Seattle voters embraced five incumbent City Council members Tuesday, a reflection in large part of their support for a downtown highway tunnel.

Four incumbents easily won another four years at City Hall: Tim Burgess, Sally Clark, Bruce Harrell and Tom Rasmussen. Jean Godden held a comfortable lead over challenger Bobby Forch in first-day returns.

Altogether, the incumbents raised six times as much in campaign contributions as challengers: $1.35 million to $230,000. That disparity was much greater than in the past two council elections, in which incumbents collectively raised nearly twice as much as their opponents.

The problem for challengers was that big contributors — including real-estate interests and labor unions — decided early on the most important city issue was building a waterfront tunnel to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct.

Once they crowned the tunnel the king of issues, and rallied around the pro-tunnel incumbents — in part to fend off tunnel foe Mayor Mike McGinn — it left council challengers, whether they were for or against the tunnel, with little political traction. Incumbents were vindicated when voters strongly supported the tunnel in an August election.

"These elections, by and large, were settled the day that the tunnel was put on the ballot back in April," said Christian Sinderman, campaign consultant to all the incumbents except Godden.

It helped, said former council President Jan Drago, that incumbents faced "an extraordinarily weak field of opponents" and were seen as "protecting citizens from a mayor who is inexperienced."

Incumbents got something of a pass on the car-tab fees because voters were inclined to view its emphasis on transit, bike and pedestrian improvements as McGinn's priorities more than the council's, Sinderman said.

Godden faced the toughest challenge of her political career from Forch, a Seattle Department of Transportation manager, who did not concede Tuesday night. But Godden, a longtime journalist with The Seattle Times and Post-Intelligencer, was better known and held a nearly 3-to-1 edge in campaign funds. She stopped short of declaring victory Tuesday, but added it likely would be her last term in office.

Harrell enjoyed a similar advantage over former T-Mobile manager Brad Meacham, as did Clark over community activist Dian Ferguson. Rasmussen and Burgess faced token challenges from Dale Pusey and David Schraer, respectively, neither of whom raised more than $3,000 in campaign contributions.

Bob Young: 206-464-2174 or byoung@seattletimes.com