Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant has emerged, during just nine months at City Hall, as the every-posturing show horse of Seattle politics. Seattle’s socialist City Council member Kshama Sawant (AP photo) The title was cemented this week as the socialist Sawant took out after a majority of her council colleagues for attending an annual Seattle Chamber of Commerce-sponsored retreat at the Suncadia resort in Cle Elum, in the Cascade foothills 84 miles east of Seattle.