By Josh Feit

Desperate to make anything stick to our unflappable and breezy left-wing mayor, Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat tried to create the narrative that Mayor Katie Wilson is prone to gaffes. He didn’t mean it in the same way the damaging label once dogged klutzy president Gerald Ford in the 1970s. (Ask Claude about Ford and the Air Force One stairs.) Or the way we mean it when we talk about Trump getting his facts wrong 24-7. What Westneat means is: Wilson has said a few things about tax policy that he disagrees with. He’s evidently the keeper of common sense.

On several occasions now, Wilson has acknowledged, with gusto and millennial nonchalance, that she’s not cowed by the business class.  Specifically, when questioned about the state’s new “millionaires’ tax” during a recent appearance at Seattle University, Wilson mockingly said “bye” to rich people who choose to flee. And while promoting progressive tax policy at an earlier event, Wilson described Seattle as “filthy rich.”

She was hardly wrong. Between 2013 and 2023, the number of millionaires in Seattle grew by 72 percent, putting us in the company of other tech boom towns like Austin and the San Francisco Bay Area.

To characterize Wilson’s statements as “gaffes,” Westneat assumes Wilson has unwittingly said what she really thinks—and, more importantly, that she’s been nefariously hiding something.

But she hasn’t been hiding anything. That’s what drives Westneat bonkers. The editorial team at the Seattle Times still can’t wrap its head around the fact that Wilson openly ran as a socialist and won. They’re now rationalizing her victory by pretending she has a secret agenda.

Westneat calls Wilson’s pronouncements “revealing.”  Only to someone who’d be surprised to find books in a library.

Wilson, the first mayor in memory who seems to actually like the job, is brazen about being a Capitol Hill lefty. In March, I saw Wilson wear her politics on her thrift-store sleeve during an address to Seattle’s capitalist class in a convention center ballroom at the Downtown Seattle Association’s annual State of Downtown event. Just like the supposed gotcha fodder she hand-delivered at Seattle U, when she insouciantly defended progressive taxes, she gleefully reiterated the same pro-tax message to the business crowd at the DSA. She openly described herself to the ruling class in attendance as “a progressive and a socialist”—and then paused to say it again, in case anybody missed it.

There’s just no gotcha to get. These aren’t “gaffes.” Wilson said what she she openly believes, including her assessment that the narrative about millionaires fleeing the state is, as she told the SU crowd, “overblown.” And she’s right. As the New York Times reported this week in a story about Wilson’s co-conspirator, NYC mayor Zohran Mandami: “Research shows that past tax increases by states have not led to an exodus of wealthy residents.”

It’s also important to note that Wilson’s derisive comment was specifically about the tiny number of high-income people who may leave the state—as opposed to those who may grumble, but decide living in a thriving city like Seattle is worth paying higher taxes. She isn’t demonizing the wealthy. She’s ridiculing wealthy people who don’t prioritize their larger community.

There’s also another group of people in Wilson’s calculation. Lower-income people who don’t have the luxury of deciding whether or not to stay, but instead, are forced out by Seattle’s insuperable cost of living. Raising taxes on the wealthy to pay for affordable housing and transit is one way to help make sure working-class residents aren’t displaced. Which is a much more pressing and concrete concern for a mayor than the notion of millionaires on the lam.

“We continue to have one of the most regressive tax systems in the country in this state,” Wilson said with typical candor at a pro-social housing event in February, evidently sounding like Che Guevara or, I don’t know, centrist state Democratic Sen. Jamie Pedersen (D-43, Seattle). (Pedersen led the charge for the state’s new tax on people who make more than a million dollars a year.) “It is very gratifying to know that we’re going to be able to use a little bit of that wealth and put it to work building housing and operating housing,” Wilson concluded. 

In another recent attempt by the conservative media to catch Wilson in a supposed gaffe, talk radio seized on a press conference last month where she announced a new bus lane. They accused her of  being privileged because she said she takes her daughter to Seattle Center on Metro’s Route 8. (Yep. Taking the L8 up Denny is apparently elitist.)

Unsurprisingly, the ploy didn’t work. Wilson, who co-founded the Transit Riders Union and ran on improving bus lanes, simply doubled down on her new bus-only lane plan and playfully trolled the apoplectic media on Instagram.

In case the Seattle Times doesn’t follow Wilson’s Reels, they might want to watch this one, because she offers up another consistent core belief that they could spin as a “gaffe.” Wilson said: “As our city keeps growing, there just isn’t room to keep adding more cars to our roads. When we make it possible for more people to choose public transit for more trips, more people can get where they want to go and everyone wins, including those who drive.”

Trying to portray Wilson as gaffe-prone when all she’s doing is demonstrating her commitment to the progressive agenda that she openly ran on last year is just sour grapes from the Seattle Times. It also shows how flummoxed they are with her casual charisma. As they reported themselves last year, the anti-Wilson campaign couldn’t get traditional anti-left memes to stick to her. This latest iteration doesn’t track either.