Category: Mayor Harrell

Mayor Harrell

Police Chief Shon Barnes Fires Two of SPD’s Top Civilian Staff

By Erica C. Barnett

This morning, Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes fired two of SPD’s top civilian staff, Chief Operating Officer Brian Maxey and General Counsel Rebecca Boatright. The two were members of Barnes’ command staff, and both had worked under multiple police chiefs for a decade.

According to internal sources, Barnes relies heavily on a small, tight-knit team of staffers he hired from outside SPD, including chief of staff Alan Ricketts, crime and Community Harm Reduction Director Lee Hunt, and communications director Barb DeLollis, along with deputy chief Yvonne Underwood. Barnes’ decision to bring in a large cadre of executive-level staff has created a budget issue at SPD, because the chief only has a certain number of executive positions, or “pockets,” he can fill on a permanent basis; firing Maxey and Boatright potentially gives Barnes the authority to move some of his new staff into these permanent roles.

Barnes’ inner circle, which multiple insiders have described as reflexively supportive of the chief’s ideas, did not include Maxey or Boatright, who pushed back on some of his proposals as impractical or politically nuclear. Both were reportedly blindsided repeatedly by some of Barnes’ decisions, including some that blew up publicly for reasons that might have been obvious to people with longer tenure at SPD.

For example, when we reported that Barnes had appointed Michael Tietjen, a former lieutenant who was disciplined for injuring and endangering protesters in 2020 (and who failed to report alleged harassment against a trans woman by officers under his command), Barnes was apparently shocked by the public blowback and angry that no one had warned him Tietjen would be controversial.

After our story ran, Barnes reportedly launched an investigation into who “leaked” the information about the promotion, which SPD had announced on their own Instagram page. There have been multiple efforts to find out who is “leaking” to reporters, including when PubliCola reported on the salaries and bonuses Barnes and his new staff are receiving.

Compared to previous police chiefs, Barnes reportedly spends more time in his office and less time talking directly with sworn officers and others on SPD staff, SPD sources say. Since Harrell hired him earlier this year, Barnes has held one full meeting of his senior command staff.

Boatright and Maxey both worked on SPD’s efforts to comply with a federal consent decree imposed on the department in 2012 in response to allegations of racial bias, excessive force, and inadequate accountability for officers who violate SPD policies or the law. As SPD’s most senior civilian leaders, they carried institutional knowledge about the conditions that landed SPD under federal oversight as well as the reasons the city adopted specific accountability measures in the past.

Without talking to people with institutional knowledge about things like accountability, past contract negotiations, and the relationship between SPD and the public, some worry that Barnes is making decisions untethered from important, Seattle-specific context.

Boatright and Maxey reportedly disagreed with Barnes on some decisions and department initiatives. These included SPD’s recently announced “Dear John” operation, in which SPD detectives stake out men paying for sex on Aurora Ave. N and photograph their cars, sending the photos, along with letters saying they were seen participating in “illegal sexual exploitation,” to the vehicles’ registered owners. The theory behind the surveil-and-shame operation, which deputy Seattle City Attorney Scott Lindsay has been pushing for years, is that embarrassing men who pay for sex, and potentially setting off explosive conflicts with their partners, will reduce the demand for sex work.

It’s unclear whether Harrell directed Barnes to remove Boatright and Maxey, or if he even knew Barnes planned to fire the pair. Harrell’s office declined to answer our questions, saying, “We would defer to SPD related to internal personnel decisions.” (None of our questions for the mayor were about SPD’s internal decision making).

SPD responded to our questions with this statement: “This message is to inform you that Brian Maxey and Becca Boatright are no longer serving in their roles as COO and General Counsel. They served the public with honor. We do not discuss personnel matters. More information regarding the department’s organizational structure will be forthcoming.”

 

Elections, Mayor Harrell

Uncertain Outcome in Mayor’s Race While Progressive Council, City Attorney Candidates Celebrate Wins

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.

Elections, Mayor Harrell

As Mayor, Harrell Paid for Luxury Upgrades on City Trips, Including a $12,000 Flight and $1,000-a-Night Hotels
Screenshot from Mayor Bruce Harrell’s budget speech.

Now he wants voters to believe he represents the working class—and that his opponent, renter Katie Wilson, is an out-of touch-elite.

By Erica C. Barnett

Mayor Bruce Harrell has attacked his opponent Katie Wilson for being insufficiently “working-class,” casting himself as a man of the people running against an out-of-touch elitist who “has never had to struggle because her parents are still paying her bills at age 43,” as a campaign spokesperson put it last month.

Harrell, 67, has been wealthy for decades, and his travel while in office reflects his access to a personal expense account most ordinary travelers would envy. While traveling on city business, the mayor has spent tens of thousands of dollars of his own money to upgrade his accommodations from the economy flights and midrange hotel paid for by the city to purchase first-class flights and luxury accommodations for himself and his wife, Joanne.

Over a two-year period, according to documents obtained through a records request, Harrell spent at least $55,000 on 16 first-class flights to attend conferences, tours, training sessions, and ceremonial events on behalf of the city, among at least 24 out-of-town trips he took during that period.

Hotels for 14 of those trips—the only ones for which the mayor’s office provided hotel expense information—cost at least another $24,000.

Only a small portion of this sum, which represents part of the mayor’s travel between February 2023 and February 2025, was reimbursed by the city; the mayor paid for upgrades, and all of the first lady’s travel, on his own dime.

Generally, the Harrells paid for their travel by credit card (often accumulating Alaska airline points), and received partial reimbursement from the city, reflecting what the same trip would cost for the mayor alone if he was traveling on the city’s middlebrow dime. Harrell was often accompanied by mayoral staff and his security detail on his travels, but the records we received do not include travel costs for the mayor’s retinue.

The records reveal the extent to which Harrell has been out of town while on the job—at least 11 weeks in 2023, seven in 2024, and four weeks in the first six months of 2025. This almost certainly underrepresents the mayor’s travel, since it does not include vacation and may not include every city-sponsored trip; for instance, the documents show almost no travel between August and December 2024, indicating either that the mayor did not leave town for five straight months or that the mayor’s office did not provide complete records for that year.

We chose to look at February 2023 through February 2025 because that was the longest period for which the mayor’s office provided a relatively complete set of records.

The pricey flights and luxe hotels reflect the dramatic wealth gap between of Seattle’s 57th mayor, who reported his family’s net worth at around $15 million in 2021, and most of his constituents, to whom lie-flat airplane beds and $1,000-a-night hotels are far out of reach.

The records, which consist mostly of emails between mayoral staff and Joanne Harrell about travel details and reimbursements, don’t include all hotel and flight expenses. For example, they exclude the cost of hotels and flights for at least seven trips, making a total tally of expenses impossible.

Still, the expense records we did receive show that the Harrells travel in style. Here are a few examples of the expenses the Harrells incurred while traveling on the city’s behalf. In most cases, the city paid only for the estimated cost of an economy class flight and the price for a mid-range hotel, typically between $250 and $300 a night, with the Harrells paying the difference. In some cases, such as the Bloomberg trip, conference organizers were the ones paying the cost of economy fares.

• $2,600 for one first-class ticket for Harrell to attend the Bloomberg City Data Alliance in Baltimore in May 2023;

• $7,800 for two first-class tickets for the Harrells to attend the Seattle Chamber’s annual International Leadership Mission in Bergen, Norway, where—according to the program—attendees discussed “Regional Promotion on the Global Stage Through Tourism,” learned about advancements maritime and airline industry sustainability, and participated in “Sister City Engagements” in Bergen and Reykjavik, Iceland.

• $13,000 for two first-class tickets to Tokyo and Seoul, South Korea in June 2023, for a nine-day trip billed as “G7 trip” in emails between Harrell’s staff and Joanne Harrell. Incomplete travel records for this trip suggest the Harrells’ hotels cost $1,000 for one night in Tokyo and $2,200 for three nights in Seoul.

• $5,500 for two first-class flights and $2,600 for three nights in a hotel in Washington, D.C. in 2024 for a trip that included a state dinner at the White House.

• $3,500 for two first-class tickets to Columbus, Ohio for a two-night trip to attend the US Conference of Mayors’ annual event. According to the mayoral staffer who calculated the city’s reimbursement, an economy-class ticket for the same trip was about $550.

The mayor is obviously free to spend his wealth however he chooses. But Harrell has repeatedly claimed the “working class” mantle in order attack his opponent, who shares a one-bedroom apartment with her husband and young child, as comparatively privileged and out of touch. It’s unclear whether voters who struggle to pay their own bills will buy into Harrell’s claim that he’s just like them.

Elections, Mayor Harrell, podcasts

Seattle Nice: Closing Arguments in the Mayoral Election, and a $5,000-a-Week “Outreach” Consultant

By Erica C. Barnett

On the final Seattle Nice episode before Tuesday’s election (look for our post-election show in your feed later this week!), the guys and I debated the two mayoral candidates’ closing arguments. Bruce Harrell, the incumbent, has argued that his opponent Katie Wilson lacks his experience in government and is a privileged brat because she dropped out of college and her parents have helped her pay for child care as she campaigns. Katie Wilson has argued that Harrell’s policies cater to his corporate backers and leave working and poor people behind; also, “he’s bad at the budget.”

David said no one he knows is enthusiastic about either Wilson or Harrell; I said he probably isn’t talking to younger people, or not-so-younger renters, who can’t afford Seattle’s ever-rising rent. Sandeep said Wilson’s supporters are part of the “movement Left.” That’s not how I’d describe Wilson’s base, which seems motivated by a candidate whose chief focus has been making Seattle more affordable, rather than maintaining the status quo.

We also discussed a story I wrote last week about Abdul Yusuf, the Eastside for Hire owner who’s getting $5,000 a week from the Harrell campaign for unspecified “outreach” in the Somali community. David and Sandeep both said it didn’t seem that unusual to them (Sandeep compared it to “walking-around money” distributed before elections in the 20th century South; David wanted to know how a campaign giving an individual $25,000 for “outreach” is any different than the way labor unions and business PACs spend money supporting candidates.

PubliCola is supported entirely by readers like you.
CLICK BELOW to become a one-time or monthly contributor.

Support PubliCola

 

As the author of the story, I argued that the two things have little in common. Unlike PACs, which put out campaign materials like ads and mailers, the nature of Yusuf’s work is unclear (although rumors abound). According to the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission, he isn’t registered to collect democracy vouchers (worth up to $100 per voter) on behalf of any campaign, which anyone gathering vouchers is required to do. Nor has he ever done any consulting work for any campaign in the state prior to Harrell’s; his main lobbying work has been on behalf of rideshare drivers as the vice president of Drive Forward, the Uber-backed group that recently advocated against higher minimum wages for delivery drivers.

As I noted in my story, Yusuf’s weekly pay is the same amount his campaign consultant, Christian Sinderman, makes in a month. It’s also more than any full-time Harrell campaign staffer earns in a month, according to campaign finance reports.

Elections, homelessness, Mayor Harrell, Police, Seattle Nice, Trump

This Week on PubliCola: November 2, 2025

Exclusive election reporting, a Seattle City Attorney debate, SPD participates in Trump’s “Operation Take Back America,” and more.

Monday, October 27

Seattle’s Nicest City Attorney Debate

Seattle Nice moderated a debate between incumbent Ann Davison and challenger Erika Evans, and you can still listen to it before Election Day! The candidates debated the uses of Davison’s “high utilizers” list of frequent misdemeanor offenders, the elimination of community court (a therapeutic alternative to prosecution), and banishment zones for drug users and sex work.

City Official Used Internal Teams Chat to Solicit Department Directors’ Contact Info on Behalf of Harrell Campaign

PubliCola reported exclusively that the Office of Economic Development director under Mayor Bruce Harrell, Markham McIntyre, used an internal city of Seattle system to solicit department heads’ contact information on behalf of Harrell’s campaign; department heads who provided their information through the city Teams chat got emails from the campaign asking to help get Harrell reeelected.

Tuesday, October 28

A Closer Look at Mayor Harrell’s Rickety 2026 City Budget Proposal

We took a deep dive into Mayor Bruce Harrell’s 2026 budget, which uses a series of short-term budget tricks to pay for a ton of new spending next year while creating massive budget shortfalls for the future mayor and city council. The council’s proposed budget amendments only make this structural problem worse by piling on still more new spending.

PubliCola is supported entirely by readers like you.
CLICK BELOW to become a one-time or monthly contributor.

Support PubliCola

Harrell Campaign Paid a Consultant $5,000 a Week for “Outreach and Engagement,” Won’t Say Why

Another PubliCola exclusive: The Harrell campaign paid Abdul Yusuf, a rideshare company owner active in the Somali community, $5,000 a week—the same amount Harrell’s consultant Christian Sinderman gets from the campaign in a month—to do unspecified “outreach and engagement” to the Somali community. The nature of this outreach is unclear; Yusuf is not authorized by the city to collect vouchers for the campaign.

With Their Jobs on the Line, Half the City’s Department Heads Gave to Harrell’s Campaign

It’s not unusual for some city employees to give money to the incumbent. What is highly unusual is for more than half the city’s department heads and director-level employees to donate to their boss, as they have to Harrell. The donations suggest less a spontaneous outpouring of support for the mayor than an expectation that donating to Harrell’s campaign is a good form of job security.

Friday, October 31

UPDATED: Homelessness Authority Cuts 28 Positions, Including Deputy CEO, Finance Director, and General Counsel

The King County Regional Homelessness Authority laid off 13 staff and cut 15 vacant positions, citing a need to save nearly $5 million in administrative costs the city has declined to fund. These jobs include several top executive roles, including the deputy CEO with whom CEO Kelly Kinnison clashed over Kinnison’s hiring decisions. In an internal email announcing the layoffs, Kinnison also said she was hiring five new positions, including three executive-level staff.

SPD Drug Arrests Were Part of Trump’s Anti-Immigrant “Operation Take Back America”

In a press release from the Trump Department of Justice, SPD Chief Shon Barnes thanked “federal partners” for aiding in the arrests of 10 people accused of participating in a drug-trafficking ring earlier this week. The arrests were part of an anti-immigration effort by the Trump Administration called “Operation Take Back America,” whose top goal is to “repel the invasion of illegal immigration.”

Drugs, Mayor Harrell, Police, Trump

SPD Drug Arrests Were Part of Trump’s Anti-Immigrant “Operation Take Back America”
Police Chief Shon Barnes speaks at a recent press conference.

By Erica C. Barnett

Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes celebrated earlier this week after an anti-drug trafficking operation recovered fentanyl, guns, and cash from a stash house in Sammamish. The operation resulted in at least 10 arrests.

“This violent organization not only trafficked dangerous drugs but was responsible for putting firearms on our city streets,” Barnes said in a press release. “I’m thankful for the great work of our Seattle Police officers and our federal partners.”

Which federal partners was Barnes referring to? The arrests, conducted in collaboration with the US Drug Enforcement Administration, were part of a Department of Justice effort called Operation Take Back America established in a Trump executive order whose primary purpose is “Repelling the Invasion of Illegal Immigration.” All 10 people arrested in the operation have Hispanic surnames.

Trump’s order, according to the press release for which Barnes provided a quote, is “a nationwide initiative that marshals the full resources of the Department of Justice to repel the invasion of illegal immigration, achieve the total elimination of cartels and transnational criminal organizations (TCOs), and protect our communities from the perpetrators of violent crime.” In addition to focusing on “Transnational Criminal organizations… such as Tren de Aragua (TdA) and Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13 ),” the order expresses support for “bringing back the death penalty” for certain drug-related capital crimes.

Court records do not yet indicate what penalties the DOJ plans to seek against the men, who have all been indicted on felony charges in the US District Court of Western Washington. But the Trump Administration’s approach to both drug trafficking and immigration, in general, has been appalling.

In addition to just straight-up killing people on boats and claiming they were “traffickers,” the Trump administration has falsely accused many immigrants of being members of Tren de Aragua and MS-13, including Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was wrongly deported to El Salvador and is currently fighting a second deportation attempt. Operation Take Back America has resulted in thousands of arrests so far, including “1,300 illegal aliens,” as the DOJ put it in a different press release, during a single operation in May.

State law prohibits state and local law enforcement agencies from participating in civil immigration enforcement—for example, by helping out in ICE raids. Earlier this month, Harrell issued two executive orders on immigration—one affirming and strenghtening the city’s commitment to the state law, and one committing to spend more money on immigration services and ban law enforcement officers from wearing masks to conceal their identities.

Neither Harrell’s office nor SPD responded to our questions about the Operation Take Back America arrests.