By Erica C. Barnett and Andrew Engelson

Mayor Bruce Harrell’s election night party started with an empty room—an hour before results came in, a handful of staff filled a corner of the vast, brightly lit Royal Esquire Club on Rainier Ave. S.—and ended with a prayer, as First AME Pastor Carey Anderson praised Jesus and asked God to “do what you do best and give us victory.”

Harrell himself seemed cautiously pleased with the night’s results, which put him at ahead of his challenger, labor activist Katie Wilson, 53.3 to 46.2 percent.

“This is still a nail-biter,” Harrell said shortly after the night’s tally of around 120,000 votes came in. “I mean, we know how votes change. I’d rather be where we are right now than where my opponent is, let me put it that way.”

“We always keep things positive,” Harrell said. We see a half full glass everywhere we go, because that’s our North Star.”

Across town, at an overflowing hall at El Centro de la Raza on Beacon Hill, Wilson said the numbers were “promising,” and suggested that the result could come down to the wire. “We are going to be pulling out all the stops in the next couple of weeks between now and when ballots are certified to make sure that every vote is counted,” she said.

“If we prevail in this race, which is very possible,  I want everyone in this great city of ours to have a roof over their head. I want world class transit. Stable, affordable housing for renters. 

Despite the less-than-definitive results, the crowd at Wilson’s event was buoyant and loud.  “This is your city,” Wilson told the crowd, who chanted, “Katie, Katie, Katie!” in response (At around the same moment, the crowd at the Royal Esquire Club was chanting “Bruce, Bruce, Bruce!”)

The uncertain result for the progressive activist trailing the establishment mayor contrasted starkly to election victories for progressives elsewhere in the country, including Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani, who defeated Andrew Cuomo in the New York City mayor’s race, and Democrats claiming the governor’s mansions in Virginia and New York. 

Wilson’s campaign consultant Jake Simpson said he hoped the remaining votes would break strongly in Wilson’s favor. “This is well within the realm of what we were thinking was possible to overcome,” Simpson said. “We don’t feel like it’s an unsurmountable deficit.”

Harrell may currently lead by a 7.1-point margin, but in Seattle, late votes from younger, more left-leaning voters often swing races by eight points or more once all the votes are tallied. (Election-night results typically represent people who voted shortly after getting their ballots, a group that tends to skew older and more conservative).

On primary election night, Harrell had 44.9 percent of the vote to Wilson’s 46.2. with six other candidates splitting the rest of the votes; by the time all the ballots were counted, Wilson had increased her lead over Harrell to 50.8 to 41.2, meaning that Wilson gained 8.6 points once all the ballots were counted. If Wilson gained a similar amount in the general, she would defeat Harrell by 1.5 points.

But nothing in elections is apples to apples—more voters turn out for general elections than primaries, and candidates going after later, undecided voters have more time to sway the electorate with ads, mailers, and other last-minute persuasion efforts.

In the weeks leading up to the election, Harrell hit Wilson hard on several fronts, arguing that (as a college dropout whose parents helped her pay for child care during the campaign) she was too privileged and out of touch; lacked Harrell’s long experience in government, where he’s been for most of the last 20 years; and would send Seattle backward by allowing homeless encampments to proliferate and defunding the police.

Wilson, who said on election night that she was “glad we ran a clean campaign,” didn’t attack Harrell with similar vigor, leaving that to a union-backed PAC that just wasn’t as ferocious as the $2 million independent effort against Wilson, which was the source of some of the most intense (and misleading) attacks on her experience. (Several mailers from the Bruce Harrell for Seattle’s Future PAC printed a CV Wilson submitted to the city when applying for a board position 10 years ago and claimed it was her current résumé.)

Instead of striking back—focusing on, for example, concerns about Harrell’s ethics while in office, his frequent out-of-town travel, his troubled police department, or the allegations of misogyny against him—Wilson focused on her key issue‚ affordability, ducking opportunities to slam her opponent even as he treated her with clear, sometimes discomfiting contempt.

Campaign volunteer Suresh Chanmugam, an organizer with Tech 4 Housing, said he appreciated that Wilson kept it positive while Harrell went low.“They looked at internal polls and [going negative] was the only choice they had,” Chanmugan said. “They have all the money and they know that their only tactic is to spew half-truths and really negative character assassinations on someone who’s incredibly selfless.”

Harrell’s campaign party was filled with mayoral staffers, department heads, and other people who depend on Harrell for their positions. Down the street at Black and Tan Hall, where future city attorney Erika Evans, future city councilmember Dionne Foster, and victorious council incumbent Alexis Mercedes Rinck were celebrating their wins, one person quipped that the party was neutral ground—a place city employees could go without worrying they’d be caught failing to support the mayor, as they would if they attended Wilson’s party.

When PubliCola arrived, shortly before 9, we were told the place had “emptied out”—meaning it was only a mildly suffocating concentration of people—but that before the results were in, there had been a line down the block. The party was a foregone celebration. Rinck beat Republican fringe candidate Rachel Savage 79-21 to retain her citywide Position 8 seat, while Foster defeated incumbent Position 9 Councilmember Sara Nelson 58 to 42 percent. Evans beat Republican City Attorney Ann Davison 63 to 37 percent.

District 2 winner Eddie Lin, who was holding a splinter party of his own on Beacon Hill (just kidding, but our three-person election-night team couldn’t get there) was defeating staffer Adonis Ducksworth 69 to 31. It was a low-profile race with two affable candidates who genuinely seemed to get along, making them a boring breath of fresh air among many tense contests.

The race for King County Executive, like the Seattle mayor’s race, is still up in the air, with Girmay Zahilay leading his fellow King County Couniclmember Claudia Balducci 50 to 48, a gap of just over 4,000 votes.

The next batch of votes will come in tomorrow afternoon around 4:00; check PubliCola and Bluesky for updates.