Bruce Harrell is ending his 12-year career on the Seattle City Council. Lester Black

After three terms in office, the current council president decided not to run for reelection this year. Harrell, 61, a former corporate attorney and University of Washington football star, will be replaced by community organizer Tammy Morales.

A lot has changed since Harrell first took office. When he won his first election, Amazon employed fewer than 5,000 people in Seattle (they now employ over 50,000 inside the city), the national economy was deep in recession, and George W. Bush was still president.

More than 140,000 people have moved to Seattle since Harrell took office, and when he leaves City Hall next month, a piece of Seattle as we know it will leave with him: the Seattle City Council will lack a black person for the first time in 52 years. Harrell's story is part of a disappearing thread of Seattle's multicultural past. He was born in Seattle in 1958 to a Japanese mother and a black father. His mother had been detained in a Japanese internment camp in Idaho during World War II. His father’s family had left the deep south for better opportunities in the Pacific Northwest.

The Stranger recently sat down with Harrell to learn what he’s going to do in his post-council life, what he's proud of, what he regrets from his tenure on the council, what he thinks about Amazon’s attempt to buy this year’s election, and what he thinks about the new City Council lacking an African-American person for the first time in more than five decades.