Elections

In Anti-Incumbent Rout, Progressive Candidates Lead In All Local Races

By Erica C. Barnett and Andrew Engelson

Call it the “Fuck Trump” effect. That, at least, was the most common explanation I heard on Tuesday night for the progressive rout that had left-leaning candidates destroying centrist and conservative incumbents. After two successive backlash elections in which centrists and a Republican (City Attorney Ann Davison) won election after election, voters are fed up with the status quo.

This is part of a national trend—plenty of social media pundits, along with The Nation, have declared Katie Wilson “Seattle’s answer to Zohran Mamdani”—but it’s also a specific response to local politicians who have prioritized police over human services, surveillance over safety, and trees over housing.

From City Attorney Ann Davison (losing to challenger Erika Evans 37 to 51 percent) to City Councilmember Sara Nelson (losing to progressive challenger Dionne Foster 39 to 54 percent) to Mayor Bruce Harrell (losing to labor organizer and transit activist Katie Wilson 45 to 46 percent), progressives ran the table on Tuesday night.

At Harrell’s outdoor party on the back patio of Bluwater Bistro in Leschi, there was no TV or obvious group of campaign staff monitoring the night’s results, and the crowd was visibly unbothered as they mingled over a buffet that included kebabs, whole Dungeness crabs, and a white sheet cake. Harrell spoke for just a few minutes, emphasizing the need to “tell the story” of the city’s success. “I don’t take a lot of shots” against opponents, Harrell said. (Earlier in the day, the mayor sent out an email blast that harshly criticized Wilson for appearing on a controversial Youtuber’s show, suggesting she had poor judgment).

“We talk about public safety—we know we’re creating a safer Seattle. We’re talking about transportation. We … talk about climate change. We know we’re going to save our planet, our water and our air. We’re talking about housing affordability,” Harrell said.

During a brief interview after his speech, Harrell told PubliCola he thought the progress his administration has made in the past few months just isn’t well known by voters yet; he cited work on the city’s comprehensive plan (which was delayed a year), the city’s Real Time Crime Center and CCTV cameras, and progress on housing construction.

Across town on Beacon Hill, at Wilson’s election-night party at El Centro de la Raza, the mood was joyous. Wilson, a community activist and co-founder and general secretary of the Transit Riders Union who has never held elected office, told supporters, “By the time all the ballots are counted, our numbers are  going to go up. We are very much in this race. And we are going to build the biggest ground game Seattle has ever seen.”

“Bruce Harrell is doing a bad job,” Wilson said over cheers. “We’re going to fix that in November.”

“We knew we had momentum, but you never know until you know,” Wilson told PubliCola. “The numbers are pretty freaking great.”

Volunteer Austin Schey, who moved to Seattle just a year ago and spent a month knocking on doors and tabling for Wilson, said he was impressed with Wilson’s focusing on housing  and affordability.

“I see Katie as someone that actually cares about people,  So many of our politicians are wealthy homeowners out of touch with what people actually need. She’s not a wealthy person. She’s worked odd jobs. She knows how the system works and she knows what people need.”

Over on Capitol Hill, a joint party for incumbent Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck (defeating several challengers with 75 percent), Evans, and Foster was still going strong well past 10 pm, as jubilant supporters hung out at Stoup Brewing to celebrate victories for three progressive women of color. (Earlier in the evening, a conga line briefly formed).

Rinck told PubliCola she was looking forward to working with new colleagues to focus on issues like affordability and fighting federal funding cuts (her colleagues Nelson and Maritza Rivera endorsed her opponent Ray Rogers, who ended election night with less than 5 percent), and added that a progressive city attorney would be less likely to focus on priorities that harm people, like banishment zones for drug use and sex work, and more likely to file proactive lawsuits against the Trump Administration. Overall, Rinck said, “I’m in the clouds right now.”

Foster told PubliCola that many voters she spoke to specifically cited Nelson’s emphasis on policies they didn’t support, like rolling back gig worker minimum wages and weakening city ethics rules, as reasons they were voting against her.

Her campaign talked to people “who were frustrated about the comprehensive plan not getting delivered on time” and wondered “what’s going on with council members leaving City Hill early,” before the end of their terms. (Tammy Morales and Cathy Moore were both elected in 2023 and left early in their terms.) “Or, why are we arresting protesters—what is going on?”

Evans said the thing she heard most frequently from voters was that they never see Ann Davison out in the community, talking to people about what their priorities are. “Community organizations don’t hear from her,” Evans said. “She’s not asking them, hey, what are the things you care about, as opposed to just like her putting forth her own pet policies.”

In other local races, Eddie Lin, a land use attorney at the city, was leading Adonis Ducksworth, a longtime SDOT outreach staffer and onetime transportation advisor to Harrell, 46 to 31. In the county executive race, County Councilmember Girmay Zahilay led fellow Councilmember Claudia Balducci 4o to 30. And funding for democracy vouchers, Seattle’s public campaign finance program, was winning 56 to 44.

Tonight’s results likely represent the high-water mark for centrist candidates; later results tend to benefit progressive candidates, so the margin of victory for progressive candidates will likely rise.

As one of my Seattle Nice podcast co-hosts put it Tuesday, it was a “bloodbath” for Seattle’s centrist incumbents—a backlash to the backlash.

City Council, Taxes

Business Tax Will Be on November Ballot, Despite Council Objections Over Spending “Buckets”

By Erica C. Barnett

Over objections from some council members that the proposal was “rushed” or that it funds the wrong things, the Seattle City Council voted to place a tax increase for the city’s highest-grossing businesses on the November ballot. If it passes, the “Seattle Shield” proposal would direct new revenues toward housing, homelessness, food security, and other spending areas that are typically vulnerable during budget deficits and at risk of losing federal funding under the Trump Administration.

The proposal, which Counclmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck and Mayor Bruce Harrell rolled out in June, would raise the business and occupation tax exemption from $100,000 to $2 million in gross revenues, exempting most Seattle businesses from the tax, while increasing the tax rate for revenues above $2 million, netting about $90 million a year.

Amendments passed last week, including two from Councilmember Maritza Rivera exempting Children’s Hospital and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center from the tax, reduced that total to about $81 million a year. Other amendments expanded the potential uses of the new tax to include substance use treatment, business workforce development and storefront repair, and—the broadest spending category—”transportation.”

An amendment from Bob Kettle would make the tax exemption up to $2 million a year permanent (otherwise, the exemption would revert back to $100,000) and reduce the higher tax on large businesses to make it revenue neutral, meaning it would only pay for the tax break for smaller businesses. The city estimates that in 2026, the tax breaks will cost around $61 million.

Councilmember Bob Kettle, who ultimately joined the unanimous vote to move the proposal to the November ballot, said he would much prefer that the council not stipulate how the increased tax revenues would be spent, instead sending a ballot measure to voters that asked them to approve an all-purpose tax that could be used for any need the mayor or council identifies in the future.

Comparing the ballot measure to the council-approved JumpStart payroll tax, which was originally earmarked for housing, Green New Deal priorities, and small business assistance, Kettle said the council only fixed that “problem” last year, when it formally eliminated all spending restrictions on the tax.

“I’m generally opposed to the use of categories or buckets, as some may say. I believe they were a mistake in the payroll expense tax, since over the years, conditions change, but the legislation remains the same,” Kettle said. “I also believe that categories, or buckets, in this B&O legislation was a mistake, in the sense that buckets begets buckets”—a reference to the expansion of the spending categories. “You know, our focus should be on the deficit. … And I think our focus should be for a clean bill to ensure that we are fiscally responsible, that meets the needs of our city.”

It is, of course, unknown whether voters would support a so-called “clean bill” that did not specify any purpose for a tax increase they were being asked to approve. But in general, every local ballot measure calling for a tax increase has had some purpose, whether it’s the transportation levy, the housing levy, the preschool and Seattle Promise levy, the tax we pay to fund emergency medical services, or any other voter-approved tax increase in local taxes.

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A levy “to fix the general fund deficit” would not only be a hard sell to many voters (who wouldn’t know whether new taxes would fund police hiring bonuses or food banks), it would incorporate the assumption that the city will continue going into each budget year with a deficit for the duration of the levy—not exactly “fiscally responsible” financial planning.

Rivera, too, appeared generally dissatisfied with the proposal, saying the six-week process to approve it was “rushed” and that she would also have preferred to send it to voters as a general tax increase to address the current deficit.

“Rather than single out items, this money should have just gone to the general fund and then when the mayor was putting together the budget that he sends us, he could have then considered this funding along with all the other funding,” Rivera said. “That would have been the good governance way to do this. But that is not how this moved forward.”

As I reported last month, Rivera was the first council member to publicly propose asking voters to approve a tax increase for undefined “general fund” purposes, arguing that the city can’t predict what needs will emerge in the future. Rivera has also suggested the city could take dedicated funds from the city’s housing levy and using them to backfill the general fund in the short term, paying back the loaned dollars later and foregoing some potential housing. Editor’s note: This story originally said Bob Kettle backed Rivera’s idea of using housing levy dollars to backfill the general fund; his office said this isn’t the case, so we’ve corrected the story to reflect that.

City Council, Courts, Elections, Mayor Harrell, podcasts, Taxes

Seattle Nice: Seattle Sues Trump, Camping Ban Proposed, Business Tax Hike Heads to Ballot

By Erica C. Barnett

On this week’s episode, we discussed the broader implications of a proposed ballot initiative that would make it illegal to fall asleep outdoors anywhere in unincorporated King County. If enacted—proponents are still gathering signatures to put it on the ballot—the measure would make it a misdemeanor to sleep outdoors.

The proposal does stipulate that the sheriff’s office should only enforce the sleeping ban if shelter is available, but includes a carveout for situations where an officer believes someone poses a risk to himself or others, which is mechanically similar to Seattle rules allowing no-notice sweeps if someone is causing an “obstruction” in any public space, an exemption the city has interpreted quite liberally.

Whether the proposal ends up passing or not, it’s part of a broader growing intolerance for people who are visibly homeless in public spaces—one that goes hand in hand with anti-Housing First efforts to force people into treatment while they’re still homeless or unstably housed.

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We also discussed the proposed Seattle ballot measure that would raise business and occupation taxes on high-grossing businesses, using the proceeds to support housing stability, food security, shelter, substance use disorder treatment, and transportation. (The bill was originally more limited, but councilmembers piled on new spending categories and exemptions last week). After amendments to exempt Fred Hutchinson Cancer Care Center and Children’s Hospital from the tax, it will—if it passes—bring in about $90 million a year.

The three of us debated whether the tax proposal was, as Sandeep suggested, “rushed” forward to give Mayor Bruce Harrell a last-minute boost before the primary election (mail in your ballots or drop them off at an official ballot drop box before Tuesday night at 8pm!)

Harrell has certainly jumped on more than one progressive bandwagon in recent weeks to bolster his lefty bona fides in his race against progressive labor and transit activist Katie Wilson. In addition to coming out for the B&O tax, which Rinck was reportedly working on long before Harrell got wind of it, the mayor just endorsed a lawsuit against the Trump Administration filed by City Attorney Ann Davison—another local official who appears to be in for a tough reelection battle and could benefit from being able to say she proactively sued the Trump Administration, even if it took her until the week before Election Day.

City Council

New Forecast Reduces City’s Projected Revenue Shortfall to $150 Million

 

Sales tax revenues have declined in Seattle, thanks largely to a slowdown in construction.

The change comes largely from the shift from a “pessimistic” to “baseline” revenue forecast scenario.

By Erica C. Barnett

Seattle’s August revenue forecast, which will form the basis of the 2026-2027 biennial budget, reduced the. city’s projected two-year budget shortfall from around $240 million to about $150 million, thanks largely to the Economic Revenue Forecast Council’s decision to adopt a more optimistic “baseline” budget forecast this month, rather than the “pessimistic” forecast the group adopted in April.

The forecast council includes City Councilmember Dan Strauss (who chairs the four-member body), City Council President Sara Nelson, a representative from Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office (at this meeting, Andrew Myerberg), and the city’s finance director, Jamie Carnell. (Editor’s note: Carnell’s name was misspelled and has been corrected.)

At the council’s meeting Monday, forecast council interim director Jan Duras and other staffers explained their decision to shift to a more optimistic forecast.

“The overall situation has stabilized somewhat,” Duras said, noting that major economic forecasters, such as Moody’s and S&P Global, were no longer predicting a recession, which was one of the assumptions in the April forecast for Seattle. (Technically, the prediction was for a “growth recession,” in which economic growth slowed but GDP did not.) At the same time, “in the last few days, there have been some developments that shifted the balance of risk more towards the downside,” including a new tariff announcement from Trump and weaker than expected employment numbers, Duras said.

If the city’s current projections hold (another forecast will come out in October, as the city works to finalize the next biennial budget), the upshot is  that budget writers will have a total of about $90 million more to work with this year than they expected to have in April.

That still means many forms of city revenues are falling far short of previous projections. The JumpStart payroll tax, for instance, is now expected to bring in about $32 million more than anticipated over two years, but that’s compared to an April forecast that reduced revenue projections for the tax by $167 million over two years.

Similarly, sales tax revenues are now projected to come in $20 million higher over two years than the forecast office projected in April, most of that in 2026, but sales tax revenues depend heavily on construction, which has plummeted since 2022. Office construction has been hit particularly hard, as existing downtown buildings remain largely vacant. And residential permits have plummeted over a similar period—a trend that could persist if the city decides to impose new restrictions, such as zoning restrictions and new tree-related mandates, on new housing development.

Tourism has also declined, especially from other countries (for some reason, Dan Strauss put an optimistic spin on this news, saying he would change the “headline” to “higher number of visitors expected in Seattle in 2025; international visitors lag”), depleting another source of sales tax revenues.

Meanwhile, revenues from smaller funding sources, like automatic speeding cameras, parking fines, and the sugary soda tax also continue to come in lower than expected.

In each case, city officials suggested the trends would reverse soon. The rollout of automated speed cameras has taken much longer than projected, so ticket revenues should start pouring in any day now. Parking fines, once so small (at $45) that Strauss said people would rather pay them than feed the meter, were just raised to around $70, which should pay off once the new fines have been in effect for a while. People may be drinking less soda now, but just wait until all those international visitors show up for the FIFA World Cup next year!

There are obvious counterarguments to all these optimistic scenarios (here’s one: What if $70 parking tickets just send more people into collections?), but the forecast doesn’t directly incorporate most of those assumptions. It does include a $33 million reduction in Jumpstart payroll tax revenues that will go into the general fund, a reflection of lower-than-anticipated revenues and the fact that there was enough budget “underspend” in 2024 that the transfer wasn’t necessary.

Losing less money than anticipated is good news, but only in the context of how bad it could have been. Under the pessimistic scenario, the city would stand to lose an additional $87 million on top of  the $240 million shortfall projected in April.

The city, in other words, will still be faced with huge potential budget cuts this year, just not quite as huge as anticipated in April. Unless the economy tanks because of future decisions by Trump, an unpredictable president whose moves to crack down on immigrants and impose huge tariffs on other countries, including US allies, have caused market volatility.

Strauss, who chairs the revenue forecast council, said he wished he could share the relative optimism of Duras and his staff, but that “today, maybe for the first time in a long time, I feel greater risk than you do,” thanks to the possibility of higher-than-anticipated tariffs and other national news that could impact Seattle’s economy.

Duras said choosing between more optimistic and pessimistic forecasts “essentially means taking a stance over whether the economy is going to go into a recession or not,” and the likelihood of a recession is now lower than it was in April—between 40 and 50 percent—so “the more likely scenario is the one without a recession.”

 

City Council, Elections, Mayor Harrell, Police, Taxes, Trump

This Week on PubliCola: August 2, 2025
The city is already expanding its police camera surveillance program to three new areas, including a large swath of the Central District.

This week’s roundup, featuring a proposed camping ban, tons of election updates, and news about the city council, SPD, and the impact of Trump’s executive orders on Seattle.

By Erica C. Barnett

Monday, July 28

Council Appoints Juarez to Serve Out Cathy Moore’s Term, Accusations Fly Over Democracy Voucher Collection

Two stories in Monday’s Afternoon Fizz: Former elected councilmember Debora Juarez, whose appointment to her old position was never truly in doubt, will serve out the term of Cathy Moore, who quit the council after just 18 months. And two candidates for the District 2 council seat accuse a third of illegally farming democracy voucher contributions.

Seattle Nice: Is Trump’s Executive Order the End of Housing First?

On the podcast this week, we spoke to Purpose Dignity Action co-director Lisa Daugaard about a Trump executive order slamming harm reduction and housing first. Unlike many advocates, Daugaard said the executive order will probably still allow most housing-first programs to continue, and doesn’t mandate arrests or involuntary commitment, despite its pugnacious language.

Tuesday, July 29

Initiative Would Criminalize Sleeping Outdoors in King County

A proposal from head tax opponent Saul Spady, whose grandfather founded Dick’s Burgers, would make it a misdemeanor to sleep outdoors in unincorporated King County. In addition to the “camping” ban, Spady’s group wants to impose mandatory minimum sentences for fentanyl and meth dealing, force people who overdose or get caught using drugs three times into mandatory six-month rehab, and open 3,000 shelter beds.

Council Finally Seats Renters Commission, New Council Rules Allow Longer Public Comments

Tuesday’s Afternoon Fizz features two stories: After Councilmembers Rob Saka and Sara Nelson shut down a committee meeting to consider appointments to the city’s long-unfilled Renters Commission, possibly at the behest of ex-councilmember Moore, the council seated the full commission this week without comment or dissent. And: New city council rules, proposed by Councilmember Dan Strauss, set parameters around public comment so council members can’t cut people off quite so arbitrarily.

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Wednesday, July 30

Business Tax Plan Moves Forward, Larded With New Exemptions and Spending Categories

A proposal to increase business and occupation taxes on the city’s highest-grossing businesses moved forward, now loaded up with tax exemptions that will cut annual revenues from the tax by more than $10 million and additional spending areas that could dilute the impact of the tax, which is supposed to go to housing and human services.

Thursday, July 31

Police Roll Out Expansion Plans for Surveillance Cameras

The council is preparing to approve an expansion of police surveillance cameras into three new areas, just two months after SPD installed dozens of CCTV cameras in three Seattle neighborhoods. The city has no data yet to justify the expansion of the new program, which supporters pitched as a solution to human trafficking and gun violence.

Friday, August 1

Who Is Common Purple Collective, Ann Davison’s Campaign Consultant?

It’s pretty unusual for a brand-new consultant to arrive on the scene in local Seattle politics. It’s even more unusual for that consultant to conceal their identity using an out-of-state LLC, proxy registrar, untraceable private mailbox, and a weird corporate name that yields exactly one search result. Whoever’s working for Ann Davison, Seattle’s Republican city attorney, doesn’t want to be known.

Ex-SPD Chief Drops Lawsuit Against Harrell, City Files Pre-Election Trump Lawsuit, Councilmembers Oppose Progressive Colleague’s Reelection

Three stories to round out the week: Former police chief Adrian Diaz mysteriously dropped Mayor Harrell from his lawsuit against the city, which relied heavily on claims that Harrell defamed Diaz and fired him unfairly. Harrell, who’s running for reelection, stood alongside Davison as they announced they’re suing the Trump Administration over two seven-month-old executive orders, less than a week before Election Day. And two councilmembers send a message to their colleague Alexis Mercedes Rinck: In case you were wondering, we don’t like you.

City Council, Elections, Mayor Harrell, Police, Trump

Ex-SPD Chief Drops Lawsuit Against Harrell, City Files Pre-Election Trump Lawsuit, Councilmembers Oppose Progressive Colleague’s Reelection

1. City Attorney Ann Davison and Mayor Bruce Harrell announced on Thursday—a date also known as Six Days Before the Primary Election—that they are suing the Trump Administration over two January 2025 executive orders threatening to withhold federal funding from jurisdictions that support diversity, equity, and inclusion or acknowledge the existence of trans and nonbinary people, a policy the Trump order refers to as “gender ideology.” (Harrell said there was nothing political about the timing. OK.)

The lawsuit isn’t the first in the nation to challenge the two executive orders, which seek to dismantle policies adopted by local jurisdictions by threatening the loss of critical federal funds. But it is the first such lawsuit initiated by the city of Seattle, which has also joined two other anti-Trump lawsuits filed by other jurisdictions.

The lawsuit argues that the Trump Administration has overstepped its authority by unilaterally imposing illegal conditions on federal contracts. By requiring the city to certify that it doesn’t have any programs that promote diversity or acknowledge genders other than “biological male and female,” the city argues the Trump Administration is subjecting it to “impossible choice when it accepts and spends federal grant money—either submit to the Administration’s policies through unlawful means or forgo vital funding for major infrastructure and safety initiatives.”

In a press conference Thursday, Davison avoided talking explicitly about gender diversity and DEI, limiting her comments to the legal aspects of the lawsuit. (Harrell, in contrast, talked about his own history of advocating for gender-affirming care to be included in the city’s health care plans and for the city’s Race and Social Justice Initiative.) “We should not have to forego our own local policies in order to obtain that money that has already been provided to us,” Davison said.

This year, Seattle has the authority to spend around $370 million in federal grant funds, much of that for transportation projects. According to the lawsuit, Trump’s executive orders put all that funding at risk.

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3. Late last month, former police chief Adrian Diaz quietly agreed to dismiss all claims against Mayor Bruce Harrell in his defamation lawsuit against the city of Seattle—a surprising turn for a legal claim that puts Harrell at the center of most of its allegations, claiming he helped spread false rumors that Diaz had an inappropriate affair with a subordinate, Jamie Tompkins, and that Diaz and Tompkins lied to investigators looking into the allegations.

Diaz’ complaint rehashes a number of his longstanding grievances, including his claim that a love letter, written in what an expert identified as Tompkins’ handwriting, was a “forgery.” (Four days after Diaz filed the lawsuit, the city released records and recordings from the investigation, which PubliCola covered at length.) But it also included many specific allegations against Harrell.

After Harrell “wrongfully” fired Diaz, the complaint says, he “escalated the injustice by making knowingly false and defamatory statements to the media and public, accusing Chief Diaz of dishonesty, lying, failing to disclose conflicts of interest, acting unprofessionally, and engaging in an improper personal relationship.”

Then, the complaint alleges, “in an effort to score political points in an upcoming election year, Mayor Harrell then engaged in a self-aggrandizing media tour during which he repeatedly and falsely proclaimed Chief Diaz had lied to him, statements that wrongfully labeled Chief Diaz as a dishonest cop who could not be trusted.”

Diaz is still suing the city—the other named defendant in his lawsuit. Asked about his removal from the lawsuit on Thursday, Harrell said tersely, “No reaction. No comment.”

3. Talk about performative: Two of Seattle Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck’s colleagues—Sara Nelson and Maritza Rivera—along with the council appointee Rinck handily defeated, Tanya Woo, recently endorsed Rinck’s opponent Ray Rogers, who’s one of four people running against the popular incumbent.

Rogers, a self-identified former gang member who supports community policing and opposes a “return to the radical council of the past,” has raised just $4,000 and is polling at about 2 percent. Like her other nominal opponents, he isn’t a threat to Rinck. By endorsing him, her colleagues (and Woo) are sending Rinck a message that they’d rather endorse a nonviable candidate than accept the fact that voters overwhelmingly support her.