Tag: Seattle Nice

Elections

Seattle Nice: Did Katie Wilson Win or Did Bruce Harrell Lose?

By Erica C. Barnett

Our latest podcast episode (subscribe and get a new one every week!) focuses on the mayor’s race—how Katie Wilson won it, why she won it, and how incumbent mayor Bruce Harrell tried very hard to keep her from winning it.

I kicked things off by talking about Harrell’s not-so-gracious concession speech and Q&A with reporters, in which he suggested baselessly that there were “anomalies” in King County Elections’ vote count and grumped at a reporter who asked, reasonably enough, if he understood what it was it was like to struggle with affordability in Seattle in 2025.

Harrell, who worked as a corporate attorney before being elected to the city council in 2007, told a reporter it was “offensive” to even ask that question, given that he spent his whole life suffering from “scars” such as having to share one bathroom in the Central District house his parents owned. (The fact that Harrell frequently brought up this fairly common annoyance with living in an older house as proof he relates to the present-day challenges of working people in Seattle says a lot about why he lost).

History probably won’t care about the fact that Harrell and his allies used tired misogynistic tropes to attack Wilson, painting her as a privileged, Oxford-educated princess who never worked a day in her life, but I do—especially since Harrell’s gendered attacks created the playbook for national right-wing media like Fox and the New York Post, which will probably never tire of calling her a hypocritical socialist who “lives off her parents’ money.” (If you’re not familiar with this trumped-up issue, Wilson’s parents helped her pay for day care temporarily so she could campaign).

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Sandeep suggested it’s a bit hypocritical for left-leaning white people who “got on the identity train” a few years ago to “throw over the Black, Asian mayor” in favor of a white woman now; Harrell banged this drum at length during his campaign, suggesting that “Seattle’s Black community” monolithically supported him and his policies. And David asked whether I’m not a bit hypocritical for

defending Wilson, who has never worked in government, after criticizing the new city council voters elected in 2023, most of whom had little or no government experience. (This one didn’t feel correct to me—in general, council members don’t have much or any government experience—so I looked it up. Turns out: Nope! I criticized the incoming council cohort for their policy positions and the things they said about how local government works, which were often simplistic.)

Also, for some goddamn reason, we’re still debating whether Wilson promised to lower the price of pizza (she didn’t!)

Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts, and tune in later this week for a special bonus episode.

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.

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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.

Drugs, homelessness, podcasts

Seattle Nice: CoLEAD Brings a New Approach to 12th and Jackson

By Erica C. Barnett

This week’s special guest on Seattle Nice, Purpose Dignity Action’s Director of Outreach and Special Initiatives Nichole Alexander, spoke with Sandeep and me about the work PDA’s CoLEAD program is doing with drug users at a longtime “hot spot” in the Chinatown International District.

Centered on 12th and Jackson, the area has been a frequent target for police operations, encampment removals, and city-led outreach efforts over the past decade.

The PDA’s CoLEAD program, formed during the pandemic to relocate people from encampments on state highway rights-of-way into hotel-based lodging with intensive case management, saw results—according to Alexander, 95 percent of people they worked with moved into hotel-based shelters funded by the state, and 70 percent ended up in permanent housing. That program, known as the Encampment Resolution Program, lost state funding, and now CoLEAD is focusing its much more limited resources helping people around 12th and Jackson by offering them a safe, private place to stay—something Alexander says is a prerequisite for longer-term stability.

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Unlike the city’s Unified Care Team, which moves people from place to place while offering shelter referrals to some, CoLEAD spends weeks getting to know people individually and listen to their needs before moving them inside.

“I hear a lot of people say folks don’t want to come inside, and that is not what we find,” Alexander told us. “We find 95% of folks really do want to come inside. They just want something that’s going to be safe for them. They want to be able to close the door, use a toilet safely, have case management that cares—and have that long-term care, not just a quick answer.”

We also talked to Alexander about her personal story, the debate over whether jail and involuntary treatment lead to lasting recovery, and the misconception that low-barrier shelter or housing is inherently chaotic and destabilizing.

David was out this week, but we’ll all be back together next week for a special election episode!

Elections, homelessness, Mayor Harrell, podcasts

Seattle Nice: Harrell Talks Tough on Food Deserts and Homelessness

By Erica C. Barnett

Mayor Bruce Harrell has issued a fusillade of official announcements in the weeks leading up to the November 4 election, including one, last week, about legislation that would prohibit restrictive covenants that limit the size of grocery stores and pharmacies. On this week’s podcast, we discussed the timing and implications of the proposal, which Harrell pitched as one solution to the problem of “food deserts”—areas with few grocery stores (or pharmacies) where residents have to travel long distances to get basic items.

As I noted in my story about the plan, size restrictions didn’t prevent grocery stores from opening in the two locations the city gave as examples of this phenomenon. In one case, a Sprouts organic food store replaced a long-vacant Albertson’s, joining an Amazon Fresh and several cultural grocery stores to create a diverse mini-food hub in North Seattle. In the second, neighbors successfully lobbied for a Trader Joe’s to anchor a development that brought hundreds of new apartments Greenwood; that project replaced a single-story Safeway and a parking lot, and is just four blocks away from a giant Fred Meyer.

The size of grocery stores in Seattle is limited primarily by zoning, not rarely-used restrictive covenants; in the lowest-density neighborhood commercial zones, for instance, grocery stores can’t be larger than 10,000 square feet. And the problem in food deserts isn’t that grocery stores are too small—it’s that there aren’t enough (or any) grocery stores of any size in those areas, while wealthier, whiter neighborhoods like Ballard are almost overrun with options.

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You could argue (and I have) that Harrell’s anti-covenant proposal is a solution in search of a problem. But what about other ideas for enticing grocery stores to open in Seattle, like a separate Harrell proposal to simply exempt all grocery stores from state business and occupation taxes? We were all pretty skeptical of this idea, since tax breaks aren’t free—when the government cuts taxes for one group, they always pass the losses on to someone else.

We also discussed ongoing turmoil at the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, whose CEO, Kelly Kinnison, was recently the target of several toxic-workplace allegations. Kinnison’s only penalty was a round of executive coaching and a written reminder that the KCRHA prohibits retaliation, but the agency itself still faces criticism from all sides—including KCRHA board member Harrell, who has recently been arguing that Seattle spends more than its fair share on the regional authority. Sandeep said it’s time to “write [the KCRHA] off as a failure, because it is a failure.” To which I asked: “But then what?”

Elections, housing, King County, Mayor Harrell, podcasts, Police

Seattle Nice: Harrell’s Election-Year Budget, King County’s RealPage Ban, and Mayor Pete’s Endorsement

 

By Erica C. Barnett

On this week’s episode of Seattle Nice, we discussed Mayor Bruce Harrell’s election-year budget proposal, a one-year plan for 2026 that increases spending by more than $50 million, including “one-time” programs that will almost certainly require ongoing funds. Harrell’s budget also adds $26 million to hire new police officers, on top of the Seattle Police Department’s existing budget; public safety, including police and fire, now makes up more than half the city’s discretionary budget.

The one-time spending in Harrell’s budget includes temporary funding for programs that are likely to lose federal funding under the Trump Administration, as well as assistance for immigrants being targeted by the federal government. These needs are likely to accelerate, rather than diminish, over the next several years.

Sandeep and I actually agreed that the city should be doing more to address future budget deficits (Harrell’s budget, not counting the one-time funds, assumes a deficit that will grow from $140 million in 2027 to $374 million in 2029). Where we departed ways was on the question of whether the city should be “”goring some oxes” in the budget by telling some human services organizations they’re “not going to get money because we’re not seeing results. … I think there would be a human cry coming from the progressive side saying, this is austerity budget[ing]. ”

While it’s definitely true that slashing the city’s budget for human services would anger progressives, I argued that the call for cuts seems to always focus on programs designed to help people directly with needs like food, housing, and other basic needs, rather than departments like SPD, whose funding only goes up every year. (Police are always a sacred cow, never a gored ox). This year, public safety departments will consume more than half the city’s discretionary budget, with SPD accounting for half that amount, at $486 million.

Perhaps the city could reduce some of this year’s expansion plans for SPD, I suggested, by taking a peek into the extremely opaque police budget and finding some money there; personally, I’d stop the CCTV surveillance program, which Harrell added to the budget as a new ongoing obligation last year, and look for other places where money is sitting unused or being spent ineffectively.

We also talked about the King County Council’s recent vote to ban the use of rent-pricing software like RealPage. David noted that bans on rent-fixing software are similar to “trust-busting,” in which the federal government cracked down on mergers, price-fixing, and other anti-competitive practices. Landlords use algorithmic pricing tools to charge the highest rent possible, a rate that can vary day by day—much like Ticketmaster, Expedia, and Uber use “dynamic” pricing to determine the price of tickets, flights, hotels, and rides.

Finally, we all issued our verdict on former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg’s endorsement of Harrell. Our assessment: A big “whatever.”

City Council, Density, Mayor Harrell, public safety, Taxes

Seattle Nice: CARE Team Expansion and a Missed Opportunity for Neighborhood Businesses

By Erica C. Barnett

Gearing up for Seattle’s 2025 budget season on the latest episode of Seattle Nice, we discussed Mayor Bruce Harrell’s proposal to increase the local sales tax rate by 0.1 cent to pay for an expansion of the city’s CARE Team and 911 department, backfill $20 million in spending that currently comes from other sources, and add funding for firefighters, addiction treatment, and the fire department’s Health 99 overdose response team.

Governor Bob Ferguson gave cities and counties the authority to hike sales taxes to pay for public safety programs in his budget last year, effectively punting his promise to spend $100 million on police to local jurisdictions and forcing cities and counties to use a regressive sales tax increase if they wanted more public safety funding. King County already passed its 0.1-cent tax in June; assuming Harrell’s proposal passes, the total sales tax in Seattle will rise to nearly 10.6 percent.

We dug into what the new tax will pay for, as well as why CARE Team expansion is happening now, after a lengthy stalemate between the Seattle Police Officers Guild and CARE over what responsibilities SPD is willing to hand over to unarmed social workers.

Since 2023, a memorandum of understanding between CARE and the police department requires cops to go out with CARE on every call, limits the kind of calls CARE’s first responders are allowed to respond to, and restricts the size of the team to 24 people. That MOU expires at the end of the year.

Although new SPOG contracts typically drag on for years (the most recent contract, covering the years 2021 through 2023, passed in April 2024), that may not be the case this time, as we discussed, thanks to the recent primary election results, which had Katie Wilson leading incumbent Harrell outright.

In short, SPOG appears to be racing (relatively speaking) to wrap up their latest contract this year, betting that Katie Wilson might win the mayor’s race and be less willing than Harrell to provide concessions to the union without corresponding improvements to police accountability.

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This goes far beyond CARE, of course, but the new urgency around the contract seems to have produced a new willingness to give the team some of what it’s been asking for almost since its inception, including expansion from 24 to 48 tea members, the ability to go out on calls without a police escort and to respond to more types of calls where a social worker can do more good than officers with guns.

Harrell’s sales tax proposal, part of the 2025 budget he announced today, includes funding for CARE expansion, which suggests the MOU language may already be settled. As Sandeep put it, “The specter of Katie Wilson has scared SPOG into actually making the deal to allow alternative dispatch.”

Also this week, the guys gave me a lot of time to geek out over the council’s amendments to legislation implementing “phase 1” of the city’s comprehensive plan, which just passed last week.

Did they go into a boredom-induced fugue state? Who knows, but I did get an opportunity to talk about why I’d be thrilled to have bars, restaurants, and late-night corner stores in my own residential neighborhood. Unfortunately, the council foreclosed that possibility when they voted to restrict new businesses in neighborhoods to stores and to make them close no later than 10pm—a missed opportunity to give more people access to the kinds of things that make a city a city.