Adonis Ducksworth, Mayor Bruce Harrell’s transportation policy and operations manager, may be the coolest person to ever run for the Seattle City Council District 2 seat. Don’t be swayed by his name, which sounds like it belongs to someone who crawled out of a time machine from Victorian England. Ducksworth, 50, is a Renaissance man of dope hobbies: He’s a skateboarder, a high school golf champion, and he makes techno beats in his studio after his kids go to sleep. 

As I write this, I’m listening to his track “The Vision.” After this election, we should all meet under a freeway and get down to “The Vision.” It goes pretty fucking hard. But after talking through his plans if he’s elected to represent D2, I’m not certain Ducksworth’s vision—for Rainier Avenue, for housing density, for transit, policing, and public safety—is as fully realized as his sick beats.

Duckworth is the second candidate to announce their run for the D2 seat, following Assistant City Attorney Eddie Lin. City council appointed Mark Solomon to the seat in January after Tammy Morales’s decision to step down, and we’ll choose a permanent replacement this November. Morales's departure left Alexis Merceds-Rinck as the sole progressive on the council.

 

Ducksworth’s main goals for Seattle are to make it a more affordable, safer place—especially for kids—and to get the stalled Rainier Beach skate park project built. He’s big on vision, but light on specifics. Except for the skate park. And, after talking to him, I’m all in on the skate park. 

Ducksworth grew up in a triplex on Beacon Hill. His mother worked multiple jobs to make ends meet. Throughout his adolescence, especially when his parents split in his early teens, Ducksworth skated. He spent most of his 20s skating, snowboarding, and making beats (Let me recommend “Universe” while you read the rest of this article). 

In his early 30s, he went to Seattle Community College to finish school. There, the combination of an enlightening economics course and Barack Obama’s successful political campaign inspired Ducksworth to take his education seriously. He finished his bachelor’s degree, then his master’s in urban planning. His real start in transportation came doing outreach on the Seattle Department of Transportation’s 23rd Avenue overhaul project, where he interfaced with communities impacted by the construction in the Central District. Today, he’s the senior transportation policy official in the mayor’s office and one of the architects of the 2024 transportation levy. 

While being on city council was “always in the back of my mind,” he said, Ducksworth didn’t seriously consider it until Councilmember Morales resigned from her seat. Ducksworth applied for the open position. He became a finalist and came in second, but ultimately lost out to Mark Solomon. 

Part of what inspired Ducksworth to enter politics was his experience living in Rainier Beach for the last decade. His house was broken into twice, in 2019 and 2020. He says he regularly hears gunshots. One day, the shots sounded close to his house near Rainier Avenue. When he hopped on his skateboard to check it out, he says he saw that someone had been killed outside his daughters’ dance studio. 

He says that his and his neighbors’ experience living in an area where crime is more concentrated motivated him to run on a public safety agenda. But what does “public safety” mean to Ducksworth? He wants more police and wants more diversity within the force. Specifically, he wants them to come from D2. In his application letter for Morales’s open seat, he said he wanted to “bolster the pipeline of police recruits that come from the district,” in the hopes that they’ll be more invested in the people that live there. He also wants police to “walk beats” in the neighborhood to develop relationships with the community. Ducksworth believes “walking a beat” could help soften the complicated relationship diverse communities have with police officers. 

“If this was happening in any other neighborhood, the response would be very different,” Ducksworth said. “There is some of that institutionalized bias and racism toward the south end.”

According to SPD data from 2024, violent crime decreased citywide, but some neighborhoods still saw an increase, including District 2’s North Beacon Hill (It’s worth noting that "perennially safe" Magnolia ended up with the highest crime spike of any neighborhood in the city last year). Duckworth doesn’t believe that the city’s current efforts to ameliorate the violence he sees in his neighborhood are working. 

“That's one of the perspectives I can bring to the city council, because I'm living in the middle of it and it's awful,” Ducksworth said. 

It’s unclear how Ducksworth would accomplish this. He didn’t specify whether he would advocate for raising the police budget or any strategies for increasing or diversifying hiring. While he is already in communication with the Seattle Police Department’s South Precinct, requesting additional patrols, it’s not clear how he could influence the police to “walk a beat” any differently as a city council member. (Research has found that having more officers on the street may act as a deterrent for violent crime, but it also increases the number of arrests for low-level, petty crimes in already over-policed communities.)

“I just want these kids to be safe. I want to be safe,” he said. “When you read about in the newspaper while you're sipping coffee, looking at the lake [you say], ‘So sad, we should do something about that.’ But when you're in it, it's a totally different mindset, a totally different approach.”

In his original application for Morales’s seat, he did also say he felt “mentoring services and programs” were important to help divert kids away from crime, as well as additional (though nonspecific) resources for addiction, mental health, and homelessness.

One diversion program he could get specific on, though?  Opening up that goddamn Rainier Beach Skate Park. 

“People keep asking me ‘Why do you keep talking about that skate park?’” Ducksworth said. “Look, for me, when I was 12 or 13 years old and my parents were breaking up and things were all awful in my house, that's what I had. That was a release I had and I’d go link up with my friends in my neighborhood.”

By providing a skate park in the neighborhood, Ducksworth says the city will be providing kids with something they can do and a place they can build community. 

Currently, the closest skateparks to Rainier Beach are in Judkins Park or Jefferson Park—15 to 20 minutes away by car, even longer by bus. It’s a dilemma he faces as a skater himself. He skates whenever he can: before work, during lunch, after work. Skating has changed his perspective on the world; when he looks at an everyday handrail, a bench, a curb, he sees opportunity. It’s a different, creative way of thinking. He wants that for the kids in his neighborhood. 

“This is a real concrete thing that will make a difference,” he said.

The city secured the funds for the park ahead of its planned construction in 2024. But it’s been stalled, partly, according to Ducksworth, because the plans didn’t make the park covered. Without a cover, in a city where it rains 152 days out of the year, skaters can’t skate. 

Aside from public safety and the skate park, Ducksworth is light on specifics. 

He called himself an urbanist, and said he’s “disappointed” in the current draft of the Seattle Comprehensive Plan because it doesn’t spread increased density enough throughout other neighborhoods, concentrating the growth in District 2. However, he was vague in his criticism of the plan. But his boss is the guy who greenlit the lackluster plan. (I am, conveniently, listening to his song "Resist" now. Crazy stuff happening in here.)

We need better housing solutions for people wanting to get off the streets, families with kids, and working-class and low-income people throughout Seattle– to help anyone who wants to live in Seattle find housing options that meet their needs,” said Ducksworth in a statement announcing his run. “That includes South Seattle where exclusionary and racist zoning practices in the past created inequities in home ownership, predatory development, displacement, and inferior infrastructure. I’ll bring a commitment to housing policies informed by past harms– but driven by future opportunity– to build the communities we all deserve.”

Ducksworth rides his bike regularly on Lake Washington Boulevard, but he doesn’t believe the street should be shut down to cars. He instead would prefer the city pursue a true multi-modal solution a la the waterfront redesign. 

As far as funding all these amorphous dreams and desires, Ducksworth supports progressive tax revenue. He said he would back a local capital gains tax, and is also open to new taxes and expanding existing ones. 

On transportation—his specialty—Ducksworth has a smattering of ideas. He would like to make Rainier Avenue safer by preventing drivers from using the center lane to “scoot around other cars.” He’d also like to increase bus frequency to move more people and make it harder for people to speed in bus-only lanes. The bus is overseen by the county, not the city. He endeavors to make the bus safer, too, by using Seattle Transit Measure funds to boost security on the bus and design stops with better lighting. With light rail, Ducksworth wants to pursue a study to see what it would take to elevate the south end light rail tracks, given the dangers of the street-level design. 

In the meantime, he also wants to look into train frequency and headways to reduce the wait for people trying to cross the street or turn near the south end’s light rail stations. He believes the long waits for pedestrian crossing and vehicles encourage impatient people to make risky decisions and increase their likelihood of being hit by the train.

Ducksworth seems like an overall good guy. He’s dedicated to his neighborhood and his community, and he’s someone who invites the local kids over to his house in the summer to use his backyard skate ramp. He seems to me to be someone who’s figured out a life that makes him happy. He also makes other people happy—I mean, I didn’t know I liked techno house music and here I am bumping “Resonance,” a song deep into his Spotify discography.

Part of spreading that happiness would mean accomplishing these goals he has for District 2. At this stage, though, I’m not sure he’s the politician to do it. Mostly, because I’m not sure Ducksworth is a politician. He’s got nine months to refine these ideas into both an electable stump speech and a real plan for this city. Let’s see what he can do. 

Editor's Note: A previous version of this story incorrectly named the other candidate for the District 2 seat. His name is Eddie Lin.