1. On Friday, Mayor Bruce Harrell accused his opponent, Katie Wilson, of “darkening” his photo in a social media post, blaming her for “another chapter in the troubling history of manipulating skin color to dehumanize candidates of color” like himself. The image Harrell circulated, an Instagram post by the Black-led progressive nonprofit Common Power, made his skin looked unnaturally orange.
In a statement, Harrell campaign manager Marta Johnson said, “We are asking the Wilson Campaign and Common Power to immediately retract the manipulated image and apologize for the clear intent to darken Bruce’s skin tone. There is no excuse to alter the tone of a candidate’s skin, especially given the troubling history of racist intent behind these types of manipulations.”
Harrell made the accusation again during a debate on Saturday at the Royal Room in Southeast Seattle, saying she had used the “common tactic—to darken my image in a regular picture, to make me look ominous, okay?”
The practice of darkening Black and brown people’s skin tone in photographs has a long and ignominious history based in colorism and the racist idea that darker-skinned people are more threatening than those with lighter skin. The most famous example comes from Time magazine, which dramatically darkened OJ Simpson’s skin color on its cover in 1994.
Beyond the screen shot, Harrell presented no evidence for his claims.
On Sunday, Common Power director Charles Douglas responded to Harrell’s accusation that his group had darkened Harrell’s skin to make him look “ominous”: “The claim that we ‘darkened’ Mayor Harrell’s photo is both offensive and untrue. As a Black man leading an organization primarily run by people of color, I know firsthand the harm caused when racial tropes are weaponized in politics.”
“To suggest that Common Power engaged in such tactics is a sensationalist smear that reeks of desperation from a mayor who has repeatedly contributed to inequality and hurt the very communities he now claims to represent.” On Sunday, Common Power and the 36th District Democrats swapped out the photo of Halloween Harrell for a less orange version.
The source for the image appears to have been a story by the (UK) Independent about the 2021 mayor’s race. The photo appears to have been taken in low light at this debate, creating the unnaturally orange cast.
Smartphone photos taken by several different people in similar conditions at Saturday’s low-light debate at the Royal Room made both Harrell and Wilson look orange, with Harrell’s black hair coming through as grayish in the photos. For example, a reader contributed this photo of Harrell checking in on the Huskies game during the debate; my own, unedited iPhone photos, taken from the front row, turned Harrell an even more extreme orange color and tinted Wilson orange as well.
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2. As I reported on Bluesky last week (seriously, follow me there for the latest breaking news, short news items, and live coverage of everything from mayoral debates to the council’s budget deliberations), the business-backed political action committee supporting Mayor Bruce Harrell, Bruce Harrell for Seattle’s Future, has raised more than a million to defeat Harrell’s challenger, Katie Wilson. Most of that money, $554,000, has come in since the beginning of September—revealing a rush to fill the pro-Harrell campaign’s coffers after the mayor’s dispiriting 41 percent showing in the August primary.
The biggest donations to the PAC, which is separate from Harrell’s official campaign, come from real estate advocacy groups, development and property management companies and their current or retired CEOs, and land-use attorneys who work for real-estate interests. Overall, real-estate interests contributed at least $592,000 of the $1,080,500 the PAC has collected so far. Tech companies and their leaders, including retired tech company founders as well as current executives like Microsoft CEO Brad Smith, gave another $257,000, at a minimum.
A majority of the 218 contributors to the pro-Harrell PAC listed their occupations as “retired” (59 total) or did not list their occupations (56 total), so the true percentage of both real estate interests and tech company executives is almost certainly higher than the ones I was able to confirm.
A pro-Wilson PAC, Katie Wilson for an Affordable Seattle, has raised about $85,000.
3. During a meeting about the city’s police department budget on Monday, Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes responded to a question from Council President Sara Nelson by saying he couldn’t answer it because Nelson cited PubliCola as her source.
“I came across an article in PubliCola … that mentioned [the city’s proposed contract with the south King County jail] SCORE, and I wanted some information on this,” Nelson said. “I think that it mentioned that we are no longer depending on that contract. Is that the case?”
In response, Barnes told Nelson he would not answer her question, forcing her to reframe her factual question about SCORE. “I’ll be clear. I do not read PubliCola, so I won’t respond to that,” Barnes said. After Barnes answered the rest of Nelson’s questions, but not the one about SCORE, budget director Dan Eder had to jump in and answer in the affirmative.
Barnes’ dismissive comment about PubliCola was the first time I can recall, in this publication’s 16-year history, that a department director has used a public meeting to disparage us directly. SPD’s communications department has reportedly stopped including stories from PubliCola in the department’s daily news clippings email, and in a recent social media post, Barnes said he wouldn’t be “swayed by opinions, criticism, lies, or the stories that others may fabricate.” He added, cryptically, “This is my leadership journey and you won’t make me quit! The battle is not mine.. It’s the Lords!”
PubliCola will, of course, continue to apply a critical lens to SPD and other city departments in our coverage, as we have since 2009.