Our latest podcast episode (subscribe and get a new one every week!) focuses on the mayor’s race—how Katie Wilson won it, why she won it, and how incumbent mayor Bruce Harrell tried very hard to keep her from winning it.
I kicked things off by talking about Harrell’s not-so-gracious concession speech and Q&A with reporters, in which he suggested baselessly that there were “anomalies” in King County Elections’ vote count and grumped at a reporter who asked, reasonably enough, if he understood what it was it was like to struggle with affordability in Seattle in 2025.
Harrell, who worked as a corporate attorney before being elected to the city council in 2007, told a reporter it was “offensive” to even ask that question, given that he spent his whole life suffering from “scars” such as having to share one bathroom in the Central District house his parents owned. (The fact that Harrell frequently brought up this fairly common annoyance with living in an older house as proof he relates to the present-day challenges of working people in Seattle says a lot about why he lost).
History probably won’t care about the fact that Harrell and his allies used tired misogynistic tropes to attack Wilson, painting her as a privileged, Oxford-educated princess who never worked a day in her life, but I do—especially since Harrell’s gendered attacks created the playbook for national right-wing media like Fox and the New York Post, which will probably never tire of calling her a hypocritical socialist who “lives off her parents’ money.” (If you’re not familiar with this trumped-up issue, Wilson’s parents helped her pay for day care temporarily so she could campaign).
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Sandeep suggested it’s a bit hypocritical for left-leaning white people who “got on the identity train” a few years ago to “throw over the Black, Asian mayor” in favor of a white woman now; Harrell banged this drum at length during his campaign, suggesting that “Seattle’s Black community” monolithically supported him and his policies. And David asked whether I’m not a bit hypocritical for
defending Wilson, who has never worked in government, after criticizing the new city council voters elected in 2023, most of whom had little or no government experience. (This one didn’t feel correct to me—in general, council members don’t have much or any government experience—so I looked it up. Turns out: Nope! I criticized the incoming council cohort for their policy positions and the things they said about how local government works, which were often simplistic.)
Also, for some goddamn reason, we’re still debating whether Wilson promised to lower the price of pizza (she didn’t!)
Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts, and tune in later this week for a special bonus episode.
