By Erica C. Barnett
Is Mayor Katie Wilson proving herself to be a “gaffe”-prone executive, stumbling and bumbling her way into damaging missteps, as Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat argued recently? Or is she exactly who she appeared to be on the campaign trail—an authentic lifelong activist with socialist leanings who refuses to play the game pundits like Westneat want her to play? That’s our first topic on the Seattle Nice podcast this week.
Here’s my take: Westneat’s column was a confusing, first-pass confabulation of unrelated incidents, including a Starbucks rally before Wilson took office, an out-of-context remark about millionaires fleeing the state in response to taxes, and a comment Wilson made at an event in February about social housing.
In addition to these “gaffes,” Westneat was incensed that Wilson allowed a city staffer to steer her briefly away from KOMO’s Chris Daniels, who was interviewing the mayor in a one-on-one after a press conference where she took questions from all members of the media.
(Westneat, like most pundits and the Seattle Times editorial board, failed to summon similar outrage when Wilson’s centrist predecessor, Bruce Harrell, routinely deployed the phrase “how dare anyone question” him when deflecting questions he didn’t want to answer, ended press conferences abruptly, and was rude to unfavored reporters, including on Election Night 2021 when he literally pretended I was invisible. Wonder why.)
Although Daniels, Westneat and seemingly everyone who’s still on X treated this brief faux pas as an assault on journalism itself, Wilson actually did answer the question—which was about whether a recent shooting made her want to add more surveillance cameras faster. (No.)
Sandeep and David think there’s something deeper here—Sandeep in particular argued that it’s important to play nice with the business community—but I think what’s really going on is that people who didn’t want Wilson to win in the first place are now angry that she isn’t playing the usual political games by slapping backs and spooning up sound-bite pablum on command. Despite their outrage about this supposed assault on the free press, it’s clear that Westneat and the rest of the pundit class are perfectly happy when politicians give meaningless comments like “that’s a great question, Chris, and it’s a matter of great concern to me,” as long as the politicians treat them like they’re important.
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Case in point: Westneat praised Wilson’s counterpart at King County, County Executive Girmay Zahilay, for giving “a classic ‘I feel your pain’ answer” to the question Wilson was answering—at much greater length than the out-of-context clip—about millionaires leaving Seattle because of the new state tax. “He said he supports progressive revenue, but that every policy has trade-offs that ought to be acknowledged,” Westneat wrote. Then Wilson “did the very thing Zahilay had just suggested was bad to do.” She was honest. No wonder the pundit class hates her guts!
Later in the podcast, we talked about a couple of stories I covered last week: A proposal to create 750-foot “buffer zones” around schools, child care centers, and parks where new tiny house village shelters would be prohibited, and the ongoing fallout from a damning forensic evaluation of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority’s finances, which has left many of the people with the power to shut down the agency convinced it’s time to do so.
Can’t put low barrier shelters near schools? What about single women and kids?
Me thinks thou doth protesteth too much. Seriously, this post is over-the-top, and you are much too thin-skinned, Erica. Danny Westneat was not “outraged” or any of the other terms you pulled out of your, uh, Thesaurus. Westneat, like Sandeep Kaushik, is merely calling out unforced errors. While I, like others, *want* Katie Wilson to be successful, her incredible lack of experience is showing. One can only hope she gets her stuff together soon, or Seattle may go back to the incompetent Hell that were the Administrations of Jenny Durkan and Mike McGinn — other people who had ZERO experience as elected officials. Given Seattle’s record with electing people with no experience these past 16 years, maybe the blame for our troubles belong on voters.
I think it goes deeper…
The people not voting for Katie are trying to low key trap her into a news story of ANY kind. Lay awake at night thinking about “the gotchya” attacks. They want her to fail. She won’t fail.
Erica, I think Wilson’s doing a pretty good job, and I really want her to succeed. But your outrage (or annoyance, or however you want to frame it) over Westneat’s criticism is misplaced. Wilson may be an “authentic lifelong activist,” but that’s not the job she currently holds. She is the mayor of a major American city. A large part of a politician’s job description is leadership, and an authentic piece of that is public theatrical performance. The best politicians know how to enact effective policies, run the machinery of government, and also play to the crowd. But a mayor’s crowd is very different from an activist’s crowd. It’s not inauthentic for an office holder (or activist, for that matter) to tailor her theatrical performance to win over an audience. It’s a crucial component of both jobs. Overall, Wilson has been really good at showing where she stands, demonstrating what she understands, and explaining how she hopes to take action. I think Westneat was pointing out that she’s also made a few unforced errors that undercut what she’s trying to pull off. That shouldn’t be surprising: politics is an extraordinarily complicated and difficult job, and this is the first time Wilson has ever held office. A Mayor Elect calls on residents to boycott one of the city’s most influential employers: unforced error. A Mayor disdainfully waves g’bye to wealthy residents whose taxes we need to pay for programs we like: unforced error. I hate Starbucks and I’m disgusted that super wealthy people won’t pony up tax money they won’t even notice once they’ve paid it. But I’m not the freakin’ Mayor of Seattle. Katie Wilson is. Harrell was a good public speaker but that’s ALL he was; he’d been around long enough that everyone knew he never did shit. I hope Wilson continues to learn the differences between activism and politics. Then we’ll get to experience the joy of watching a great politician from our side of the fence get things done.
If the privilege of living in the best place in America is too much to pay it forward?
Bye!