Its very clear that Harrell should NOT be the next mayor.

I've met Harrell. I like him.
But, everything about this particular campaign of his stinks of "republican".
Just a synonym for "capitalist". "Trump". "Fat-cats". "Wall Street".
Everything Seattle DOESN'T need.

Wait, there's an election?

I thought that was in Canada ...

Isn't the GQR Research survey one of those "push polls" you were whining about last Thursday, when it was one done for the Sara Nelson campaign?

Wow! A poll that smears someone while asking questions?! How original. What a hack piece.

@5 - if it doesn't support your candidate - smear it! How Trumpian.

There's a widow who lives down the street from me. She's lived in the neighborhood for 40 years. She's scared. The junkies that live in the park a block away bang on her door in the middle of the night and bust up the stuff on her porch. Unless blood is spilled, the police do nothing. The city parks department does nothing.

Do you think the whiff of Republican funding on Harrell is going to change this lady's vote to Gonzalez, the champion of doubling down on the status quo? There are THOUSANDS of voters across the city who have had enough with the garbage and the petty crime. We'll see where the chips land on election day.

What a lame article. I have no doubt that a push poll that mentioned Gonzalez's flip-flop on defunding the police by 50% would've elicited a response much more favorable to Harrell.

The truth is that both candidates each have their own weaknesses that their opponent will try to exploit.

The lame hysteric Rich Smith doing all he can to salvage the incompetent and unbright but verbally PC González's campaign.

Mr. Smith, rather than evidence of dominant Republican influence, what we're seeing with Harrell's campaign is a cross-ideological coalition of the sane, desperate for some competence in City Hall.

I highly doubt this election is going to turn on what Councilmembers said or did not say in 2017 about Mayor Murray; as Westside forever notes in #7, it’s going to turn on what people are experiencing today and the candidate they think will fix things.

At some point, the patina of progressivism will vanish off a majority of voters once they get sick and tired enough of the problems they see every day, rightly or wrongly.

@1 Ivy R. Nightscales: Agreed and seconded.

If "Be afraid! Junkies! Camping! Bicycle lanes! Seattle is dying!" ever wins elections here, how did González win in the first place? Or anybody? Up and down the ballot every losing candidate ran on fear of crime, fear of tents, fear of taxing business. Why would it work this time if it didn't work all those other times?

What I wonder is what Harrell thinks Seattle-is-dying, Inc. is going to do for him if he does get elected. Ask Jenny Durkan what friends like that are worth.

Contrary to this post's headline, the respondents were not reacting to knowledge of Harrell's response to "Murray Rape Accusations," but rather to the push-poll's flagrant lying about what Harrell had actually said:

'That negative messaging statement said Harrell "defended" Murray in 2017 when he said that Seattle residents "did not ask us to judge anyone for something that happened 33 years ago or maybe didn't happen," '

Noting both the length of time passed and dubious nature of the claims wasn't defending Murray, it was simply recognizing reality. Furthermore, Seattle's residents showed Harrell's statement about them was correct. In the general election for Mayor in 2017, Seattle's voters had a choice between Cary Moon, who had begun her campaign by demanding that Murray resign, and Jenny Durkan, who had begun her campaign by accepting Murray's endorsement. The previously-unknown Durkan trounced the well-financed Moon by double digits, showing Seattle's voters simply didn't care about alleged details from Murray's long-ago past.

(Likewise, the push-poll's claim that Harrell has a "history" fails because the push-poll alleges only one other incident, and even if true, with the characterization of Harrell's response to the Murray allegations now shown to be false, there is no pattern upon which to base a "history.")

If Seattle's voters simply did not care in 2017, when the dubious allegations against Murray were fresh, the idea that those equally-dubious, but now-stale allegations can swing any part of a 15-point deficit counts mostly as amusing. More relevantly, such a claim, along with the lies supporting it, demonstrate González simply doesn't have the judgment required for public office.