Jenny Durkan, the 56th mayor of Seattle, marked a couple of milestones when she took the oath of office at the Ethiopian Community Center in Rainier Beach. She is the first woman to hold the position in nearly a century and the first lesbian mayor of Seattle ever. Winning 56 percent of the vote, Durkan begins her first term with a mandate, and she got to work right away. She spent her first week signing executive orders launching a rental vouchers program, mandating city hall department heads undergo implicit bias training, and creating a framework to give students two years of free community college.
At the same time, distrust of Durkan from the activist left—over her prosecutorial background, her wealth, and her long list of corporate backers—has endured. The mayor faced her first protest on November 30 at Elliott Bay Book Company as she announced a small-business advisory council. At least one person was detained.
The morning after her inauguration, I met with Durkan on the seventh floor of City Hall. She had recently stepped into her office for the first time.
