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Nicholas Ton (Bellevue City Council Position 1, Washington, candidate 2025)
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Nicholas Ton ran in a special election to the Bellevue City Council Position 1 in Washington. He was on the ballot in the special primary on August 5, 2025.[source]
Ton completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2025. Click here to read the survey answers.
[1]Biography
Nicholas Ton provided the following biographical information via Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey on July 6, 2025:
- Bachelor's: Arizona State University, 2017
- Gender: Male
- Profession: Program Manager
- Incumbent officeholder: No
- Campaign slogan: Bellevue for the rest of us.
- Campaign website
Elections
General election
Special general election for Bellevue City Council Position 1
Vishal Bhargava and Paul Clark are running in the special general election for Bellevue City Council Position 1 on November 4, 2025.
Candidate | ||
| Vishal Bhargava (Nonpartisan) | ||
 | Paul Clark (Nonpartisan)  | |
| ||||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Nonpartisan primary election
Special nonpartisan primary for Bellevue City Council Position 1
Vishal Bhargava, Eddie Chang, Paul Clark, and Nicholas Ton ran in the special primary for Bellevue City Council Position 1 on August 5, 2025.
Candidate | ||
| Vishal Bhargava (Nonpartisan) | ||
| Eddie Chang (Nonpartisan) | ||
| Paul Clark (Nonpartisan) | |
 | Nicholas Ton (Nonpartisan) | |
| ||||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Election results
Endorsements
Ballotpedia is gathering information about candidate endorsements. To send us an endorsement, click here.
Campaign themes
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Nicholas Ton completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2025. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Ton's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.
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I envision a Bellevue that works for the people who make it run. Where the people that work here can afford to raise families without crushing financial stress or giving up dreams of homeownership. A city that lowers costs for working people wherever it can by taking back our services from profiteering private equity and abusive staffing firms. Where light rail and buses connect everyone to opportunity, not just luxury condos to downtown offices. A city where young families can plant roots in affordable homes, and workers can train for union careers that actually pay the bills. This future demands policies with morality: banning predatory practices that prey on working families, taxing vacant properties to fund child care, and treating housing as homes first, not investments.
I know this won’t happen overnight, but each step toward affordability, accessibility, and dignity makes us more human . That’s the Bellevue worth fighting for, where people don’t just survive, but are allowed to live without everything getting squeezed out of them.- We are at our best when our working class is thriving.
The basic concept of it is: Unionized jobs, childcare support for working people, and tax/fee/fine relief for families and small businesses.
I think that If you work here, you should afford to live here, and with dignity. I believe one job should be enough.
Bellevue has the state’s widest income gap. While tech executives like Vishal Bhargava take home millions, our social and public health workers downtown earn so little they qualify for the subsidies they staff. That’s immoral. This imbalance crushes the middle class: 81% of city employees now commute from outside Bellevue, including cops and firefighters who protect our homes but can’t afford to live here.
We have fix that - Housing is a human right, not a luxury, not an asset class Until Housing is separated from being an investment, it will never be affordable. Investments go up in value constantly, or else they're bad investments. That makes it so housing, even if temporarily affordable, can never be permanently so. I want multiple things to work us towards this, from social housing programs that remove housing from the market rate where where rents cover costs (not profits), to taxes on non-primary vacant houses. This is the only way we're going to make the homeownership dream for so many come true and we can have a city where homes are shelters for people and not hedge funds.
- I'm running because we need real solutions - not just sympathy and platitudes for the problems we all see every day. Too many politicians offer empty words about 'feeling your pain' while failing to deliver actual change. I'm different. I'm coming to the table with specific, actionable policies that will materially improve people's lives, guided by the moral principle that working class people's lives should be made easier in every decision I make. These aren't just ideas - they're battle-tested solutions that we've seen be successful in other cities. From city childcare programs, to city owned internet and electricity services, to vacancy taxes where money goes towards homebuyer programs
The moment we start making excuses for injustice is the moment we become part of the machine that creates it. That’s why I’ll never clamor that “incremental change” is enough when families are homeless now or prioritize political convenience over moral necessity
This is my pledge: However long I serve, I will measure every decision against one question: “Does this help or hurt the people struggling the most?”
The city is the level of democracy that actually touches people’s skin every single day. While state and federal politicians debate abstract policies, city council decides:
Whether your street gets paved or left to crumbleThe city implements (or blocks) every lofty state/federal promise. This is where ideology meets reality. You can’t ‘debate’ a pothole. It either gets fixed or it doesn’t.
If your landlord can jack up rents 30% in a year
How long you wait for a bus in the rain
Whether your kid’s playground has needles hidden in the woodchips or safe equipment
We see all around us, life is hard and it keeps getting harder every year that passes.
An official's initial heart, their values, and principles cannot be lost or forgotten. A person's pursuit of their ideals must be resolute.
We are constantly tested, offered shortcuts and compromises, and as the saying goes: One turns into two, two begets three, and three becomes all. It keeps going
I believe every time you give in, compromise, take a step back, take a kick back, your road does get smoother, but it ultimately amounts to nothing.
Why do you think they try their hardest to keep us out? Because we have the stamina to do hard work and the hunger to create better systems, and that is what this city needs, but it impedes their profits. When developers say "we can’t afford affordable housing," I'll be proposing we do it ourselves for cheaper rather than throwing endless subsidies away.
Outsider Accountability
I’ve never been inside the Bellevue bubble. That means I see clearly:
Who’s being ignored (service workers, rent-burdened families)
Who’s being overfed (speculators, corporate landlords)
Unbreakable Loyalty to Public Services
My scholarship didn’t come from a foundation, it came from a public school who saw potential. That’s why I owe my success to the people, not donors. You’ll always know whose side I’m on because I’ll wear my biases proudly: for workers, for renters, for the left-behind.
Government is not a neutral referee. It’s the only force capable of standing between working families and the unfettered greed of those who would exploit them. When we fail in this duty, we see the consequences all around us:
Housing costs skyrocket while Wall Street landlords vacuum up properties
Wages stagnate as corporations pocket record profits year over year over year
Public services crumble while the wealthy lobby for tax cuts
This isn’t hypothetical. It's not new. it’s history repeating. We’ve seen what happens when government becomes a servant to power instead of a shield for the people:
The 2008 financial crisis that wiped out working class household wealth
The opioid epidemic fueled by profit-hungry pharmaceutical companies
The climate crisis accelerated by fossil fuel giants who lied for decades
Different crisis. Same cause.
The job and role of any elected official isn’t to ‘find common ground’ between billionaires and struggling families. It is to be the counterweight.
The moment we accept that ‘this is just how the economy works’ is the moment we surrender to injustice. The economy isn’t some natural force, it’s a set of rules written by and for the powerful. Rules that can be wielded for the working people and rewritten to give them more than scraps.
We must act with inner principles while being outwardly adaptable. We must have ideals, yet not shy away from unconventional solutions. We must follow rules, yet not be shackled by them.
If something is difficult to do, it means we're on the right path.
It's precisely because holding onto our morals is difficult that makes this worth pursuing.
If we were to merely seek comfort, doesn't that let down all those who believe and invested in us? our supporters who believed in us, our parents and elders who taught and guided us, ourselves.
I remember, after school, I'd go to my uncle's shop and work on clothes. Sewing buttonholes onto jackets, fitting suit pants to measurements.
My family didn't have the means for me to consider university. For a long time, I thought that’s what my life would be: measuring tapes and chalk dust. Helping people look sharp for weddings and job interviews. A backroom at an alternations shop or clothing store was going to be my future.
Then came two strokes of luck I’ll never forget: I scored well on the SAT, and Arizona State University offered me a merit scholarship. That was my ticket out, not because I wanted to looked down on the job, but because I got what every kid wants: a fair shot at a better life.
That’s my regret.
But I’ve learned this: There are unbearable regrets which are the chances we didn’t take for others. When I see my neighbors sleeping in cars because they can’t afford rent, or seniors choosing between medicine and food for the week, it's the cost of our silence.
I want to run for office, not because I have all the answers, but because I don't want to look back someday and say:
‘I could have fought for affordable housing when it mattered.’
‘I could have stood up to the investors pricing out our working families.’
‘I could have brought more jobs to my city and made it so people could have lived on them’
'I could have made public transit better'
'I could have done something'
'I should have tried'
This is my answer to regret: Waking up every day and doing what I can to make one more life better. Not just thinking ‘someone should fix this’, but being the someone who tries.
Washington State Progressive Caucus
I believe the stance of every public official on this topic should be uncompromising.
Roaches scatter in the light, and corruption fears transparency.
We need real transparency because what we have today is theater where our officials hide in backroom "executive sessions" to make deals. Every dollar should be debated in public.
I want more transparency on our contracts, and to make all our contract details public on the city website. I want it made so any vendor over $50k must disclose subcontractors and profit margins.
This matters most in Washington State, where our tax is the most regressive in America. Every tax break given to a developer or business lobby is a theft from working families and cannot be seen as "business as usual".
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Other survey responses
Ballotpedia identified the following surveys, interviews, and questionnaires Ton completed for other organizations. If you are aware of a link that should be added, email us.
See also
2025 Elections
External links
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Candidate Bellevue City Council Position 1 |
Footnotes
