A mere 284 days into her tenure, Mayor Katie Wilson sat down with reporters to address a taboo subject: what Seattleites actually want to know.
Aside from a bit of FIFA-related bliss, Wilson has had a terrible summer. She’s been under a microscope for not being transparent enough, especially after the Bite of Seattle shooting. The numbers and specificity of Candidate Wilson have haunted Mayor Wilson.
We’ll get to that. But first, I wanted to know, why did she decide to do this now?
I tried to allude to this in my question to the mayor about why she was finally entering the off-topic media trenches. First, I thought of the Brazilian TV show Roda Viva (Roundtable Live) where politicians wade into a literal pit of criticism. Searching for something more familiar, I thought of the disgraced and clownishly corrupt former mayor who preceded Zohran Mamdani.
When I covered New York City, I used to dip into the weekly Tuesday press conference of Eric Adams, a jubilant spin zone where he’d take on his critics with rizz and occasional apparent lies. I mentioned this to Wilson as I put the question to her.
“I don’t know if that is a recommendation or not,” she said with a laugh.
“Can you talk a little bit about [why at] this point in your political career you decided to hold regular off-topics, and how you see it as a tool, and why you didn’t want to do it before?” I asked.
“It’s not that I didn’t want—” Wilson started. She began again. “This is something that we’ve actually talked about the possibility of really since the beginning. There’s just a lot that goes into standing up a mayor’s office and get rolling [sic] and so just we’re at the point now where that seemed like a good thing to introduce.”
Like former Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell, Adams organized his pressers in a TV-friendly podium-facing-pews style. Harrell only trotted out the format when he thought he had good news, though.
Wilson’s staff had reorganized the executive reception area of her office with a classroom vibe, her and the press sitting around a table (in the style of outgoing New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat who has actually done something radical about childcare access). They described the Tuesday roundtable as part of a “periodic” availability to underscore the mayor’s commitment to transparency.
But there’s no guarantee that her staff will take up that effort again. As she’s done on progressive tax revenue, support for police, and homeless sweeps, we must ask if she’ll revert to a Harrellian instinct on media availability. “Periodic” is yet to be defined.
For months, Wilson has tried to ignore reporter questions about the issues of the day like shootings and progressive taxation under the maxim of “let’s keep it on the topic of this event.”
It’s an excuse many mayors use to keep the media focused on various dog and pony shows, but it carries a bit more weight when they actually respond to media questions on other days.
On Tuesday, I saw one reason why it’s tempting to ignore questions, as members of the media asked her various iterations of Why hasn’t your police department caught the Bite of Seattle shooter??? It’s a question she could be asked at every event for months with answers that are largely out of her hands. (On Tuesday, she said—I’m paraphrasing here—cops are working hard, I’m impatient too, I’m giving them plenty of money, and—a real quote—“I’m assuming there will be a Bite of Seattle next year.”)
No wonder New York’s Mamdani didn’t continue his predecessor’s off-topic availability. It’s tough. Each week, he saves himself from a round in the octagon with my former colleagues at the New York Post.
But I also saw the value of her communication on Tuesday
Many Wilson supporters may have gotten the impression from her budget, and the accompanying budget speech, that she’s pushed progressive taxation down her priority list somewhere near colonizing Mars. Unlike Mamdani, she has no concrete proposal to tax the rich or increase overall spending for citizens outside law enforcement.
But in Tuesday’s presser, Wilson suggested she’s actually working on making something happen next year with the Legislature’s help.
“We are in active conversation with state legislators about the upcoming session and about bills that they’re interested in putting forward, and some of that includes revenue bills, whether that’s state level revenue bills or bills that would give cities like Seattle new revenue authority,” she said.
My doubts (Is Mayor Katie Wilson Still a Socialist?) are ever-so-slightly soothed. We’ll see where progressive revenue lands on her legislative priority list, but at least it’s an update.
And we’ll see if “periodic” gets as loosely defined as “socialism.”
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