Tag: Election 2025

Crime, Elections, Mayor Harrell

“It Was Cold”: Mothers Who Lost Children to Gun Violence Say Harrell Ignored Their Pleas for Help
Mayor Bruce Harrell speaks at the honorary designation of a portion of East Union Street as D’Vonne Pickett., Jr. Way in 2023. Image via Seattle Channel

By Erica C. Barnett

D’Vonne Pickett, the owner of The Postman mailing and shipping store and in the Central District, was just 31 when he was shot and killed outside his store three years ago. His public memorial service, at Climate Pledge Arena, drew thousands of mourners. Among them was Mayor Bruce Harrell, who broke down as he described learning from his son that Pickett had been killed.

“What happened to D’Vonne— this happened time and time again when I was little boy in the CD, going to T.T. Minor, Meany, and Garfield,” Harrell said, naming his elementary, middle and high schools. “We have to do everything humanly possible to save our own community, because no one’s going to do it for us,” Harrell said. “We have to hold up the family. You don’t say, ‘What can I do?’ Do it.”

Three years after Pickett was kiled, his mother, Nicky Chappell, is planning an “angelversary” celebration of his life that will double as a fundraiser; his grave, at Lakeview Cemetery, still lacks a headstone. Despite Harrell’s comments about her family at the memorial, Chappell says the mayor didn’t acknowledge or speak to her at the event, and hasn’t reached out to her in the years since.

Over the past several weeks, PubliCola has spoken to the mothers of young men killed by gun violence who told us Harrell ignored their pleas for help during his years in office, reaching out to some of them only once he was running for reelection. We also spoke with Black business owners and advocates who are supporting Wilson because they’ve met with her and believe she’s willing to make a place for them at the table. Some wouldn’t go on the record, citing a fear of retribution if Harrell gets reelected. Others talked at length about their disappointment with a mayor they thought would stand up for their communities.

“Every time he starts talking, he talks about his roots, or ‘I grew up in the CD,’ ‘my family’ this and ‘my family’ that. That’s what he did at my son’s service and I didn’t like that,” Chappell said. “We’re not going to talk about you growing up in the CD or whatever schools you went to. My son’s service wasn’t for you to come here and talk about what you talk about on the news all the time.”

After the service, Chappell said, she reached out to the mayor’s office on social media and eventually secured a meeting, where she told him she was disappointed and hurt that he hadn’t reached out or offered help. “As the mother in a high-profile case, I think he should have done better with me. as as a mother. … We would have never talked if I hadn’t reached out to him about how he did me at my son’s service.”

“If he’s going to involve himself in situations like this, or these traumatic incidents, don’t come half-ass,” Chappell said.

Harrell is in a tough reelection battle against a challenger, Katie Wilson, who disagrees with him strongly on many major policies, from the decision to place surveillance cameras in neighborhoods around the city, including the Central District, to his support for putting police officers in schools— starting with his alma mater, Garfield High School.

In debates, Harrell has frequently tried to shut Wilson down by talking about his personal history as someone who grew up Black and biracial in the Central District; unlike Wilson, a white woman who grew up in upstate New York, “my parents weren’t college professors,” Harrell said at a recent forum.

“Race,” my colleague Marcus Harrison Green wrote in a powerful recent piece for the South Seattle Emerald, “has shadowed this race from the start.” Harrell has certainly used it, suggesting (falsely) that his white opponent “darkened” his skin on an Instagram post. (In fact, the post that gave Harrell’s skin an orange tint was created by a progressive group run primarily by people of color whose Black director called the claim “untrue and offensive.”)

At a press event to announce a housing reparations proposal, Harrell lashed out at critics, saying the people he sees on the streets are “people I grew up with. How dare they write that under this administration—which has, by the way, the most diverse set of leaders on the executive floor in our city’s history—how dare anyone question the compassion of this administration toward people who are underrepresented?”

Several mothers who lost their children to gun violence said they initially had high hopes for Harrell, but have spent the past four years trying in vain to get Harrell to listen to them and other women who struggle with grief, job loss, threats, and the financial burden of caring for grandchildren long after losing a child.

“What mothers go through in crisis is not a one-time opportunity—it’s ongoing, especially with gun violence,” said Donnitta Sinclair, whose son, Horace Lorenzo Anderson, was shot in the CHOP protest zone in 2020 and died at Harborview. Volunteer medics took Anderson to the hospital in a pickup truck as a Seattle Fire Department medic unit idled nearby.

Earlier this year, Sinclair and a group of about 20 other mothers who lost children to gun violence met for a healing circle that was coordinated by the nonprofit group RISE. About halfway through the event, they learned that a special guest would be arriving soon: Mayor Bruce Harrell. Several people who were present told PubliCola what happened next.

As a video of their children played in the background, Harrell walked in with his security and asked, “‘Do you guys want me to talk freely and keep it real?’ recalled Lonnisha Landry, whose son, 16-year-old Xavier Landry, was shot and killed in Auburn lsat July; Landry is currently petitioning the state to do advanced DNA testing on casings left at the scene of the murder, hoping they will help identify his killer. “We said, ‘Keep it real.’ And he was like, ‘Cut the cameras.'”

According to four accounts, a videographer who was filming the event turned off his camera and everyone put their phones away.

“He was just writing, kind of not paying attention—okay, that’s one thing,” Landry continued. “But then when he does get to talking, he wants to basically say, ‘I’m not one of you guys, I haven’t lost a child, but I am one of you guys because I grew up in the community. I went to Garfield and I knew Donnitta’s family and I remember when one of her uncles stole my father’s coat.’ And we were like, ‘What?'”

Sinclair confirmed that Harrell made the crack about the supposed coat incident, which would have occurred before she was born. It wasn’t the first time, she said. Harrell also mentioned it when they spoke shortly before his first election in 2021. At the time, Sinclair recalled, “I told him, ‘Mr. Harrell, I lost my son. I’m not really interested in no coat.”

After some heated back and forth with Sinclair, several people who were present recalled, Harrell slammed his hand on the table, told the women “I didn’t even want to come here,” and started walking toward the door. (Chappell, who was present, said she understood why he was mad: He and Sinclair don’t get along. On the other hand: Sinclair is a mother who lost her son; Harrell is, well, the mayor.) Landry said she asked Harrell to at least stay and talk to a woman who had been trying to meet with him for more than a year. “We’re kind of pleading and wanting him to hear us. It was cold.”

Keshia McGee, whose son, James Richardson (the hip-hop artist Tanaa Money) was shot and killed in 2019, said Harrell’s words about not wanting to be there “haunt me to this day. We finally got a chance to speak to him about our kids … and he told us he didn’t even want to come to our healing circle,” she said.

“The way he treated us was like we were little ants and he was the giant.”

It wasn’t the first time McGee had felt used by Harrell and people associated with the mayor. In 2023, Harrell held a “One Seattle Day of Remembrance for Gun Violence Victims” event but didn’t reach out to her to participate in the event itself. Instead, she said, she got an invitation to attend, which is how she found out the event would feature a slide show that included her son. (In fact, Richardson’s image was on the very first slide.)

“I said, ‘how dare you guys reach out to me to come to this event? You had my information all this time and you’ve never reached out to me before to ask me about my baby,” McGee said. By the time of the weekend retreat, “we were feeling like, ‘You’re on TV talking about our kids but never spent the time to talk to us, the mothers that carried these kids.'”

At the retreat, Harrell started speaking again, but was soon interrupted by a phone call from his daughter, which he took while still standing in front of the group. After hanging up, Sinclair recalled, “He’s grinning, laughing, saying ‘I’m glad she didn’t want no money.'” (Others who were there recounted the same story, although not everyone was offended he took the call). “I said, ‘I’m glad she’s okay and you could answer her,” Sinclair recalled. “We don’t get to answer our kids’ calls ever again.’ He said, ‘You don’t know what the hell she needed.'”

“If you were at a white meeting, you would have blocked [your phone],” Sinclair said, “but you’re here at a meeting of women of color, so you don’t.”

McGee, too, found it insulting that Harrell took his daughter’s call. “It didn’t matter why you picked up the phone. … When he was in that [televised] debate, up on the podium while millions of people were watching, I bet he had his phone off.”

Harrell’s appearance “shook up the whole room,” McGee said. They all came to heal together, “and we all left very hurt and upset and mad. Why the hell did he even come? This was supposed to be healing and then that man showed up.”

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PublCola sent Harrell’s campaign a list of 10 questions for this story. The campaign responded with the following statement: “Mayor Harrell is a champion for survivors of gun violence, and communities impacted by firearm tragedy. He is the first Mayor to hire an executive-level gun violence prevention coordinator (herself a survivor), and has the sole endorsement of the Alliance for Gun Responsibility. Under Bruce’s leadership, Seattle has seen a reduction in shots fired, thousands of guns have been removed from our streets, and we are investing in proven community violence intervention and youth engagement programs. Bruce meets regularly with families and victims of gun violence, respects the need for privacy and intensity of grief often expressed in these meetings, and out of respect for all involved will not comment on specific meetings or interactions.”

Many of the women who lost children to gun violence said they want the city to fund opportunities for them to meet and support each other, from healing circles like the one Harrell attended, to a community center with services such as child care, support groups, and direct connections to emergency resources.

“I’m tired of calling 211 for help,” Chappell said. “There’s so much funding going into [programs] for gun violence—they just passed a policy the other day for more funds to help this problem—but how are you helping families? How about helping moms get into a position where they’re able to do some healing?”

Most of the women PubliCola spoke to said they’re supporting Wilson. So does Chiif Ahmed Mumin, director of the Seattle Rideshare Drivers Association. He believes that, unlike Harrell, she’ll aid in identifying the culprit in the 2022 shooting of Uber driver Mohamed Kediye by helping his organization retrieve camera footage of the shooting, which took place in downtown Seattle.

Kediye, a father of six, was “someone people really loved and respected, and he really leaves a void in the community,” Mumin said.

Mumin also said Harrell has failed to create the rider safety task force they proposed two years ago to come up with solutions to help keep drivers safe, such as cameras in cars and a quick way to contact law enforcement if they find themselves in danger. He believes that Wilson, unlike Harrell, will listen to rideshare drivers who’ve asked to be included in conversations about transportation safety.

During a campaign forum in South Seattle last month, Mumin asked Harrell what he was doing to solve Kediye’s murder. Harrell responded by accusing Wilson of wanting to defund the police and suggesting that if he’s reelected, there will be enough police and detectives to solve the crime. “It has not been solved, and that’s exactly why I support having police officers, Harrell said.”That’s exactly why I’m not defunding the police department, because we need the resources to give that family justice.”

Mumin wasn’t convinced. “It seemed like the mayor was actually diverting the question to the police department, when to the best of our knowledge, the mayor is the head of the police department,” HE said. “He’s the one who names the chief of police, and he could have taken much more of a leadership role in making sure that this crime is solved.”

After the campaign forum, Mumin said, someone from Harrell’s campaign reached out to ask him, “Why did I ask that question in public?’  And my response was very clear—this crime has taken so long  to solve. We will continue to ask every time we get an opportunity to ask the mayor this question.”

Elections, Mayor Harrell

Harrell Says King County Public Health is “Failing Us,” Talks Tough on Trump, and Muses About an AI Wall Where You Can Ask MLK What He Had for Breakfast
Mayor Bruce Harrell and FamilyWorks Executive Director Marcia Wright-Soika at a recent debate hosted by the Seattle Human Services Coalition

By Erica C. Barnett

As readers may know, I’ve spent much of the last month attending Seattle mayoral debates and live-posting about them on Bluesky. Typically, the dynamic is this: Mayor Bruce Harrell criticizes his opponent, Katie Wilson, for having “no experience” in various areas (housing, budgets, managing people, etc.), and belittles her while refusing to use her name. In response, Wilson defends herself with facts about her experience, achievements, and plans, often stumbling a little in the face of broadsides that may include five different inaccurate claims about her; Harrell is fond, for example, of claiming “she is one of the chief architects of the Defund [the Police] movement,” an absurdity that erases the Black leaders who began the movement in response to police violence against Black victims, like George Floyd, Breonna Tayler Eric Garner.

Over the weekend, though, Harrell had the rare opportunity to participate in a “debate” without his opponent present, after Wilson pulled out of the so-called “Great Debate” at the Washington Athletic Club at the last minute on Saturday afternoon. (Wilson’s campaign said she was sick; the debate’s emcee, Harrell supporter Julius Caesar Robinson, told the crowd, “She wants me to to pass on her apologies, which I am not!”) For a reporter in the audience, it was also a rare opportunity to see the usually unsmiling mayor in a friendly crowd—the debate was sponsored by We Heart Seattle, the Seattle Police Officers Guild, the state Realtors Association, and the Discovery Institute, among other right-leaning groups.

In contrast to his usual dour appearance when forced to share a stage with Wilson, Harrell was garrulous, expansive, and casual, often stopping to shout out people he recognized in the audience and ramble for minutes at a time about whatever was on his mind, be it the Mariners (“we’re playing some really, really good baseball this year) or the role AI will play in Seattle’s arts and culture (“The reason why culture and art is so strong is you’re going to see a heavy AI influence in it,” he said.)

And speaking of AI: During a rambling response to a question about how he would keep businesses in downtown Seattle, Harrell said he had great hope that AI startup incubators like AI House, on the downtown waterfront, would help produce “experiential activities” that would get people to come downtown. Those might include dog parks, day cares, restaurants, music, and interactive video, he said.

“We want video activity. And I gave an example to someone. I said, Imagine how cool would this be if we had like, a 10-foot wall. It’s interactive and it’s historical. And you could talk to Martin Luther King, and you could say, ‘Well, Dr, Martin Luther King, I’ve always wanted to meet you. What was your day like today? What did you have for breakfast?’ And he comes back and he talks to you right now. How cool would that be if we have a series of historical figures that we all could agree on, that we respect. And then it stops off, and we can watch the Mariners beat Toronto for the championship. That’s where downtown is heading, and our think tanks—my think tank that I’ve convened—are coming up these kinds of deals to make sure our downtown is vibrant and we get employees back. I think we can lead the way.”

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s daughter, Dr. Bernice King, asked people to stop making AI versions of her father just last week. A spokesperson for the King Center in Atlanta said she’ll be issuing a statement soon about AI replications of her father’s likeness.

Harrell’s off-the-cuff musings about an interactive fake MLK in downtown Seattle weren’t the only unusually candid comments he made at the friendly event, which ended in a standing ovation. I’ve gathered a few of his remarks here, all from an audio recording and edited lightly for accuracy from my live AI (yes, there are good uses for it) transcript—a fact that I’m noting, mostly, because Harrell took a moment out of his comments to say that he hoped I was quoting him accurately.

On whether he “punches down” against his opponent, who founded the Transit Riders Union and led successful minimum-wage efforts in Tukwila, Burien, and unincorporated King County:

“I haven’t done anything that I would consider punching down. … I’ve tried to argue with facts. I said in a debate, I think we had two debates a couple days ago, and I said my opponent has never hired one employee, and my opponent said, That’s not true. And then her campaign manager said, she hired me. And then I said to my opponent, well, how many employees have you hired? And my opponent wouldn’t ask the question. I don’t think that’s punching down. I said that my opponent ran a $200,000 budget, and last year they lost $21,000. The year before that, $38,000. The year before, $46,000. They had zero employees. … So when I cite facts like that, I don’t see that as punching down.” (Wilson has said that as head of the Transit Riders Union, she recruited volunteers, not paid employees. TRU’s IRS filings show negative income but positive assets, like many nonprofits.)

On dealing with the Trump administration:

“Dealing with Donald Trump is very, very hard because I don’t understand the end game. I have an idea of the end game, which is not healthy for America as far as I’m concerned. It’s my personal belief, and it’s more my style to understand the president. I actually had a one on one with President Biden several times, a one on one. Not a lot of people can say that. We would take a walk. I had one on ones with Vice President Harris. How many people could say— I’m very proud of that. I’ve had some great opportunities here. I believe there’s a sacred pact between the federal government and the city. They should help us with transportation projects, cancer research, public safety, infrastructure. So to answer your question directly, I’ve been very aggressive on our executive orders, because no one believes. Remember, I was a linebacker. A linebacker, and I’m not particularly big. I played against people who are much bigger. I’m tenacious.” (Harrell went on to praise Police Chief Shon Barnes, a “superstar,” and detail the executive orders I wrote about here, which include a local law banning federal agents from wearing masks to conceal their identities.)

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On whether he’ll require protesters “dressed in black bloc” to take off their masks too: 

“I think what you’re talking about are masks with the intention, perhaps, to take some kind of aggressive action which could result in someone being unsafe. And I don’t think that’s right at all. I have to respect the fact that some people—we were all wearing masks about three and a half years ago, and there could be code restrictions or health concerns where some people need to wear masks. So the reason I mentioned that is because when looking at the mask law, I asked the question, well, can’t—how far we can we go with masks in case someone still has a respiratory issue and have to wear masks? And so what we’re trying to do is make sure that masks with the intent to camouflage themselves, to exert force over people, is not what we want, and we’ll prohibit that. So I’m all for that, but I have to recognize that people will have health conditions that may require some level of mask, and we have to respect that.”

On “good protest”:

I expect people to use their voices. You all have loud voices. You know how I know? ‘Cause I hear them sometimes. And we don’t want you poking the bear. We don’t want you falling for the bait. And so we also want to do some training on what First Amendment good protest looks like, because I don’t want any of you to be charged with obstruction of justice. You heard my [police] chief ask many of you, have you ever heard of Willie Grimes? … If you go back in history books, this was a person that when the National Guard federalized, he was killed. … There are many incidents in our history when there was peaceful protest that resulted in violence. So we want to make sure that you all know the do’s and don’ts of peaceful protest to protect you as you raise your voice.”

On the “failing” Seattle/King County Public Health Department:

“Now, one thing that I did ask when I first got elected, I really wanted to serve on the Board of Health because I thought I should implode it. Remember, the health department is a $3.5 billion organization run by the county. …  There are many cities like Berkeley that run their own health department, and there’s an effort underway on a national basis for cities to get close to running their own health departments, becoming what they call a continuum of care. Now, why would cities be interested in doing that? I’ll tell you why. Because during COVID, the monies went right to the cities, and they found out cities were nimble. They knew their constituents better. They knew their streets better than the county. I know the streets better here in Seattle than the county.

“Okay, so part of the challenge, Andrea, is that I can’t tell them how to do their job, because this enabling of [public drug use] often is exacerbating the problem. … And so I struggle a little bit with the Health Department. When I say this during these debates, my opponent will say, you’re passing the buck. I don’t pass any bucks. I’m an empowered person. But I have to acknowledge that there are structural issues of how the health department are doing their job, and we are all suffering as a result of that. So I’m on top of the issues. We’re working on it now, and I will guarantee you that we’re making changes to our relationship with the county, because I’m paying into a system that, I think it’s failing all of us. So we’re moving very recently because, because I realized the system was failing. …”

“What I want to see from the health department, and I won’t denigrate any of these fine people work with health department. I will not do that. But here’s the challenge, Andrea, I never see them when I—if you and I took a walk out on Third Avenue, we’ll see people that are not fulfilling their lives. So what I’m asking my group is, where are these health workers? Many of them are fine people. So what I want to see—every time I see someone dying or sick, I want to see them getting help.”

On his work ethic:

“Anyone that works around me knows that I outwork everybody. I will. I’ll work seven days a week, 12, 14, hours a day. My people that work with me, they are amazed with the energy, I have an amazing wife. In any debate, I always have to find her, because she’ll always say, smile, Bruce, smile. They take pictures of me. I’m looking at myself expressing joy at the love of my life.”

A full recording of the Q&A session with Harrell is available here. 

I’ve also posted a rough transcript here.

Elections

Harrell on the Attack and Defensive in First Televised Mayoral Debate

By Erica C. Barnett

In a short but spirited debate that aired on the Seattle Channel Friday, Mayor Bruce Harrell repeatedly attacked his frontrunning opponent, policy nerd and Transit Riders Union leader Katie Wilson, as a know-nothing policy lightweight with zero leadership experience, while explaining away his own missteps, including the ongoing budget deficits that have resulted, in part, from his own proposals to increase city spending, as the result of circumstances beyond his control.

During the debate, Harrell consistently spoke over Wilson, interrupted her, and repeatedly posed his own questions, then wouldn’t let Wilson answer them.

Repeatedly, Harrell took over the role of moderator (to the consternation, no doubt, of actual moderator Brian Callanan) and needled Wilson with rhetorical questions that seemed designed to suggest his challenger—a longtime labor and transit activist who helped craft the JumpStart payroll tax and led several successful minimum wage campaigns— had no business coming anywhere near the mayor’s office. (At one point, Harrell, an attorney, noted that Wilson “has no experience in constitutional law, in arguing in front of courts to be able to protect the people that matter most,” which is not part of the mayor’s job.)

Harrell, who has claimed (unjustifiably) to have created 3,000 new units of housing for homeless Seattle residents, accused Wilson of having “all the platitudes” but “no plan” to build 4,000 new shelter units, as she has vowed to do. “You see the weakness in her platform—it’s just complaints with no solutions,” he said. In comparison, Harrell claimed, his administration successfully referred thousands of people to shelter. (More on why that’s a poor metric for addressing homelessness here.)

Then Harrell accused Wilson of “taking credit for the minimum wage” in Seattle and said businesses were “hemorrhaging money” because of the JumpStart payroll tax she supported.

“There’s been no evidence at all that we haven’t supported” social housing, “we just wanted it paid for differently,” Harrell continued. In fact, Harrell appeared on campaign materials for a proposal to reject social housing and instead use existing funds to pay for traditional affordable housing, something the city already does.

Wilson did get a moment to explain the difference between the social housing measure (which she has said inspired her to jump into the race) and the alternative Harrell supported, which would have deprived social housing of funding.  She also  corrected Harrell’s false claim about the minimum wage: “I have never taken credit for Seattle minimum wage. What I have rightly taken credit for is leading and coordinating campaigns in the cities of incorporating King County and Burien to raise the minimum wage to the highest in the country.”

Wilson also pointed out that the Jumpstart payroll tax has provided the money to cover gaps in the city budget year after year, even as the mayor and council have piled on new spending that has contributed to a structural budget deficit that now tops $240 million budget. Harrell characterized deficits during his administration as “a very tough hand” he was “dealt,” and changed the subject to accuse Wilson of wanting to eliminate the entire police department.

Instead of responding directly to that claim (Wilson wrote a piece in 2020 about what defunding the police would realistically look like), Wilson accused Harrell of making repeated bad hires that have harmed morale at SPD. “You hired and stood by Adrian Diaz as police chief, and under his reign, SPD lost many high-integrity career officers. Morale tanked,” Wilson said. “It’s weird to be the one saying this in this race, but the police actually have a really important role to play. That’s not happening right now.”

Addressing Callanan, Harrell responded, “It’s pretty rich of her to say that. …. She’s never led anything. Number one, just look at her background. I mean, she’s run a nonprofit. I think one employee.”

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When Wilson also brought up two other disastrous hires: Pedro Gomez, a key staffer who was accused of sexual assault and harassment by several women who met him through his official role at the city, and Darrell Powell, a longtime Harrell friend who spent a brief and tumultuous time as head of the regional homelessness authority—Harrell said he wasn’t to blame. “If you actually had experience of hiring people, which clearly you do not, you’ll realize that sometimes you get it right and sometimes you can make corrections, and you have to be nimble.” Harrell defended Powell, who was accused of referring to an employee as a “retard” and fostering a hostile work environment for LGBTQ staffers, by citing his MBA and CPA degrees.

“When you run an organization of 14,000 employees, you have to make these tough decisions. That’s why the stakes are so high in this particular election, because you are really, literally hiring a person. If you look at her—but she doesn’t talk much about her personal story, by the way. There’s no ability to lead an organization, no budget. What’s the highest budget you’ve ever managed?”

As Wilson began to respond, Harrell interrupted her. “What I’m trying to impress upon everyone that’s listening is that an executive has to have executive experience. Even before this, I was elected to the City Council, as president twice. [I was] a managing partner at a law firm. I know how to manage people. … These are tough decisions. Katie, and if you’ve never managed any employees, you should at least tell them. Maybe they’d accept that—'[it’s] the city of Seattle, I’m hoping to be the mayor of an $8 billion organization, and I’ve never managed any employees,'” Harrell said.

On the topic of police surveillance, Harrell accused Wilson of claiming to speak “on behalf of minorities” while “ignoring” the opinions of Seattle Councilmembers Joy Hollingsworth and Debora Juarez, two women of color who voted to expand camera surveillance earlier this week. (No mention of another woman of color on the council, Alexis Mercedes Rinck, who opposed the bill.)

“How rich is it for this person to talk about protecting my community?” Harrell said. “We ran into the same same arguments when I proposed body cameras [for police]. Body cameras are put for the protection of communities of color. Now this surveillance will be used smartly and not to the detriment of the very same people that my opponent seems to want to speak on their behalf.”

The law the council passed expanding surveillance, Harrell continued, has plenty of “safeguards” to ensure the footage can’t be used to prosecute immigrants and people seeking abortions or gender-affirming care.

Not even the most ardent surveillance supporters on the city council were so bold as to make this claim when they passed the legislation earlier this week; instead, they added an amendment saying the city can shut down the cameras for 60 days if the feds come after SPD’s footage, as the many civil-rights groups that opposed the legislation believe they will.

Harrell concluded by calling Wilson’s plan for creating new shelter beds “ridiculous,” calling Wilson herself “a person that gives platitudes, that will not answer a question,” and accusing her of being “hypocritical” by “talk[ing] about the need for public safety.”

Elections, Mayor Harrell

Harrell Fared Worst In Southeast Seattle District He Once Represented on City Council
Mayor Bruce Harrell on primary election night

By Erica C. Barnett

An analysis of primary election results shows that Mayor Bruce Harrell lost badly in the primary on his own home turf—Southeast Seattle’s 37th District, where he won just 36 percent of the vote to challenger Katie Wilson’s 56 percent. Overall, Harrell didn’t win a majority in any Seattle legislative district except the sliver of the 32nd that dips down into Seattle from Shoreline, but his 47-42 victory in that area represented a majority of less than 5,000 votes.

Although the 37th LD, which roughly overlaps with the council district Harrell represented between 2015 and 2019 (the boundaries were redrawn in 2022) also went for Harrell’s opponent, then-councilmember Lorena González, in 2021, the gap was much smaller—González had 36 percent to Harrell’s 33 percent, with the remainder going to other candidates.

That’s a major comedown from Harrell’s 2015 election to represent City Council District 2, when he got nearly 62 percent of the primary vote and went on to narrowly defeat Tammy Morales, who won election to the same seat four years later. Harrell was an incumbent, but ran for the Southeast Seattle seat after the city switched to district elections.

González was the more progressive candidate in the 2021 race, so her supporters serve as a rough proxy for Wilson’s voter base.

In other legislative districts that are fully or mostly located in Seattle, voters flipped from supporting Harrell in the 2021 primary to supporting Wilson this year. These include the 34th District (West Seattle), the 36th District (Queen Anne, Magnolia, Ballard), and the 46th District (North Seattle). Harrell also lost to González in the 11th District, which included some of South Seattle, in 2021, but that area was also redistricted and the part that was in Seattle is now in the 37th. In the 43rd District, which includes Capitol Hill and the University District, Harrell trailed Wilson by 14 points, 40 to 54.

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Harrell will have to close a nearly 10-point gap with challenger Wilson if he wants to win reelection in November—a feat that, as we documented last week, no sitting mayor has accomplished in at least the last 28 years.

Of course, the electorate itself changes between the August primary and the November general election, when turnout is generally higher—about 40 percent of Seattle’s registered voters, or around 200,000 people, voted in the primary, a number that will likely spike well above 50 percent in the general). And people can change their minds and vote for a different candidate in the general, including voters who chose one of the six candidates who didn’t make it through.

But there are reasons to expect that that last group of voters won’t move the needle much in Harrell’s direction: Unlike in the 2021 election that made Harrell mayor, when nearly 34 percent of voters went for candidates other than Harrell or González, the other candidates split just 8 percent of the vote this year, which doesn’t “free up” many voters to choose Harrell or Wilson.

When we asked Joe Mallahan, a candidate to the right of Wilson whose votes would theoretically go to Harrell, if asked if he was voting for Harrell, he responded “fuck no” and said he’s supporting Wilson.

City Council, Elections, Privacy

Mayoral Challenger Katie Wilson Closes In on 51 Percent; Council Moves to Expand Police Camera Surveillance

1. Katie Wilson, the labor organizer and transit advocate who’s challenging Mayor Bruce Harrell, is on target to come out of the August primary with around 51 percent of the vote, with Harrell trailing 10 points behind at 41 percent. It’s a huge political victory—passing 50 percent against an incumbent mayor backed by almost $800,000 in pre-primary spending sends a strong message that voters want change—and puts Wilson in an extremely strong position to win in November.

A look at historical vote totals shows why Wilson is on track to win.

To start with, Seattle has not reelected a single incumbent mayor since 2005, when Greg Nickels defeated a nominal challenge from a UW professor named Al Runte, beating him in the primary by a 35-point margin. (Nickels got his comeuppance in the following election, when two challengers, Mike McGinn and Joe Mallahan, nudged him out in the primary).

Additionally, it’s been almost 25 years years since a mayoral candidate has come in second in the primary and won in the general election, which happened most recently in 2001. In that race, the two frontrunners, Mark Sidran and Greg Nickels, were neck and neck, and both advanced to the general after knocking out incumbent Paul Schell. Nickels went on to beat Sidran 50-48.

You have to go back even further, to 1997, to find a comparable gap between the two mayoral frontrunners. In that case, though, the ultimate winner, Paul Schell, won decisively in the primary, beating neighborhood activist Charlie Chong by just under 6 points going into the general. As a weak incumbent, Harrell appears more likely to follow the path of his five most recent predecessors who each failed to win reelection.

2. The city council’s public safety committee unanimously approved bill expanding police camera surveillance into three new neighborhoods on Tuesday, rejecting one accountability-focused amendment from progressive Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck and passing an amendment from Joy Hollingsworth that limits the new CCTV cameras around Garfield High School and Playfield, which is in her council district, to three arterial streets—East Cherry, 23rd Avenue East, and South Jackson St.

Rinck isn’t on the committee, so she couldn’t vote; committee chair Bob Kettle sponsored her amendments as a courtesty.

Another amendment from Rinck, aimed at ensuring that police report back on whether SPD had provided camera footage to any outside entity in response to court orders or subpoenas, passed unanimously.

The expansion of camera surveillance is now on a glide path for approval by the full council.

Once the new cameras are up and recording, Hollingsworth said, “I’m going to continue to be listening to community and trying to address a lot of concerns that they have with the cameras and making sure that we are not violating people’s civil liberties.”

An amendment from Joy Hollingsworth restricted surveillance cameras around Garfield high school to the arterials marked by the blue lines on this map.

At Tuesday’s meeting, Council President Sara Nelson asked a staffer if the cameras would ever be trained on “residential streets.” In reality, they already are—because of Seattle’s zoning laws, apartments are heavily concentrated on arterial roads, and streets where Seattle is currently placing most of its new surveillance cameras are no exception. Although SPD has said it will blur out images of residential buildings, renters coming to and from their homes will frequently be caught on SPD’s surveillance cameras, along with anyone who patronizes businesses, goes to (or has kids in) school, spends time in parks, or visits a public library branch in the areas under SPD surveillance.

The committee also rejected two amendments by progressive Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck. The first would have required any future evaluation of the cameras to include a controlled assessment to determine whether the cameras were meeting the city’s stated goals for deploying them—deterring violent crime, human trafficking, or persistent felony crime.

If the assessment found that the cameras were failing to meet those goals, the mayor would “consider” discontinuing them. “We, as an elected body, should be instilling trust in our community and not pushing for expansions of programs before getting data and information about their effectiveness,” Rinck said.

Committee chair Bob Kettle said it was likely the cameras would accomplish lots of other important goals, beyond the ones supporters have used to justify their expansion, such as aiding in prosecutions, reducing response times, and improving the relationship between SPD and the public, much as Saka said body-worn police cameras have. Juarez added that the city “would have a hard time measuring and enforcing whether or not the cameras are actually deterring violent crime, because if we could do that, we would have done that.”

Nelson then piled on the anti-data train, saying that “it’s very difficult to draw causal conclusions based on an evaluation because many things could be impacting the trends that we have seen.”

Nelson, Kettle, and other council members have consistently blamed the previous city council for causing police to leave the city for by demoralizing them with talk of reducing SPD’s budget in 2020, despite the lack of data to support this claim.

 

City Council, Elections, housing, podcasts, Taxes

This Week on PubliCola: August 10, 2025
The crowd begins to gather at Mayor Bruce Harrell’s party early on Election Night

A huge election upset led this packed week, which included two podcasts (plus two-thirds of Seattle Nice on KUOW!)

By Erica C. Barnett

Monday, August 4

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

Seattle’s latest 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. The city’s revenue forecasters used a more optimistic model than the April forecast.

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

On the first of two Seattle Nice episodes this week, we discussed the broader implications of a proposed ballot initiative that would make it illegal to fall asleep outdoors in unincorporated King County, a Seattle ballot measure to raise business and occupation taxes to pay for housing stability and human services, and a lawsuit filed by City Attorney Ann Davison, a Republican who’s struggling to retain support, over a seven-month-old Trump executive.

Tuesday, August 5

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

The city council approved the business and occupation tax proposal for the November ballot, overcoming objections from some councilmembers that it shouldn’t be dedicated to any specific purpose, but instead should go toward any current or future general-fund purpose elected officials decide they want to fund. In general, voters approve taxes for specific purposes, and there is no recent precedent for sending a blank-check tax measure to the ballot.

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

This week’s local elections represented a massive rebuke of the people elected in the wake of COVID and the 2020 protests against police brutality. Across the board in Seattle, progressive candidates were leading big, from Katie Wilson (running against Mayor Bruce Harrell) to Erika Evans (headed for victory against Davison).

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Thursday, August 7

Council Amendments to Comprehensive Plan Reveal Competing Priorities

City councilmembers have proposed more than 100 amendments to Mayor Bruce Harrell’s much-delayed Comprehensive Plan update, which only deals with neighborhood residential (former single-family) zoning. Some amendments would further shrink the size of neighborhood centers—small nodes of potential future density—while others would expand them and create new incentives for housing.

Seattle Nice: Election Results Emergency Edition!

On this week’s second edition of the podcast, we debated what’s behind the shift toward progressive candidates this year. I argued that it’s a combination of people’s desire to have people in office who’ll fight Trump policies that impact Seattle and a rejection of politicians who’ve prioritized cracking down on minor crimes over solving the affordability crisis; Sandeep says voters are reflexively “lurching to the left” because of Trump, not any specific local issues.

Friday, August 8

Another Tree Petition, Another Council Staff Departure, and Another Round of Election Results

A petition to “save the trees” is more blatantly misleading than usual, as the trees in question aren’t threatened by the development people are protesting. Maritza Rivera can’t seem to keep staff for more than six months. And the latest election results put Katie Wilson at 50.2 percent to Harrell’s 41.7, while Ann Davison and City Council President Sara Nelson lost ground too: The two incumbents have 33.8 percent and 35.8 percent of the vote, respectively.