strat­e­gy. Democ­rats have had super majori­ties in the leg­is­la­ture and what has it accomplished?”

That doesn’t mean she doesn’t have labor sup­port in some capac­i­ty. Spear claims that labor lead­ers have told her, ​“We hope you get 49 percent.”

Part of Sawant’s appeal, in addi­tion to enthu­si­as­tic sup­port from the influ­en­tial alt-week­ly The Stranger, was that she was run­ning for an at-large Seat­tle coun­cil seat, where­as even pro­gres­sive vot­ers might be wary of replac­ing a vet­er­an law­mak­er in the lynch­pin posi­tion with a third par­ty newbie.

The paper’s edi­to­r­i­al board chose Chopp, although sev­er­al mem­bers pub­lished a dis­sent­ing opin­ion, say­ing that at a ​“time when the state is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly fail­ing to fund its own schools, Chopp refus­es to use his pres­tige and plat­form to do much of any­thing about it.” The dis­sent also not­ed Spear’s per­ceived short­com­ings, ​“We wish Spear was a more savvy politi­cian with one sin­gle, obtain­able goal to fight for in Olympia.”

Sawant’s vic­to­ry seemed like an out­lier in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics, where social­ism is a dirty word. Yet there is no doubt that Social­ist Alternative’s orga­niz­ing has been piv­otal in push­ing the idea of a $15 per hour min­i­mum wage — some­thing once con­sid­ered a fringe idea, but which quick­ly has become a nation­al ral­ly­ing cry for fast-food work­er orga­niz­ing and the sub­ject of main­stream debate.

And in some cities, social­ist groups like Spear’s have played key roles in push­ing that debate. In Port­land, Nicholas Caleb, backed by both Social­ist Alter­na­tive and the Inter­na­tion­al Social­ist Orga­ni­za­tion (ISO), failed to win a city coun­cil seat in the last elec­tion but is cred­it­ed with advanc­ing the ​“15 Now” agen­da in that city. In New York, Sol­i­dar­i­ty and Social­ist Par­ty mem­ber Howie Hawkins and ISO mem­ber Bri­an Jones are run­ning for gov­er­nor and lieu­tenant gov­er­nor on the Green Par­ty tick­et and are polling at 9 per­cent, clos­ing the gap between the two major par­ty candidates.

And with both Sawant and Spear, there is a clear will­ing­ness among labor to acknowl­edge the social­ist cur­rent in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. A few Seat­tle labor lead­ers have sup­port­ed Social­ist Alter­na­tive cam­paigns, and even those who still sup­port Demo­c­ra­t­ic incum­bents speak favor­ably of the con­tri­bu­tions this left­ist elec­toral force has made in push­ing the city’s polit­i­cal con­ver­sa­tion in a more pro­gres­sive direction.

Spear thinks that her cam­paign is part of that push, but also is a way to pro­tect Sawant, who expects to face a Demo­c­ra­t­ic chal­lenge when she’s up for re-elec­tion next year.

“They’re grow­ing their base,” Lukaszek, the Wash­ing­ton Fed­er­a­tion of State Employ­ees pres­i­dent, said of Social­ist Alter­na­tive. ​“Real­is­ti­cal­ly, [Spear] won’t beat Chopp, but there’s noth­ing like push­ing him. And they’re going to keep push­ing him.”