Category: Women

King County, Women

UPDATED: Judge Declines to Lift Protection Order Against County Assessor Accused of Stalking

By Erica C. Barnett

On Friday June 13, a judge denied King County Assessor’s John Arthur Wilson’s motion to terminate his former partner Lee Keller’s protection order against him.

In response to Wilson’s attempt to have the order dismissed, Keller filed a declaration calling Wilson’s motion a “frivolous motion based on half-truths and outright lies.”

She acknowledged meeting with Wilson twice while the restraining order was in effect, and said she briefly agreed to sign off on a statement his campaign staff wrote that said she would drop the restraining order. Text messages show that Keller did briefly agree to drop the restraining order after Wilson had to leave an event honoring the late state Sen. Bill Ramos because Keller was there.

However, Keller added that she “immediately” regretted agreeing to drop the restraining order after Wilson “came to my house that evening and began berating me about speaking with a male friend of mine who was being contacted by the media. He then proceeded to text me until 2:30 a.m. with abusive statements such as ‘You are a two-bit whore,'” Keller wrote. Wilson doesn’t use that precise phrase in any of the texts in the court record, but Keller and Wilson did argue by text over his use of the phrase during a verbal argument.

The “male friend” was a man Keller was briefly involved with, who contacted KUOW in late May, according to text messages between Keller and Wilson. In the texts, Wilson acknowledged contacting the man’s employer and accusing him falsely of sexual assault in order to get him fired; several Wilson’s texts include graphic, lurid details.

After the court hearing, Wilson posted a photo of Martin Luther King, Jr. at the March on Washington, with the text, “Today, thanks to a court ruling, we started to bend the arc towards justice. It moves slow, but it is headed in the right direction. So we will continue fighting for justice for all the residents of King County, and for my own personal journey.”

When the King County Council voted to call on Wilson to resign from his position as county assessor, the only member absent was Republican Councilmember Reagan Dunn. The text messages reveal that Wilson contacted Dunn seeking support in May. “You should hear what Reagan Dunn has to say about you,” Wilson wrote on May 24.

Original story follows:

King County Assessor John Arthur Wilson, who was the subject of a no-confidence vote by the King County Council earlier this week, has filed a motion to dismiss his domestic partner Lee Keller’s temporary restraining order against him, arguing that she is emotionally unstable and is trying to harm him politically.

PubliCola broke the news about the new stalking and harassment allegations against Wilson in May. The Seattle Times covered earlier allegations against Wilson in January.

Wilson, who is running for King County Executive, has never publicly denied Keller’s allegations, including several dating back to 2024, that he texted and called her incessantly, showed up at her home uninvited, followed her movements using tracking apps, and called the workplace of a man she had been seeing to accuse him of sexual assault in an attempt to get him fired. These actions, among others, were the basis for the county council’s call for Wilson to resign as county assessor, a position that affords him access to personal data about King County taxpayers.

Many of Keller’s allegations, including one in which Wilson said the man he’s alleged to have falsely accused of sexual assault “deserves my wrath,” are documented in text messages and phone records. Keller’s latest filing includes a text exchange in which she told Wilson, “LEAVE ME ALONE!!!!!!!!!!!!” and he responded, “Never,” following up with several more unanswered texts.

Wilson posted a link to his declaration on Facebook, writing:

“As King County Assessor, I took an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States and the State of Washington – including those cherished principles of the rule of law, the presumption of innocence, and due process.

The King County Council, by voting 8 to 0 to demand my resignation, has shown utter contempt for these principals. They want to deny your choices at the polls and rig the election. Yesterday’s hearing was nothing more than a kangaroo court.

I will NOT resign. I will NOT give up my campaign fighting for the everyday people of King County. But the craven behavior of Councilmembers Balducci and Zahilay show they are unfit to serve the people of King County—let alone as Executive.”

King County Councilmembers Claudia Balducci and Girmay Zahilay are the frontrunners in the race for county executive; Wilson has consistently trailed both in fundraising and endorsements.

In a statement, Keller’s attorney, Paula Kurtz-Kreshel, said Wilson’s “media campaign against my client continues and is troubling not only for its obvious attempt to disparage, intimidate, and otherwise strong-arm a protected party into dropping a restraining order—but also for the fact that his efforts are taking place during hours of employment when one would think he should be working for the people of King County.”

In his new motion, Wilson claimed that he, rather than Keller, was the victim of abuse, pointing to an incident in April 2024 in which he claims Keller “shoved me and nearly made me fall down a flight of stairs.” He called the police, Wilson wrote, because he “felt I had been threatened and was personally at risk.”

A police report by an officer responding to Wilson’s call in 2024 tells a different story. According to the 2024 report, Wilson told the officer that he and Keller “got into a verbal argument” after Wilson went into Keller’s text messages and discovered she had been communicating with an ex. In his telling, Wilson calmly “talked to Keller about not being transparent” and she became “enraged.” Wilson claimed Keller pushed him “in the chest,” which “caught [him] off guard”; he did not mention anything about stairs.

Keller also called police about the incident, meeting with the same officer who had interviewed Wilson at the hotel she was staying in after she fled the home she and Wilson shared. She told the officer that Wilson “hacked” into her messages without her permission and told her they needed to talk, saying he had “proof” that she had been lying to him.

Keller told the officer she and Wilson got into a shouting match while she was standing in the entry to their home and Wilson was standing on the stairs, and said she “never laid a hand on him.” Keller told officers Wilson had tried to push his way into the laundry room where she was feeding her dog before she left for a hotel, and that she broke a ceramic dog bowl while trying to shut the door.

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While the officer was interviewing Keller, he noted in the report, Wilson “called her approximately 15 times and sent roughly 10 text messages saying that there was an emergency and that she needed to call him.” Wilson continued trying to reach Keller, the officer noted, even after the officer picked up one of Wilson’s calls and asked him to stop calling and texting her. Wilson has not publicly disputed any of this; in fact, he included Keller’s police report in the exhibits attached to his filing.

Kurtz-Kreshel said the police reports filed at the time refuted Wilson’s claim that Keller pushed him. “These reports are filed with Mr. Wilson’s motion and ironically spotlight his stalking and harassment of my client.”

Along with the statement, Kurtz-Kreshel provided a copy of an email Wilson sent to the King County Sheriff’s Office two weeks after the April 2024 altercation, in which Wilson said he had “exaggerated the incident as far more serious than it was. Ms. Keller never hurt or injured me when in the heat of our argument she moved me back from standing in front of her. In addition, I never felt in fear of Ms. Keller, or thought for an instant she might want to hurt or injure me.”

In his new motion to dismiss Keller’s restraining order against him, Wilson claimed that Keller’s “instability” and “volatility,” not Wilson’s documented behavior, is the problem. “Unfortunately, as much as I love Lee, her volatility and instability has become a real issue for me both personally and professionally,” Wilson wrote, adding that “once Lee calms down, she wants to see me.”

There are many different reasons that women return to men who are abusive or drop restraining orders against their partners, and the decision to drop a restraining order is not proof that a woman filed the order frivolously or that the relationship is not abusive.

Wilson said the two met in a public place on May 23, 11 days after Keller for the restraining order, and “Lee seemed genuinely happy to see me,” but said things turned sour after Wilson refused to help pay her rent.

“I firmly believe that victims of domestic violence should be protected. However, restraining orders should be a shield for victims and not a sword because someone is mad at you and is lashing out, especially when that someone has a long history of volatility and instability as it is evidenced by the number of times Lee has filed a Petition and then dismissed it,” Wilson wrote.

On June 3, Keller said in a statement that the “restraining order against John Wilson remains in place. I will not be changing my mind, despite his repeated efforts to coerce me to dismiss it. A hearing on the restraining order will be held on June 30, 2025. I welcome the opportunity to address John’s reference to a signed agreement at that time, and inform the court of John’s continuing violations of the very active restraining order.”

Wilson responded to my request for comment by saying, “Your reporting has been so horrendously biased, inaccurate and loaded that I really have no interest in talking to you” and encouraging me to “start by reporting on” his filing.

Also on Thursday, Jayson Morris, a longtime local Democratic Party activist and Wilson ally, filed a complaint with the King County Democrats, alleging that they had violated their own rules by dual-endorsing Balducci and Zahilay in the county executive race.

Morris’ complaint also claims that the Democrats violated their commitment to Democratic Party values by endorsing candidates whose “conduct”—voting for the resolution calling on Wilson to resign—”has created ethical issues that reflect poorly on the party.”

King County Democrats chair Beth Bazley said that while the Democratic committee itself can’t propose dual endorsements, members themselves can propose multiple endorsements, and added that the vote for each endorsement was “overwhelming.”

Elections, King County, Women

In Motion to Dismiss Restraining Order, County Assessor Calls His Ex-Partner Unstable and Vengeful

By Erica C. Barnett

King County Assessor John Arthur Wilson, who was the subject of a no-confidence vote by the King County Council earlier this week, has filed a motion to dismiss his domestic partner Lee Keller’s temporary restraining order against him, arguing that she is emotionally unstable and is trying to harm him politically.

PubliCola broke the news about the new stalking and harassment allegations against Wilson in May. The Seattle Times covered earlier allegations against Wilson in January.

Wilson, who is running for King County Executive, has never publicly denied Keller’s allegations, including several dating back to 2024, that he texted and called her incessantly, showed up at her home uninvited, followed her movements using tracking apps, and called the workplace of a man she had been seeing to accuse him of sexual assault in an attempt to get him fired. These actions, among others, were the basis for the county council’s call for Wilson to resign as county assessor, a position that affords him access to personal data about King County taxpayers.

Many of Keller’s allegations, including one in which Wilson said the man he’s alleged to have falsely accused of sexual assault “deserves my wrath,” are documented in text messages and phone records. Keller’s latest filing includes a text exchange in which she told Wilson, “LEAVE ME ALONE!!!!!!!!!!!!” and he responded, “Never,” following up with several more unanswered texts.

Wilson posted a link to his declaration on Facebook, writing:

“As King County Assessor, I took an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States and the State of Washington – including those cherished principles of the rule of law, the presumption of innocence, and due process.

The King County Council, by voting 8 to 0 to demand my resignation, has shown utter contempt for these principals. They want to deny your choices at the polls and rig the election. Yesterday’s hearing was nothing more than a kangaroo court.

I will NOT resign. I will NOT give up my campaign fighting for the everyday people of King County. But the craven behavior of Councilmembers Balducci and Zahilay show they are unfit to serve the people of King County—let alone as Executive.”

King County Councilmembers Claudia Balducci and Girmay Zahilay are the frontrunners in the race for county executive; Wilson has consistently trailed both in fundraising and endorsements.

In a statement, Keller’s attorney, Paula Kurtz-Kreshel, said Wilson’s “media campaign against my client continues and is troubling not only for its obvious attempt to disparage, intimidate, and otherwise strong-arm a protected party into dropping a restraining order—but also for the fact that his efforts are taking place during hours of employment when one would think he should be working for the people of King County.”

In his new motion, Wilson claimed that he, rather than Keller, was the victim of abuse, pointing to an incident in April 2024 in which he claims Keller “shoved me and nearly made me fall down a flight of stairs.” He called the police, Wilson wrote, because he “felt I had been threatened and was personally at risk.”

A police report by an officer responding to Wilson’s call in 2024 tells a different story. According to the 2024 report, Wilson told the officer that he and Keller “got into a verbal argument” after Wilson went into Keller’s text messages and discovered she had been communicating with an ex. In his telling, Wilson calmly “talked to Keller about not being transparent” and she became “enraged.” Wilson claimed Keller pushed him “in the chest,” which “caught [him] off guard”; he did not mention anything about stairs.

Keller also called police about the incident, meeting with the same officer who had interviewed Wilson at the hotel she was staying in after she fled the home she and Wilson shared. She told the officer that Wilson “hacked” into her messages without her permission and told her they needed to talk, saying he had “proof” that she had been lying to him.

Keller told the officer she and Wilson got into a shouting match while she was standing in the entry to their home and Wilson was standing on the stairs, and said she “never laid a hand on him.” Keller told officers Wilson had tried to push his way into the laundry room where she was feeding her dog before she left for a hotel, and that she broke a ceramic dog bowl while trying to shut the door.

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While the officer was interviewing Keller, he noted in the report, Wilson “called her approximately 15 times and sent roughly 10 text messages saying that there was an emergency and that she needed to call him.” Wilson continued trying to reach Keller, the officer noted, even after the officer picked up one of Wilson’s calls and asked him to stop calling and texting her. Wilson has not publicly disputed any of this; in fact, he included Keller’s police report in the exhibits attached to his filing.

Kurtz-Kreshel said the police reports filed at the time refuted Wilson’s claim that Keller pushed him. “These reports are filed with Mr. Wilson’s motion and ironically spotlight his stalking and harassment of my client.”

Along with the statement, Kurtz-Kreshel provided a copy of an email Wilson sent to the King County Sheriff’s Office two weeks after the April 2024 altercation, in which Wilson said he had “exaggerated the incident as far more serious than it was. Ms. Keller never hurt or injured me when in the heat of our argument she moved me back from standing in front of her. In addition, I never felt in fear of Ms. Keller, or thought for an instant she might want to hurt or injure me.”

In his new motion to dismiss Keller’s restraining order against him, Wilson claimed that Keller’s “instability” and “volatility,” not Wilson’s documented behavior, is the problem. “Unfortunately, as much as I love Lee, her volatility and instability has become a real issue for me both personally and professionally,” Wilson wrote, adding that “once Lee calms down, she wants to see me.”

There are many different reasons that women return to men who are abusive or drop restraining orders against their partners, and the decision to drop a restraining order is not proof that a woman filed the order frivolously or that the relationship is not abusive.

Wilson said the two met in a public place on May 23, 11 days after Keller for the restraining order, and “Lee seemed genuinely happy to see me,” but said things turned sour after Wilson refused to help pay her rent.

“I firmly believe that victims of domestic violence should be protected. However, restraining orders should be a shield for victims and not a sword because someone is mad at you and is lashing out, especially when that someone has a long history of volatility and instability as it is evidenced by the number of times Lee has filed a Petition and then dismissed it,” Wilson wrote.

On June 3, Keller said in a statement that the “restraining order against John Wilson remains in place. I will not be changing my mind, despite his repeated efforts to coerce me to dismiss it. A hearing on the restraining order will be held on June 30, 2025. I welcome the opportunity to address John’s reference to a signed agreement at that time, and inform the court of John’s continuing violations of the very active restraining order.”

Wilson responded to my request for comment by saying, “Your reporting has been so horrendously biased, inaccurate and loaded that I really have no interest in talking to you” and encouraging me to “start by reporting on” his filing.

Also on Thursday, Jayson Morris, a longtime local Democratic Party activist and Wilson ally, filed a complaint with the King County Democrats, alleging that they had violated their own rules by dual-endorsing Balducci and Zahilay in the county executive race.

Morris’ complaint also claims that the Democrats violated their commitment to Democratic Party values by endorsing candidates whose “conduct”—voting for the resolution calling on Wilson to resign—”has created ethical issues that reflect poorly on the party.”

King County Democrats chair Beth Bazley said that while the Democratic committee itself can’t propose dual endorsements, members themselves can propose multiple endorsements, and added that the vote for each endorsement was “overwhelming.”

King County, Women

In Unanimous Vote, King County Council Calls for Assessor John Arthur Wilson, Accused of Stalking, to Step Down


By Erica C. Barnett

The King County Council voted late Tuesday afternoon to approve a motion stating they have “no confidence” in King County Assessor John Arthur Wilson and calling on him to resign. As PubliCola reported exclusively last month, Wilson’s ex-partner Lee Keller has accused him of stalking and harassing her and obtained a restraining order against him for the second time this year.

Councilmember Claudia Balducci, who sponsored the motion, said Wilson’s behavior since the new accusations came to light was classic DARVO, a term used to describe the way many men accused of mistreating women during MeToo behaved. DARVO stands for “deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender,” and Balducci said Wilson has done everything but deny the allegations against him: He’s denied he did anything wrong, attacked people who have criticized him and demanded he resign, and pretend that he himself is the victim.

“The only way to remove an elected official from office is through a recall election, which is not in our power to initiate or to do,” Balducci said. “But I believe we should make very, very clear that we have a line, and this behavior is beyond that line.”

Balducci was one of the only elected officials to call out Wilson publicly the first time he was accused of harassing Keller, in January, when the Seattle Times reported that Wilson had found Keller when she was hiding from him, refused to leave or stop texting and calling her, and even tried to get someone she dated briefly fired by calling his boss and falsely accusing him of sexually assaulting Keller. She didn’t call for his resignation at the time, she told PubliCola, because ““I was concerned at the time that the focus should be on survivors and supporting survivors.”

Councilmember Jorge Barón said he had supported the council’s decision to give Wilson a week to respond to the call for him to step down, but said he did not agree with Wilson’s defenders who have said the council should let the allegations work themselves through the court system before passing judgment.

“I think it’s important to note that this isn’t a judicial proceeding,” Barón said. “This is about our assessment, about whether this elected official has sound judgment … and the confidence of this body, as representatives of the residents of King County, to continue to carry out [his duties]. And I believe that the answer to the questions is clearly, no, we don’t have that confidence because of the way that Mr. Wilson has acted.”

The vote came after the council withdrew to a conference room for a nearly 40-minute executive session.

Since we first reported on the allegations against him, Wilson has been defiant, telling other reporters he has no plan to step down and putting up self-pitying posts on Facebook. In one, he posted a photo of a church in Seattle and said going to church “gives me a chance to ask God for forgiveness for those who I might have hurt and to forgive those who are bearing false witness against me. May that person find peace,” he concluded—an apparent reference to Keller.

In another, he wrote that it was “[g]reat to have friends that stick by you and don’t simply parrot what’s being said by the chattering class. #Onward!!!!”

In a third, he posted a photo of a plaque displayed at former state House Speaker Frank Chopp’s memorial, of a famous quote from a Theodore Roosevelt speech now known as “The Man In the Arena.”* The excerpt, which is frequently quoted by politicians frustrated with their critics, is about how critics, “those cold and timid souls,” stay on the sidelines and point fingers while the man of action strides forward to victory or valiant defeat. “This quote from Teddy Roosevelt seems particularly timely for me,” Wilson wrote on June 1.

“After seeing a glimpse of what accountability for unacceptable behavior looks like during the MeToo movement, I refuse to have to continue to operate in a society that just expects women to deal with stalking, harassment, assault,” Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda said. “I refuse to tell my daughter that she will have to continue to grow up in a society that just expects that of women. … So I hope that this act today will be one more effort to ask him to step down and to see that he has lost the trust of this body.”

The motion passed unanimously, with only Reagan Dunn—a Republican council member who was present via Zoom earlier in the meeting—absent.

* Politicians love to quote this one partial (partial!) paragraph from this one fucking speech, which is in reality almost 9,000 words long and probably took at least an hour to read out loud. The speech, “Citizenship In A Republic,” is a lengthy jeremiad against extremism in political and personal affairs, with a populist tilt favoring men who do “the rough work of a workaday world.” Unsurprisingly for such a long speech, it’s a bit all over the map—there are references to pioneers conquering an “Indian-haunted land” and Gamaliel the Old (had to look that one up), and at one point TR encourages his audience to “perpetuate the race” by having as many children as possible. What the speech does not encourage is grandiosity or self-pity, which is usually the context in which it is quoted.

City Council, Elections, King County, LGBTQ+, Women

This Week On PubliCola: May 31, 2025

Officials call on county assessor to resign amid stalking allegations, far-right activists hold revival at City Hall, Moore withdraws bill to roll back ethics standards, and more.

Monday, May 26

Affordable Housing Providers are Losing Money and Selling Their Buildings. But is Eliminating Eviction Protections the Answer?

As the city council prepares to consider legislation repealing some anti-eviction laws, affordable housing providers offer mixed opinions on whether making it easier to kick out tenants who aren’t paying rent will solve their larger problems, which include not just nonpayment but rising operations costs, empty units, and the need to keep building in order to make their budgets pencil out.

Judge Upholds Burien’s Total Ban on “Camping,” With Appeal Likely

A King County Superior Court judge upheld a Burien law that makes it illegal to fall asleep outdoors, concluding that because it applies to everyone, not just homeless people, it only criminalizes behavior, not the status of being homeless. The plaintiffs, who include three people who were unsheltered in Burien, are likely to appeal.

Seattle Nice: Council Rolls Back Ethics Rules, Tent City’s Temporary Reprieve, and the Debate Over Mandatory Earplug Sales

On this week’s episode of Saettle Nice, we discussed the council’s plans to lower ethical standards for themselves, the city’s decision to allow a long-planned relocation of Tent City to move forward on a temporary basis after Cathy Moore raised objections to the plan, and Dan Strauss’ proposal to require “loud music venues” to sell earplugs, legislation PubliCola covered back in March.

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Wednesday, May 28

Pro-LGBTQ Protesters Stuck Outside Barricades As Far-Right “Rattle In Seattle” Took Over City Hall

Far-right Christian activists held a noisy, amplified rock concert/rally at City Hall on Tuesday, antagonizing trans protesters and their allies across a protective barricade maintained by police armed with pepper spray and batons. Although the organizers lacked a permit for their equipment, which included massive speaker stacks and a diesel generator, the city allowed the show to continue long past its supposed end time and provided protection for the anti-trans group and shut down downtown streets for more than seven hours.

Thursday, May 29

New Stalking Allegations Against King County Assessor, County Executive Candidate Wilson

PubliCola exclusively reported that King County Assessor John Arthur Wilson’s former partner obtained a second restraining order against him for stalking and harassment earlier this month, just as Wilson was officially filing to run for King County executive. Contacted by PubliCola, Wilson said there was no restraining order and that he and the woman were still in a relationship, which she said was untrue; the restraining order includes disturbing text exchanges including one in which Wilson told the woman he would “never” leave her alone.

Friday, May 30

Amid Waning Council Support, Cathy Moore Withdraws Bill to Lower Ethics Standards

After weeks of overwhelming public opposition to her proposal to change the city’s ethics code so that council members could vote on legislation even when they have a direct financial conflict of interest, Councilmember Cathy Moore withdrew her bill. PubliCola spoke to councilmembers who expressed serious concerns about the legislation and our reporting indicated that Moore did not have more than 5-4 support for the proposal, at best—not enough to overturn a veto from Mayor Bruce Harrell, who said he opposed the legislation.

Growing Chorus Calls for County Assessor Wilson to Resign After New Stalking, Harassment Allegations

In response to PubliCola’s story about Wilson, local leaders called on the county assessor to resign his position and drop out of the race for county executive. The growing list includes Harrell, four King County Councilmembers (including Wilson’s two electoral opponents), King County Executive Shannon Braddock, and the King County Democrats.

Elections, King County, Women

Growing Chorus Calls for County Assessor Wilson to Resign After New Stalking, Harassment Allegations

By Erica C. Barnett

After PubliCola broke the news yesterday morning that the former partner of King County Assessor John Arthur Wilson just got a restraining order against him for allegedly stalking and harassing her, elected officials and local leaders across the county called on Wilson to resign his position and drop out of the race for King County Executive.

Wilson was reelected in 2023 and will remain in his $225,000-a-year job until the end of 2027 unless he steps down voluntarily or is recalled in a countywide election.

An incomplete list of the people who’ve called on Wilson to step down includes the two frontrunners in the County Executive race, King County Councilmembers Claudia Balducci and Girmay Zahilay; Interim King County Executive Shannon Braddock; Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell; State Sen. Manka Dhingra (D-45, Redmond); former King County Sexual Assault Resource Center director Mary Ellen Stone; King County Democrats chair Beth Bazley; and King County Councilmembers Teresa Mosqueda, Jorge Barón and Rod Dembowski.

As we reported, Wilson’s former partner, Lee Keller, received a restraining order against Wilson earlier this month and is seeking to dissolve their domestic partnership. Keller’s allegations are similar to the ones she made last year, when she accused Wilson of, among other things, calling the employer of a man she had been seeing and accusing him falsely of sexual assault in an attempt to get him fired.

Wilson did not respond to our questions about the calls for his resignation. He did speak to KUOW, telling them that he does not plan to step down. Wilson also echoed comments he made to us earlier this week, when he claimed that he and Keller were still in a relationship; he also told us that Keller had withdrawn her petition. Keller told us that she and Wilson are no longer involved and that the restraining order still stands, which court records support.

In a statement, Harrell said he was “appalled” by the allegations and said they were “disqualifying for public office. We need to send a clear message to survivors of intimate partner abuse that this type of behavior by people in positions of trust is not tolerated.”

During a press call with Balducci, Stone, Dhingra, and Bazley on Thursday, I asked Balducci why she did not call on Wilson to resign when the Seattle Times reported on Keller’s original allegations and restraining order last year. (She did issue a statement at the time, saying she was “deeply disturbed by today’s reports of stalking, abuse, and issuance of protective orders against County Assessor Wilson.”)

“I am in a campaign,” Balducci said, and “I was concerned at the time that the focus should be on survivors and supporting survivors. … Today, we have ongoing behavior. It hasn’t stopped. It just keeps going, and I have no reason to believe that it will stop even after today. … And we can’t allow somebody who’s actively engaging in this kind of behavior to just continue being in a position of leadership.”

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Wilson, Balducci noted, had to have known when he filed to run in early May that Keller was filing for another restraining order against him. “But he decided to file anyway, I assume because he thought his behavior would be tolerated, because it too often is especially for men in positions of power,” she said.

During the call , Post Alley writer Joel Connelly asked what would happen if it turned out Keller was lying. (Wilson has not specifically denied any of the allegations, which include harassing text messages that are part of Keller’s request for a protection order.).

“I know that both of these people very, very well,” Connelly said, throat-clearing about his personal connections to Wilson and Keller for a while before asking what he called a “basic question. Say Wilson resigns as assessor and pulls out of the race, but the investigation turns up either ends up inconclusive or exonerate him from some of the allegations that Lee has made. Where does John Wilson go to get his reputation back?”

Balducci responded first, noting that the events Keller described in her motion for a restraining order “are essentially uncontested and that Wilson is free to try to “rehabilitate his reputation. But he has not attempted to, as yet, and if he has a defense, we haven’t heard it.”

City Council, Police, Women

Discussion of Women at SPD Skips Over Men’s Behavior
Screen shot from SPD recruitment video aimed at women.

By Erica C. Barnett

During a meeting of the Seattle City Council’s public safety committee meeting Tuesday, the council made it through through a nearly hour-long presentation and discussion of the 30 by 30 Initiative—a nationwide effort to hire more female police officers, which Seattle officially joined in 2021—with almost no mention of the problem female SPD officers cited most often as a barrier to recruitment and retention: The widespread culture of misogyny, gender discrimination, and harassment at the department.

Instead, SPD representatives and council members talked at length about the need to accommodate women while they are pregnant and parenting small children, by providing rooms for milk pumping, flexible schedules, and access to child care.

Maritza Rivera recalled having no appropriate place to pump breast milk when she worked for the federal government in the early 2000s, adding that her bosses were “both women and mothers. So we as women need to do better for other women.” Saka, who has talked about his parental obligations after showing up late to council meetings, said it was important for dads like him to talk openly about the work they do raising their kids. And committee chair Bob Kettle, until recently a stay-at-home dad, added that men “do need to lead by example, both in terms of what we’re doing, but also in support of partners, spouses, mothers, wives, all the above.”

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In addition to accommodations for mothers, SPD representatives said the department has started providing women-only courses in defensive tactics; re-established a mentoring program; instituted “affinity groups” where people of the same race or gender can support each other; created videos featuring women (and a voiceover that sounds a lot like Diaz’ former chief of staff Jamie Tompkins) for SPD’s hiring page; and provided a management training course in “trust-centered leadership” to 24 SPD officers, with plans for another 240 officers to go through the class next year.

Child care, flexible schedules, and dedicated milk-pumping spaces are all important priorities—as are mentors, safe spaces for discussion, and free tampons, for that matter.

But those baseline needs, which the city has been aware of for many years, were far from the onlyissues women in the department identified when asked about their experiences working for SPD; in fact, the takeaway from the city’s 30 by 30 focus groups was that men, through their actions toward women, have made SPD a bad workplace for women. Several female SPD staffers have active, ongoing discrimination and sexual harassment lawsuits and complaints against the department and individual men who work there, including former police chief Adrian Diaz, who is still on the force after Mayor Bruce Harrell removed him as chief last year. But you’d never know that from SPD’s presentation or the council discussion, which focused almost entirely on women themselves.

It’s unlikely that child care stipends, pumping rooms, and time off to take care of children will be enough to boost recruitment, and certainly not retention, if the larger underlying issues specific to the Seattle Police Department remain unaddressed. Until that happens, 30 by 30 will likely be—as Kettle put it Tuesday—a purely “aspirational” goal.