Bruce Harrell had his chance.

A lifetime ago (in 2021), when Harrell first ran for mayor, he made a lot of big, substantive promises that voters seemed to believe: He pledged to build 1,000 new housing units in his first six months in office; he committed to changing the biased policing culture in SPD after the George Floyd protests; he said he didn’t believe “dispersal,” or sweeps, worked, and promised to take a “Housing First” approach to encampments around the city. Are we living in a utopia yet?

In our endorsement meeting, we asked about his broken promises. We pointed out that he conducted more sweeps than his five predecessors combined. That he sunk years of municipal effort and energy into a Comprehensive Plan that won’t meet our housing needs. That he pandered to police with bruised egos, letting them become the militant thugs that we saw in Cal Anderson on Memorial Day weekend, but with higher salaries. And in an hour-long endorsement meeting, he didn’t answer for a single thing. In every case, the conditions in his city were someone else’s fault. Homelessness? The other cities in King County aren’t doing their part. The police that he says can take a hike if they don’t agree with his idea of good policing? Well, he told us, he doesn’t actually know what good policing is. They’re the experts, not him. Nothing was his responsibility. 

We understand why he would feel that way. Because the greatest sin of the Harrell Administration is what it hasn’t done. He’s a mayor without imagination, and with him at the helm, Seattle is a rudderless ship on a windless ocean. While tens of thousands of Seattleites are struggling to keep their head above water, he’s obsessing over penises spray painted on the overpasses, AI incubators, and digital advertising kiosks that profit private companies. 

There’s a perception that this race was Harrell’s from the start, so there was no use doing anything to stop him. But that’s not the case. In polling this spring, only 37 percent of Seattleites were happy with Harrell’s work in City Hall. Enough of Seattle is sick of the Harrell Show.

Katie Wilson is Harrell’s opposite. If Harrell is all politics and no substance, Wilson is substance embodied. She’s been an organizer in Seattle for 15 years, and she’s built a career fighting for—and winning—campaigns like raising the minimum wage, protecting affordable transit, and building progressive revenue. 

Wilson’s campaign platform is clearly made by someone who’s used to making change in a system that’s built to fight against it. She has clear, step-by-step plans to build 4,000 units of shelter in four years, to streamline access to addiction and mental health treatment, and to build $1 billion worth of union-built affordable housing. Harrell made promises. Wilson actually intends to keep hers. And she knows how to do it.

In our meeting, one question best captured the difference between Wilson and Harrell. We asked about the FIFA World Cup coming to Seattle in 2026. When Seattle hosted the MLB All-Star game in 2023, the city swept any encampments in the area out of sight. Surely, next year, Seattle’s mayor would have to field a fair amount of outside pressure to make visible homelessness invisible while the world’s eyes are on us. How would they respond?

We gave Harrell two chances to answer the question, and he never did. Instead, he ranted about how our surrounding cities aren’t building as much shelter as we are, how he has to prioritize small businesses, said it was his responsibility to revitalize downtown, and reminded us that he signed an ordinance to make Seattle a Human Rights City. Then he turned to the other candidates, and said: “How dare you talk about the values I’ve been a part of for the last 16 years.” 

Wilson, meanwhile, rejected the premise of the question entirely. Not because she didn’t want to answer it, but because she had a plan to stand up enough shelter in the first six months of her term—between tiny home villages, faith communities, and vacancies throughout the city—to make the question irrelevant. “Let’s get people inside in time for the World Cup,” she said.

See that, Harrell? No excuses, just a goal, a plan, and a timeline. This is why Wilson has our vote. She sees people that are struggling and thinks about solutions, not optics. She obviously, palpably gives a damn about people, and that drives her to act, not just talk.

While we were writing this endorsement, Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist with a people-first platform, wiped the floor with an establishment Democrat in New York City’s primary. Mamdani’s win is proof that people can show up in droves and throw decades of political tradition in the trash and choose something better. And that to accomplish such a feat, being a hell of a politician with a great personality helps a fuckton.

Wilson has the platform. What she doesn’t have is the energy. She’s quiet. She’s policy minded. She makes deeply awkward TikToks. But she knows her shit and she cares. Wilson doesn’t pull out the tear-jerking stump speech or throw down with her opposition. And while we trust that your vote will get her through the primary, we need her to throw down. Show everyone that Harrell’s empty, that he’s unelectable this time. This city wants to see that. And it wants change. Do what you need to do to give the people what they want. Show us your spine is as sturdy as that platform. We know it’s in you.

Now reader, we know that Wilson isn’t the only one making a run for Harrell’s graffiti-less office (and Joe Molloy, we hope to see you run for City Council, where your good heart, and brains, would be appreciated), but she’s the only one who has the secret sauce we need to see: one-part great ideas, one-part the knowledge and experience to pull them off, two-parts the willingness to leave an easier life as an organizer to serve the city when she thinks she’s needed. We just need her to add a little heat to that sauce.

If you’re still wondering if dethroning Harrell is the right decision, we’ll leave you with one more detail. For the last year, members of his administration have talked about the misogyny, bullying, and literal chest beating in City Hall since he’s been in office. We had Mayor Harrell in our conference room for just under an hour, and in that time, he did nothing to convince us that his reputation was not a completely accurate characterization. We lost count of how many times he pounded his fist onto the table and stomped his feet, and we had to shout over him more than once to stop him from yelling at other candidates. Harrell somehow made Joe Mallahan look good (well, not that good). He took control of the room—not the way a charismatic speaker captures an audience, but the way your angry uncle sucks the air out of the room on Thanksgiving. Our civic self-esteem cannot be so low.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that we need a strong, bullish personality at the helm of our city to combat everything that Trump promises to rain on us in the next three and a half years. Mayor Harrell has shown us, time and time again, that all he’s going to do is bully Seattle, not Trump. And we can’t afford that. Wilson may be quiet. But she has values. 

Seattle has a time-honored tradition of producing one-term mayors. Let’s make Harrell one of them. Vote Wilson.