1. On Friday, Mayor Bruce Harrell accused his opponent, Katie Wilson, of “darkening” his photo in a social media post, blaming her for “another chapter in the troubling history of manipulating skin color to dehumanize candidates of color” like himself. The image Harrell circulated, an Instagram post by the Black-led progressive nonprofit Common Power, made his skin looked unnaturally orange.
In a statement, Harrell campaign manager Marta Johnson said, “We are asking the Wilson Campaign and Common Power to immediately retract the manipulated image and apologize for the clear intent to darken Bruce’s skin tone. There is no excuse to alter the tone of a candidate’s skin, especially given the troubling history of racist intent behind these types of manipulations.”
Harrell made the accusation again during a debate on Saturday at the Royal Room in Southeast Seattle, saying she had used the “common tactic—to darken my image in a regular picture, to make me look ominous, okay?”
The practice of darkening Black and brown people’s skin tone in photographs has a long and ignominious history based in colorism and the racist idea that darker-skinned people are more threatening than those with lighter skin. The most famous example comes from Time magazine, which dramatically darkened OJ Simpson’s skin color on its cover in 1994.
Beyond the screen shot, Harrell presented no evidence for his claims.
On Sunday, Common Power director Charles Douglas responded to Harrell’s accusation that his group had darkened Harrell’s skin to make him look “ominous”: “The claim that we ‘darkened’ Mayor Harrell’s photo is both offensive and untrue. As a Black man leading an organization primarily run by people of color, I know firsthand the harm caused when racial tropes are weaponized in politics.”
“To suggest that Common Power engaged in such tactics is a sensationalist smear that reeks of desperation from a mayor who has repeatedly contributed to inequality and hurt the very communities he now claims to represent.” On Sunday, Common Power and the 36th District Democrats swapped out the photo of Halloween Harrell for a less orange version.
The source for the image appears to have been a story by the (UK) Independent about the 2021 mayor’s race. The photo appears to have been taken in low light at this debate, creating the unnaturally orange cast.
Smartphone photos taken by several different people in similar conditions at Saturday’s low-light debate at the Royal Room made both Harrell and Wilson look orange, with Harrell’s black hair coming through as grayish in the photos. For example, a reader contributed this photo of Harrell checking in on the Huskies game during the debate; my own, unedited iPhone photos, taken from the front row, turned Harrell an even more extreme orange color and tinted Wilson orange as well.
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2. As I reported on Bluesky last week (seriously, follow me there for the latest breaking news, short news items, and live coverage of everything from mayoral debates to the council’s budget deliberations), the business-backed political action committee supporting Mayor Bruce Harrell, Bruce Harrell for Seattle’s Future, has raised more than a million to defeat Harrell’s challenger, Katie Wilson. Most of that money, $554,000, has come in since the beginning of September—revealing a rush to fill the pro-Harrell campaign’s coffers after the mayor’s dispiriting 41 percent showing in the August primary.
The biggest donations to the PAC, which is separate from Harrell’s official campaign, come from real estate advocacy groups, development and property management companies and their current or retired CEOs, and land-use attorneys who work for real-estate interests. Overall, real-estate interests contributed at least $592,000 of the $1,080,500 the PAC has collected so far. Tech companies and their leaders, including retired tech company founders as well as current executives like Microsoft CEO Brad Smith, gave another $257,000, at a minimum.
A majority of the 218 contributors to the pro-Harrell PAC listed their occupations as “retired” (59 total) or did not list their occupations (56 total), so the true percentage of both real estate interests and tech company executives is almost certainly higher than the ones I was able to confirm.
A pro-Wilson PAC, Katie Wilson for an Affordable Seattle, has raised about $85,000.
3. During a meeting about the city’s police department budget on Monday, Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes responded to a question from Council President Sara Nelson by saying he couldn’t answer it because Nelson cited PubliCola as her source.
“I came across an article in PubliCola … that mentioned [the city’s proposed contract with the south King County jail] SCORE, and I wanted some information on this,” Nelson said. “I think that it mentioned that we are no longer depending on that contract. Is that the case?”
In response, Barnes told Nelson he would not answer her question, forcing her to reframe her factual question about SCORE. “I’ll be clear. I do not read PubliCola, so I won’t respond to that,” Barnes said. After Barnes answered the rest of Nelson’s questions, but not the one about SCORE, budget director Dan Eder had to jump in and answer in the affirmative.
Barnes’ dismissive comment about PubliCola was the first time I can recall, in this publication’s 16-year history, that a department director has used a public meeting to disparage us directly. SPD’s communications department has reportedly stopped including stories from PubliCola in the department’s daily news clippings email, and in a recent social media post, Barnes said he wouldn’t be “swayed by opinions, criticism, lies, or the stories that others may fabricate.” He added, cryptically, “This is my leadership journey and you won’t make me quit! The battle is not mine.. It’s the Lords!”
PubliCola will, of course, continue to apply a critical lens to SPD and other city departments in our coverage, as we have since 2009.
Dang! You should be proud for making SPD so nervous and annoyed. It is definitely not a good look for Chief Barnes to admit his disdain for a local news source in that way. Well done – keep up the good work!
Is this from Tim Burgess?
Halloween Harrell hehe
I think you’re missing a “zero” in your number showing how much Harrell’s PAC has raised under item #2 of this article. No need to publicly post this comment. Thanks for all your good work.
So CommonPower deleted the post, which indicate they at least tacitly acknowledged the issue at hand. Seems like the headline could have been: “Organization supporting Wilson campaign deletes image after its alleged to be racist.” That’s a lot different than the spin here though.
They didn’t delete the post. As I reported in this post, they swapped it out for a different version with a more natural skin tone than the non-color corrected image that ran in a British newspaper in 2021.
So they swapped out the image that was accused of being racist and its no longer on their account (also known as removing it…or deleting it…)?
Maybe they “don’t read” Common Powers posts lol
The only ‘color’ most Seattle voters are concerned about in this election is ‘affordability’. Bruce is not going to distract us from that fact. Yeah, Bruce and Keith were raised in the CD and are culturally identified as black, but Bruce has forgotten where he came from and has now adopted the perspective of his wealthy lakefront neighbors. That is NOT the perspective of most Seattle voters, and no amount of lightening or darkening his skin tone can change that election reality.
There’s tons of affordable apartments but nobody wants to live in them because of the over the top tenant protections in Seattle. They allow people to move in, not on a lease agreement and with no background check as a roommate and allow people to stop paying during the school year with no fear of eviction. Should tenants be able to live for free? There should be some accountability.
police chief is not a real crime fighter.hes taking his raicsntscorned lived experience in the Jim Crow law South and his sympathy for black criminals and running interference for them by not utilizing all the crime fighting tools to shutdown evil criminals regardless of skin color
None of what you said here makes any sense and none of it is based in reality.
No, what is ‘really’ going on is Bruce is trying to make the election about race instead of class, just like Trump. His calculation is that people of color plus sympathetic whites will rally around him because of his race and forget that this election is about AFFORDIBILITY. If we stay focused on affordability and making wealthy people like Bruce’s neighbors pay their fair share in taxes, working class people can live in a more affordable Seattle.
It’s about more than just affordability. It’s about public safety, competent team building and competent planning to get things done. Harrell was handed a damaged Seattle with homeless in all parks and on freeway medians. Rampant car theft, catalytic converter theft, property crime, shoplifting and fentanyl.overdoses. police morale at all time low due to Carmen Best fired and Council voting to defund police just a month after voting unanimously to provide more police funding. We were in chaos. Bruce came in and very quickly turned this around. Many many homeless were housed in newly opened supportive housing thru massive outreach. Now we are getting back on track but there is still more to do and we need Harrell in office to complete the job.