Amazon’s excess spending for Seattle Municipal Corporation has irked criticism from Democratic presidential candidates Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders accusing Amazon of trying to buy the council. Amazon poured a record $1.5 million into a Super PAC run by the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce to back a slate of candidates in the Nov. 5 council elections viewed as pro-business, or at least more corporate friendly than the incumbent council majority.

Amazon, the world’s leading online retailer whose chief executive is billionaire entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, accounted for more than half of nearly $2.7 million raised by the Super PAC, a group allowed to accept unlimited sums from wealthy donors in support of their favorite candidates. Four years ago, Amazon donated $25,000.

The outcome for most of the seven council seats at stake in Tuesday’s election was too close to call until Friday night, when a tally of 97 percent of votes cast showed that progressive candidates had won five of the seats, including two incumbents. Just two of the seven candidates endorsed by Amazon and other companies through the chamber’s Super Pac emerged winners, one of them an incumbent.

Many in Seattle aren’t happy with the council, but they also don’t like a company headed by the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos, trying to influence their vote. As historic income inequality fuels homelessness and soaring housing prices, progressives elsewhere don’t like it either.