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.
Nope. And besides, I thought the stranger said that Kshama Sawant was responsible for the minimum wage?
More to the point: every politician says they’re going to build housing and they never do. It’s all blahblah.
And we don’t need a “visionary” mayor. We need a capable administrator.
I couldn’t say it any better than Catalina (once again).
Katie Wilson has a platform. Noted. So did Cary Moon. So did Nikkita Oliver. Know what else Wilson has in common with those two? None of them had any experience – none – working in the public sector. The voters didn’t put up with that for Moon and Oliver, and they won’t for Wilson. They tried it once, with McGinn, and once they saw how fatuously inept he was, he was one and done.
Besides that, Wilson has no political sense. If she had any at all, she would have run against Sara Nelson for Nelson’s at-large seat on the City Council. She’d have won in a breeze. Nelson is an odious wretch who nobody likes. Wilson could have earned her bones on the council and THEN run for Mayor. But she seems to have more ambition than savvy. Comparing her with Mamdani is ridiculous. Harrell will clean her clock.
Katie is not a politician – she would be better suited as a policy wonk / department head where her skills could best be applied.
Too many folks misunderstand the executive role (see the magats), an executive’s job is to oversee various departments and ensure the will of the legislative branch is delivered.
Mayors do not make law. And if folks don’t like a specific law being enforced, work with the council and change said law (example, if you don’t like sweeps, change all associated laws which make their existence illegal). But we know that won’t happen due to the assumed backlash of voters (see most of the police reforms that have been rolled back over the past couple of years).
If you want to see an effective progressive politician, look no further than Rinck – she appears to know how to get shit passed (the latest tax proposal will be a great test).
Seattle already tried “progressive” governance and it was an absolute failure.
Bruce Harrell maybe weak and ineffectual, but he’s far superior to Katie
I’ll take her 10+ years of ED experience at a highly effective non-profit over his awful leadership. Before he was mayor he had zero executive experience, and as mayor, the he has been awful–even his own niece said he was ineffective. We have no new shelter beds and more people living at bus stops than ever. Over the past decade, she’s managed hundreds of thousands of volunteer and staff hours as leader of the transit riders union. She’s gotten a hell of a lot more done for us than he has–she passed JumpStart, we have free transit for youth, the ORCA LIFT program; we get 6 months notice before rent increases, all because of campaigns she started and led. Tukwila, Burien, and unincorporated King County have the highest minimum wage in the nation because of campaigns she’s led. Before COVID, we had some of the best bus service in the country, thanks to her leadership of the Transit Riders Union fighting against bus cuts and for additional service hours we get through our levy in Seattle.
We’re a great, smart city; we deserve a great, smart leader. I can’t wait to vote Wilson for mayor!
Is there a relative to the expression “damning with faint praise” that means “damning with idiot praise?” Because I think this is it.
“Are we living in a utopia yet?” Bubba, utopia never existed and never will – if that’s your standard, then you need either fewer recreational drugs or a lot more prescription drugs.
“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.”
So, he hurt your little baby-brains with boring grown-up talk about how things actually work? How awful. Well, let’s see if Wilson has a nice baby-brain answer:
“[Wilson] 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.”
Lovely! A perfect illustration of HL Mencken’s “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.” Firstly, a mayor doesn’t have anything within telescope-sighting-distance of enough unilateral power to make that happen, and secondly, even if she could, that doesn’t address the fact that the majority of our homeless reject or destroy the offered shelter, due to their addiction and mental illness issues.
“Zohran Mamdani…”
[eyeroll] Outside of a few douche progressives desperate to seize on any tangential straw to help them believe that people have forgotten or forgiven the role they played in helping Trump get elected, no one in seattle gives a singular fack about a local politician in a city nearly 3,000 miles away who hasn’t even won his election yet.
What was Bruce’s experience before becoming mayor? Pointing a gun at a pregnant lady before being an ineffectual cm who has a weaker legislative record as CM than Katie has had as an organizer? I feel like, objectively, he has less experience getting meaningful things done aside from protecting the wealthy.
As mayor, we’ve seen that he’s been pay-to-play. Remember Denny Blaine? Where his rich donor almost got him to build a park b/c the rich donor didn’t like the historic queer nude beach there? Remember that article in KUOW about how the city government was trying to reduce costs, but he’s taking vacations with his security entourage? Why the hell does he have such a big security entourage as mayor of Seattle? He’s not that important and needs to get out of office.
Harrell isn’t my first, second or third choice.
But Wilson is roughly my 803,967th choice.
Hopefully Harrell pulls through. The City can’t handle any more utopian minded “progressives”.
All I need to hear from Wilson is that she has no intention of going back to the strategy of not prosecuting crimes, or the strategy of letting homeless people claim squatters rights on any patch of real estate that catches their eye. Convince me of that and you have my vote.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Wilson wins and I def expect her to be ahead after the primary ala Oliver. If it’s one thing voters are is apathetic with short memories. Things aren’t great of course but they are better. The problem Wilson will have is a looming deficit the city is facing. It will be all she or Harrell can do to preserve the services the city has today much less add new programs.
You know what else Bruce hasn’t done? He hasn’t allowed our parks and public spaces continue to fester and be used as toxic dumping grounds, he hasn’t continue to let the police be the scapegoat for every social ill in our society, he hasn’t treated the business community like a giant atm to fund ineffective social programs whose only accomplishment is enriching ngos. Doing nothing is not all that bad when you consider the alternatives.
Our city has gone downhill since the city council we my hard to the right and Harrell became mayor. People whine about the previous council, but it was better then the useless people we have now.
Katie Wilson has vision and the right priorities. Maybe she doesn’t have executive chops but neither does Harrell, and maybe unlike him she’ll rise to the occasion. We need to take a chance on a truly progressive agenda.
Hm. Now THAT’S interesting…
Against Wilson:
Catalina Vel-DuRay: Member since 2009 – 9815 Comments
Teslick: Member since 2009 – 1143 Comments
gripe: Member since 2016 – 332 Comments
Buddhamat: Member since 2022 – 437 Comments
SeattleLove: Member since 2024
Traffic Spiral: Member since 2016 – 724 Comments
WereBackBaby: Member since 2025- 246 Comments
‘unsheltered’ is the new ‘unhoused’: Member since 2023 – 6 Comments
District13refugee: Member since 2020 – 2724 Comments
Pro:
trotter: Member since 2025 – 3 Comments (all of them praising Wilson)
seattle4lyfe: Member since 2025 – 1 Comment
Cascadian: Member since 2009 – 916 Comments
So: disregarding the 2 new plants, that’s 9 out of 10 commenters thinking she’s crap.
And this is the liberal paper. Yeah… I don’t think her chances are that good.
“Our city has gone downhill since the city council (something) hard to the right, and Harrell became mayor. People whine about the previous council, but it was better than the useless people we have now.”
How so, Cascadian dear? And in what universe is the Seattle City Council (or Bruce Harrell, or the Chamber of Commerce, or the Downtown Seattle Association) “hard right”? Tiresome cliches are tiresome cliches, no matter where one lands on the political spectrum.
Perhaps Ms. Wilson should focus on something she excels at and has a passion for – such as being the head of the King County or Seattle Housing authorities, or the head of the Seattle Office of Housing. Being the Mayor of a city involves a lot more than advocating for Our Unhoused Neighbors.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
@13, Stranger commenters are famously rightward skewed. People take the opportunity to be their meanest, most anti-social selves when you let them speak anonymously. I would not treat this as any sort of scientific polling lol.
@ 13:
I’m not “anti-Wilson” and I am most certainly not pro-Harrell. I simply don’t think she’s going to beat him. Mayor of Seattle is not an entry-level job, and there’s no reason to believe the voters will support someone with her relative lack of experience, no matter how attractive her platform.
Yeah, I know. I’m a right wing fascist who has read and commented on the Stranger for decades. And I know how politics works. Consider this question posed in this article. Are you being manipulated and for what purpose?
https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/political-kingmakers-as-co-owners-of-the-stranger-how-will-that-play-out/
“I like the stranger, but man the comments are shit” – everyone, ever.
yeah, I have a new account b/c the commenting system sucks and logs you out all the time.
I’d say her chances are solid. She won the last poll, and has collected hundreds of more vouchers than Bruce. But what do I know? I’m just a plant apparently… lmao
She looks like the daughter from Grant Wood’s American Gothic. The poor thing. Someone should have her view TikTok tutorials on hair and make-up.
Why on earth would Mayor Harrell bother with the Stranger?
To borrow a phrase, Bruce Harrell is the worst candidate for mayor, except for all the rest. His flaccid response to encampments and public drug use has left Capitol Hill with a perpetual level of unhealthy, degraded public spaces. The Unified Care Team, tasked with clearing encampments has been ineffective, despite a $26 million dollar budget in 2024. The SODA laws, designed to keep drug users off major pedestrian thoroughfares, is a failure. Take a walk along Broadway if you disagree. He hasn’t earned re-election, but the other candidates aren’t offering anything other than “progressive” boilerplate.
@12 – “We need to take a chance on a truly progressive agenda.”
LOL
LMAO even
Totoman @15: LOLwut?
“Stranger commenters are famously rightward skewed” – yes, we should go to Fox News to find all the leftists!
“People take the opportunity to be their meanest, most anti-social selves when you let them speak anonymously.” And you think that’s an argument against using this as an indicator of how people will vote? The fact that it’s anonymous? My brother in christ, I have some shocking news for you about the public availability of people’s voting records.
I take solace in the fact that The Stranger’s endorsed mayoral candidates have gotten slaughtered in every election after Mike McGinn.
“While tens of thousands of Seattleites are struggling to keep their head above water, he’s obsessing over penises spray painted on the overpasses”
I imagine that there are quite a few struggling Seattleites who also care about graffiti. They, more than anyone, pay a lot in taxes, and they might like a clean city.
SECB dear, you must try not to be so tunnel-vision. It makes you seem frivilous.
I like two term mayors. Like Norm Rice; he was a two term mayor. Seattle (and Portland and San Francisco) are done with the ACAB era. Now it’s on to boring centrist Democrats.
FWIW I wouldn’t worry about which mayor conducts homeless sweeps, I would worry about which fascist President conducts ICE raids. Don’t think Seattle will be ignored.
@15: “Stranger commenters are famously rightward skewed.”
Only compared to the Stranger, which has for a decade or so made a practice of posturing as far to the left as it possibly can, then berating boring old normie Seattle liberals as “conservatives” (and even “right-wingers”) for daring to point out the Stranger’s extremist policies and candidates have all failed. (Seattle’s liberals perform the same service for the MAGA crowd, who respond by berating them as Commies.)
“I would not treat this as any sort of scientific polling lol.”
No, and no one said we should. It’s the modern version of a good old-fashioned American straw poll. Nothing wrong with that.
@26 “FWIW I wouldn’t worry about which mayor conducts homeless sweeps, I would worry about which fascist President conducts ICE raids”
It’s kind of crazy people don’t see the clear parallel between these. In both there’s a disfavored out-group being rounded up and removed by government agents, to great acclaim from the heartless and self righteous.
Catalina Vel-Duray always has the best, most insightful comments. Love her
@14 – “Our city has gone downhill since the city council (something) hard to the right”
LOL I thought poor Cascadian was stroking out.
I live downtown and frankly, my politics now revolve around the number of homeless people I see sleeping on the streets and the number of tent encampments. That number has gone down under Harrel. I’m not a fan of Harrel but unless Wilson can convince me that encampments sweeps will continue, Harrel has my vote.
Harrell was my city councilmember for many years (district 2). He was/is famous for never doing anything lest he actually upset anyone. He seems to hope that no one notices this. He was an awful councilmember and has been an awful mayor. We seem to have a habit here in Seattle by putting awful mayors into office and expecting things to be different.