In 2018, Amazon made known its opposition to the council’s proposed tax on business payrolls – branded an “Amazon tax” by Councilmember Kshama Sawant — by threatening not to advance on its Block 18 building, which is now nearing completion in the Denny Triangle neighborhood, and to sublease space it had claimed in the under-construction Rainier Square tower at Fifth Avenue and Union Street. The council reversed itself, but in 2019, Amazon said it would sublease the 722,000 square feet of offices in the skyscraper anyway. Later that year, the company poured nearly $1.5 million into seven city council races, but its favored candidates lost in five of them.
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/amazon-lets-a-south-lake-union-lease-lapse-in-seattle/
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/amazon-lets-a-south-lake-union-lease-lapse-in-seattle/