On October 21, KUOW published a story with the headline: “Katie Wilson can barely afford to live in Seattle. That’s why she wants to be mayor.” The story then goes on to reveal that while she “speaks the language of the working people,” there’s something missing from her campaign narrative: “Her parents give her money,” the reporter wrote.
Harrell’s campaign seized on the idea that support from her parents undermines Wilson’s credentials as an advocate for working-class Seattleites. Two days after the KUOW article came out, Harrell sent out a press release with the headline: “Katie Wilson is Not Who She Says She Is.” It went on to say that the profile “shatters Wilson’s carefully constructed narrative: she is not a working-class Seattle resident, and doesn’t bear the stress felt by cost-pressured Seattleites.” His campaign website dedicates an entire page to the article.
And this weekend, a bunch of Seattleites got a text from the Bruce for Seattle campaign linking to the KUOW like a tabloid scandal: “Katie Wilson’s campaign built around working class identity, but parents paid her bills.”
It was a classist, sexist attack from a millionaire with a household income that falls somewhere between $500,000 and $1.2 million.
According to Wilson’s family, it also wasn’t true.
For the two decades Wilson’s been in Seattle, “we have been very apart from her finances,” Wilson’s mother, Anne Clark, tells The Stranger. “We haven’t had anything to do with supporting her materially, in any way.”
That only changed earlier this year, when Wilson told her parents that she planned to run for mayor. Clark knew that campaigns are enormously taxing, and that Wilson and her husband had been getting by without paying for childcare up to that point. She and Wilson’s dad thought they might be able to help with the stress by contributing to the cost of Josie’s daycare. “I don’t even think we cover the whole cost,” she says. And, she clarifies, she has never underwritten Wilson’s bills. “I don’t even know what her bills are.”
She says she plans to keep helping when she sees opportunities to. “This is my only grandchild. What grandparent doesn’t want to invest in their grandchild if they can?”
Clark has read the KUOW story about Wilson. She was “irritated and amused,” she says. “It made me think: I don’t know who wrote that for Harrell’s campaign. But he has kids. Surely he’s invested in his kids.”
Even without the clarification from Clark, the story was a relatable one for a lot of voters. Nearly half of millennials and Gen Zers rely, in some measure, on familial support. That help may take the form of a grocery run, a lingering phone plan, a subsidized insurance premium, or the occasional rent check, small acts of intergenerational care, as wages have lagged farther and farther behind inflation.
The original story clearly lays out a narrative that Wilson would not be able to live in Seattle without her parents’ support. “Wilson presents herself as a sensible coalition-builder who runs a small nonprofit—the Transit Riders Union – and has lived a mostly working-class life. A renter and a mother, she runs on issues close to her heart. She speaks the language of struggling people,” the story reads. “But not included in the narrative Wilson tells on the campaign trail is how she affords this expensive city. The answer is simple, and arguably very Seattle: Her parents, professors in New York State, give her money.”
Wilson’s campaign reached out to KUOW to request a correction or clarification in the story. The news station said they wouldn’t add a correction or editor’s note because the article was inspiring “really interesting conversations about what it takes to live in the city,” and that they would prefer to simply do a follow-up interview. The Wilson campaign declined.
The Stranger contacted the station over the weekend to ask if they wanted to comment about their decision to not clarify the story. On Monday morning, they added an editor’s note stating that they’d added “context and an additional quote” to “further illuminate Katie Wilson’s parents’ financial support.”
The two paragraphs read:
“Before I decided to run for office, my husband and I were just kind of juggling our kid back and forth,” Wilson said. “We didn’t have her in daycare because it’s so expensive. But then when I decided to run, we’re like, we really need childcare.”
Wilson has mentioned the exorbitant cost of child care in Seattle throughout the campaign —noting what it costs to send her 2-year-old to daycare — but without noting how she paid for it.
The changes do not address the clear narrative in the story that Wilson could not live in Seattle without her parents’ support—something she did for decades. “We stand by our reporting and plainly did not state that Katie Wilson was receiving money from her parents at any other period than what she told us herself,” the station said in a comment.
There are eight days left in this campaign season. Polls from The Stranger and Northwest Progressive Institute both show Wilson in the lead, but this election will all depend on turnout. And so for those eight days, we should expect a lot of the same: Wilson holding rally after rally trying to get out the vote, and Harrell pulling out every class-shaming, sexist half-truth he can find to make voters wonder if maybe they just shouldn’t vote this time around.
“Clark knew that campaigns are enormously taxing, and that Wilson and her husband had been getting by without paying for childcare up to that point. She and Wilson’s dad thought they might be able to help with the stress by contributing to the cost of Josie’s daycare.”
I must say, why run for office with small child you’re supposed to mother? Wait a few years for goodness sake. What’s more important – a child’s formative years or a selfish career goal?
Wow, comment #1 is so sexist, I honestly can’t tell whether it’s parody. If not: Gross, Phoebe. Gross and dumb. Gross and dumb, and embarrassingly ignorant of what it’s like to be a parent in Seattle in this century.
Katie Wilson has campaigned as Working Class Hero — and now the legend has been tarnished. How rich that polemical The Stranger would call another publication asking about a correction. Pot, kettle!
Pretty funny that the stranger doesn’t even want to report on the other major Wilson discrepancies KUOW reported on. Like Katie only reported working 10 hours per week for transit riders union in 2023 and 2024 on the org’s tax documents. Her salary doesn’t match at all what she reported on city election disclosure forms. She shrugs it off as some kind of “error,” but doesn’t explain more. Lots of discrepancies for someone who is running to lead a city with a $9 billion budget. Her story does not add up and deserves further reporting. Guess that will never come from the stranger!
@2: It’s fine for you to disagree, and yeah, I can see how you think that might be sexist, but it doesn’t look like the father is going to postpone his career either.
Pheebs a is a pos neo lib nimby, we all all know they are voting for and let’s all hope they lose
@mama do you understand how non-profits and their supporters work? Reporting 10 hours a week doesn’t equate to 10 hours of actually working. Advocates volunteer most of their time and understand that most of these small non-profits cannot survive paying full time.
Think before you speak.
@1 — Wait, so people with small kids aren’t supposed to run for office? Or take a promotion? Or advance their career in any way, shape or form? That is ridiculous.
This is just a bullshit story. The Harrell campaign is getting desperate. It reminds me of the last election when the Gonzalez campaign ran a story about Harrell’s response to the Murray investigation. That was also complete bullshit as well.
Look, these are good candidates but the main difference is that while I actually like Bruce Harrell and think he has been a decent mayor he hasn’t done shit about the biggest problem facing the city: housing. It would have been easy to change the zoning. Just say “We should do what Spokane has done” and that would be that. We would have a building boom (like Spokane) and over time the cost of housing would go down. But instead, Harrell has basically governed like it is 1995 and there is no housing crisis. Rent is too damn high and Harrell has ignored the problem.
This not only impacts ordinary families trying to rent or buy a condo/townhouse but it increases homelessness as well. I realize some of The Stranger readers can’t connect the dots but it is pretty fucking simple. Follow the science. Restrictive zoning pushes up the cost of housing (https://law.yale.edu/sites/default/files/documents/pdf/hier1948.pdf). The cost of housing increases the number of homeless (https://homelessnesshousingproblem.com/). Therefore, we have more homeless than we should because of the overly restrictive zoning. If Harrell had dealt with the problem head-on he probably would be coasting to victory right now. But he didn’t and he isn’t.
@8: Which is more important? Having a parent at home in the earliest years or both advancing their careers and leaving the nurturing to the hired help? It’s a judgement call with no right or wrong answer, but plenty of strong opinions of course.
Also, Google AI: “In the last four years (2021-2024), Seattle has built at least 6,100 affordable housing units and a number of permanently affordable homes. This includes 1,750 apartments opened in 2023 and 1,443 apartments opened in 2024, plus hundreds more from previous years. The total also includes hundreds of units from a new rapid acquisition program and thousands more units from the Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA) program”
That’s more than doing s##t, don’t you think?
I blame Harrell for all the unhappiness in my life.
Just a reminder that Kuow is the one that ran the Harrell gun arrest from decades ago which TS happily picked up and amplified. I don’t recall much handwringing over that nothing burger attempt to smear Harrell.
@3: The KUOW story is correct as written. For the Stranger — which continues to present A TRUMP SUPPORTER as a champion of the poor and working-class! — to complain about another media outlet’s allegedly misrepresenting a political candidate, just puts the Stranger into a competition for hypocrisy and chutzpah at heights normally achieved only by Trump himself.
If Harrell twisted KUOW’s factually-accurate story into a dishonest attack upon Wilson, then the Stranger should go full-out First Amendment all over his sorry ass. Indeed, that is what the free speech clauses of the First Amendment primarily exist to do: protect our right to call out politicians on their distortions and lies. That’s a whole different thing than trying to use KUOW’s hard-earned credibility to get a better look for the Stranger’s candidate. (And the Stranger actually has the gall to imply KUOW left the story unaltered because it wanted to stir up controversy, not because KUOW’s story is correct as written.)
@4: Yeah, there seems to be a reason this post contains a link to a laudatory story on Wilson in the Nation, but not to the very story at KUOW which this post supposedly exists to address. Of course the Stranger ignored evidence suggesting Wilson might not be honest about her money, even though dishonesty on the topic of Wilson’s money here forms the entire basis of the Stranger’s own complaint against Harrell.
That’s nice they are helping out.
lol Wilson oozes wealthy white privilege while she cosplays at being poor. Watch her shop at Goodwill while pretending her parents aren’t rich! If her parents weren’t supporting her, how exactly did she pay the bills? She says (and tax documents confirm) she wasn’t paid by her “union” until 2019. Her husband’s work history (if it exists) is apparently not to be discussed. The bottom line is there is no evidence of any earned income for the decade prior to 2019 yet they lived in one of the country’s most expensive cities. How? The Stranger wants to just gloss over this glaring omission in her biography, but it seems like a pretty basic question for somebody who wants to be mayor. The fact that she declined to give KUOW a follow up interview to clarify the situation tells us she doesn’t want it clarified.
@14: And to clarify that situation, the candidate should release “financial records from the period in question,” not “Mom’s voice on the telephone from thousands of miles away.” If the Stranger had ever actually done any journalism on Wilson, they would understand this fine and subtle distinction.
Look, I’d rather Wilson get her money from her parents that fundraise from underprivileged transit riders and pay yourself a salary out of that. Her nonprofit sounds like a grift. Especially when the org takes credit for laws they neither wrote nor voted on.
Katie is the victim here!
Remember the #1 rule to win over Feeble-Minded people: When challenged, play the race or victim card.
What on Earth is “sexist” about it?
Bottom line, her parents give her money.
@18 Wilson is supposed to be in the kitchen making cookies, dummy!
@19 – nothing in your sNaRkY comment explains why it is “sexist” to accurately point out the fact that Katie Wilson receives money from her parents.
For a candidate whose base credibility is built on living in poverty in Seattle, size and source of income are critical details. This storm speaks to Katie’s political naïveté.
She told a journalist, unprompted and on the record, that her parents send her money to pay the bills, then declined to explain the rough magnitude or frequency. This omission invites the journalist and readers to draw their own conclusions. I get that part of Katie’s appeal is that she’s not an experienced politician. But also, a problem for Katie’s platform is that she’s not an experienced politician. The KUOW article is hardly a partisan grilling – you might even call it a softball interview – and she still managed to set a problematic narrative, unprompted.
There are basic skills needed to be figurehead of a large, complex, highly-scrutinized public office. Katie doesn’t have these skills, because as previously discussed she has done very little in the last 20 years to prepare for public office or executive leadership.
They should never have run this true but embarrassing story.
@20 The money was for childcare. Instead of running for mayor, she’s supposed to be at home taking care of the kid. You know, because she’s the woman. See comment #1 on this thread if you need proof for that point.
@23 – So you don’t dispute the indisputable fact that Katie Wilson’s parents give her money.
Thanks!!!
@24 It’s in the fucking article, dipstick.
@25 no shit Sherlock
Why is “Katie Wilson accepted money from her parents to help with childcare” some kind of dunk? I’m still not getting it.
@27 I don’t either. Maybe I’m just oat of touch, but I don’t think such a revelation hits the same way with zoomers and millennials (Wilson’s core constituency) as it might have in decades past with boomers and Xers.
Speaking of dunks, remember when Harrell trolled Seattle at his State of the City address by pulling out a basketball and making everyone think the Sonics were coming back? What a dick!
@27
when your candidate’s
a Dedicated Status Quozier
the Straws’re much Easier to grasp
and with a Glut of Private Equity
pricing Out Native Seattleites
they’ll Take ANY Distraction
they can reach with a
Ten Foot Pole:
Vote EARLY
and Vote OFTEN
or, just make Certain
your precious Ballot gets
IN AND COUNTED WELL B E F O R E
Election Day! pls make a Note of it!
@27: ‘Why is “Katie Wilson accepted money from her parents to help with childcare” some kind of dunk?’
It’s not. The Stranger knows perfectly well what may happen if anyone tells the truth about one of their pet politicians, and so they attempt to neutralize anyone who does. So Harrell’s making an attack ad out of KUOW’s story means the Stranger first had to demand KUOW alter the story so as to invalidate the ad, and then attack KUOW for not altering it per the Stranger’s demand.
As @4 noted, the real “dunk” here is the part of KUOW’s story the Stranger resolutely ignores, which is that not even Katie Wilson seems to know everywhere Katie Wilson’s own money comes from. Not a good look for someone who asks to oversee a nine-figure city budget!
It’s not as if Katie Wilson is 43 years old, never had a job, and living in her parents basement. (Well, on second thought…)
@23
Her husband is evidently unemployed.
Why the heck isn’t he providing the child care so Katie can run for mayor?
I don’t understand the appeal of Katie Wilson at all. If I were to stack rank all of Seattles adult citizens for the role of mayor, I doubt Katie Wilson cracks the top 75%. Above her I’d place everyone with a college degree. Everyone who’s held a full time job for a few years. Everyone who can make their own finances work. Everyone who understands economics. Everyone that didn’t fundraiser from poor people and pay themselves a salary from those donations.
It’d be one thing if I heard great plans and ideas from her in the debates, but I didn’t. I didn’t ever hear plans from her, regardless of greatness. It was just “oh, we need to do more” and “oh we just need more money from our parents to pay for more”… I mean taxpayers, not parents. My bad….
But that is her mentality. Live/spend beyond means, ask someone else attached to the real economy for the difference. That may work fine for her personal finances, but it will not work for the city’s finances, which is real economy stuff.
@34 – I love you.
@33:
“Her husband is evidently unemployed.
“Why the heck isn’t he providing the child care so Katie can run for mayor?”
Exactly. Her parents’ money isn’t really for childcare. Two adults and a child reside on Capitol Hill, on what she may or may not pay herself from a nonprofit? No, that money pays many bills, and everyone involved agrees to use ‘childcare’ as a polite euphemism.
Our supposed presidents father had to bail him out because he couldn’t make money with a fucking CASINO ya’ll..
…this isn’t news worthy and honestly only makes her more relatable to a large portion of people who live in large cities.
@37: “Our supposed presidents father had to bail him out because he couldn’t make money with a fucking CASINO ya’ll…”
In a Seattle which repeatedly voted overwhelmingly for Trump, that comparison might help Wilson, yes. In the real Seattle, not so much…
@8: “Wait, so people with small kids aren’t supposed to run for office?”
What better qualification could she present for her ability to ride heard over the city council?
The Stranger is the most irrelevant publication in Seattle now. Just generic, completely out-of-date progressive ideas.
@37
Yep and that’s one of the many reasons I didn’t vote for him.
Just like it is one of many reasons I won’t vote for Wilson.
The issue isn’t “childcare” per se, though it does beg the question of why the unemployed husband isn’t doing that, which is how it would work in a real working class household. The real issue is that there is roughly a decade where there is no evidence of any earned income by Katie or her husband. The Stranger, in their fawning hagiography, reports that she arrived in Seattle in 2004 and took odd jobs, mostly construction, for “a few years”. Then there is nothing until she drew $40k in 2019 from her “union”. So how did they pay the bills in between? Was it her parents? Was it his parents? Why is the answer being hidden from the voters by both Wilson and The Stranger? The bottom line is she refuses to give voters an answer to the most basic question there is: how have you made a living? In a rational world that by itself would be disqualifying, but we don’t live in a rational world.
Another thing about Katie Wilson: she wants to lift Washington’s 1-percent lid on property-tax growth. It’s right there on her campaign website under Platform → Progressive Revenue → Reform Our Property Tax. The effect would be higher property-tax bills for homeowners across the board — not just the wealthy. That’s a fact she conveniently leaves out. Like much of her campaign, there’s more than meets the eye.
TEMPEST IN A TEAPOT. It must be real scary to certain tedious boring wealthy people in this city to have someone up for mayor that gives a damn for the downtrodden. Normally we are invisible unless we rattle our cages. Challenging the status quo how dare Katie!!! Why not do a thorough investigation of Harrell’s finances? And his city expenditures.
Harrell ignored the fact that the voters wanted social housing and voted for it twice. What happened to that? People are sleeping in the rain and dying in the streets right now and getting harassed by the police. Killing the poor is standard procedure by corrupt politicians.
IT WILL BE ABSOLUTELY REFRESHING TO NOT HAVE A WEALTHY SELFISH SOCIAL CLIMBING CLASSIST, SEXIST JERK AS MAYOR OF THIS CITY NOW. LOOKS LIKE IT CAN HAPPEN. IT MIGHT EVEN BE REVOLUTIONARY. IMAGINE THAT THE WORKING CLASS TAKES IT OVER. IT HAS HAPPENED BEFORE. CHECK OUT SEATTLE HISTORY. LOSERS.