Skateboarding, and Chatting about South End Density, With Adonis Ducksworth

This is the first of four profiles, running this week, on candidates for Seattle City Council District 2. Profiles will run in alphabetical order based upon the candidate’s first name. To break the mold of traditional candidate interviews, I tagged along with each to do something they like that isn’t related to their campaign.

You can learn more about each candidate at the South Seattle Emerald Primary Candidate Debate on Monday, July 21, 6:30–8 p.m., at the Rainier Arts Center, where you’ll hear each candidate share platform ideas in person.

The first thing I noticed about Adonis Ducksworth was his clothes: a "Bomb Hills Not Countries" shirt from GX1000, the San Francisco skate crew, and double-knee Dickies. Some skaters might not be obsessed with GX1000, which made it into The New York Times and has defined a decent share of modern skate culture, but you can't deny the shirt. It's cool. Right off the bat, I saw he knew how to adapt to his audience.

Part of the plan of skating with Ducksworth was to see if he could really skate or if he was just using it to "How do you do, fellow kids?" his way into office. His introduction to many voters was Nathalie Graham's profile in The Stranger, where she described him as "the coolest guy running for City Council," praising him in equal parts for being a skate rat and techno DJ. But rolling down the sidewalk for photo ops is one thing; doing actual tricks is entirely another.

But he's not faking it. He's got a very respectable bag of tricks and knows his Seattle skate lore. His political success — he recently secured an endorsement from The Seattle Times, one of the two essential newspaper endorsements for any City Council candidate in a primary — likely doesn't have much to do with being smooth on a skateboard. Rather, as his Instagram caption on the day's clips reads, it's about his knack for "doing all the right things, with all the right people, in all the right places."

Besides knowing what shirt to wear, Ducksworth, 50, is an ace at winning over strangers. Skate session completed, we moved to the golf course to grab a picnic table and record an interview. Afterward, we headed back toward Jefferson Park Playground, where he planned to track down both his wife as well as a few more democracy vouchers at a post-game party for soccer parents. 

A passing car pulled over, the folks in the front seat telling Ducksworth they were sure they knew him from somewhere. It turned out the teen in the backseat had attended an alumni talk Ducksworth had given at O'Dea High School, where he outlined his career and previous work with the Seattle Department of Transportation (he's currently the senior transportation policy and operations manager for Mayor Bruce Harrell).

Always on, he whipped out candidate flyers, and within five minutes, both the adults in the front seat had pledged their votes to him. Before taking off, the teen and one of the would-be voters hopped out for another suspiciously perfect photo op.

There's no question that his vibes are impeccable. The affability is off the charts. But you can't govern on vibes alone. You have to have a vision (which, incidentally, is the name of his most popular track on Spotify). Given that even The Stranger's initial profile of him called him out for being unclear on policy, have his policy views gotten any clearer since? 

In some ways, absolutely. On transportation issues, he's pretty sharp, listing a number of actionable ideas to increase pedestrian safety in the South End.

But outside of transportation, he didn't get specific. He supports social housing and supported (but did not vote for) Proposition 1A to fund it, but at this point, that's a standard progressive position. He's open to more revenue, but didn't say how to obtain it. One big unanswered question, especially in light of the blessing of the right-leaning Times, is how he would handle the right-leaning Harrell, who is technically Ducksworth's current boss.

When asked to name an issue where he and Harrell disagreed, he immediately said Harrell's Comprehensive Plan didn't go far enough. Before he could explain how, we got derailed by a discussion of whether the North or South End needed more density. The South End, Ducksworth pointed out, is already pretty dense. Thus, he said, his response to NIMBYs who don't want more density up north is, "If not there, then where?"

An admirable sentiment, especially given that District 2 has borne the brunt of Seattle's disastrous urban villages policy, but not one that says much about whether he's willing to cross the mayor. Does he, for example, subscribe to any particular political philosophy that might, like former District 3 Councilmember Kshama Sawant's affiliation with the Socialist Alternative party, tell us what he'll do once in office? Not really.

He said he's always been a Democrat, but didn't know about the shades of being a Democrat. "It's like, 'Are you a progressive? Are you a moderate? Where are you landing here?' I'm like, 'Look, bro, I live in South Seattle. I ride a skateboard. I want to make things right for everybody down here.'"

Another admirable sentiment, but making everybody happy is not how you make things right. As former District 2 Councilmember Tammy Morales demonstrated, doing the right thing for the residents of the district often involves upsetting a lot of powerful interests. Ducksworth has taken two donations from District 7 Councilmember Bob Kettle, one of the most pro-business, pro-police members of the current council, and he uses a consulting firm that has also served Harrell and former District 5 Councilmember Cathy Moore, both good friends to the city's business lobby.

While he might not like The Stranger calling him "a visionless moderate (read: Bruce Harrell)," or lefty blogger Ron Davis writing that Ducksworth is "known to be the Chamber of Commerce candidate," how can he prove them wrong?

Hopefully, at our July 21 debate, he'll be willing to answer that question on stage.

Editors' Note: The story was updated on July 16, 2025, to indicate the location of the park where the interview took place.

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Tobias Coughlin-Bogue is a writer, editor and restaurant worker who lives in South Park. He was formerly the associate editor of Real Change News, and his work has appeared in The Stranger, Seattle Weekly, Vice, Thrillist, Thrasher Magazine, Curbed, and Crosscut, among other outlets.