In Seattle Mayoral Matchup, Each Candidate Wants to Be the Change Agent

With the Nov. 4 general election drawing closer, candidate Katie Wilson knows that the worst is yet to come – specifically with attack ads, something she anticipates her opponent, incumbent Mayor Bruce Harrell, will spend heavily on.

"I imagine they're going to go hard on casting me as someone who wants to defund the police," she lamented over coffee at Victrola Coffee Roasters on 15th Avenue East. "They've tried putting me and Kshama [Sawant] next to each other. They'll probably continue to try that. They can pull my quote from Danny Westneat's article: 'Yes, I am a socialist.' Probably inexperience [is something] they're going to hammer on."

Sure enough, on a call a couple of hours later, Harrell, while taking care not to go negative, quickly made the case early on that he's the only candidate with enough experience for the job.

"This battle we are in for affordability, it is a very tough battle," he said. "Quite honestly, someone with zero experience, with nothing but ideas, I think that pales in comparison to someone who has been fighting and championing these issues."

Over the course of what was supposed to be a 15-minute call, which rapidly turned into 35, Harrell pointed again and again to his accomplishments, citing things like overseeing greatly reduced use of force at the Seattle Police Department (SPD), sponsoring "ban the box" legislation, and passing an ordinance preventing predatory homebuying practices. 

Wilson has gotten plenty of wins at her day job as the general secretary of the Transit Riders Union (TRU), an advocacy organization, most notably in throwing the TRU's weight behind the Fight for $15 campaign.

"I'm gonna be attacked for the fact that the organization that I run does not have a multimillion-dollar budget or whatever," Wilson says, anticipating another angle from Harrell's campaign. "It's like, well, I'm used to doing a lot with a little. And I think maybe we need a little of that energy in City Hall these days."

So do Seattle voters, it would seem, given that they handed Wilson 50 % of the vote and a nine-point lead over Harrell in the primary election. In our interview, Wilson seemed quite happy to lean into her identity as a change agent. And why not, when it's done so well for her? Harrell, for his part, took issue with that arrangement, arguing that he was the real change agent in this election, and that he's always been one.

"Whether I'm a mayor or a city councilmember or an attorney, you know, I have a proven background of being a change agent," Harrell said. "I am the one that passed race and social justice legislation; I'm the one that passed the 'ban the box' legislation that says that one cannot require one's criminal past during an application process; I'm the one that championed the 'Seattle Promise' efforts to make sure that these kids, when graduating from public schools, can go to college; I'm the one that championed anti-racial profiling and bias-free policing. I bring that energy and that passion and that lived experience to the job, and I think that's exactly what they want."

That aside, he did concede that the primary results were important "feedback" that voters' concerns were not being addressed.

"People are very concerned about income inequality and affordability and public safety," he said, but he remained sure he could assuage those concerns: "You know, we listen to the voters, and we think we have a great story to tell, so we're pretty excited about the general [election]."

That general election race parallels another, between New York City mayoral candidates Zohran Mamdani and Andrew Cuomo, in which political outsider Mamdani seems almost guaranteed to beat Cuomo, a scandal-ridden Democratic Party stalwart. While Harrell's time in office hasn't been plagued by any accusations of sexual harassment (at least not directly against him), he is endorsed by basically the biggest establishment Democrats in the state. And out of this state, Harrell's campaign recently trotted out an endorsement from centrist and Biden-era Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg. 

In contrast, Wilson touts endorsements from people like former City Councilmembers Tammy Morales and Mike O'Brien, both known for their progressivism, and Brett Hamil, this outlet's unabashedly socialist political cartoonist. Rumors have been flying of a Mamdani endorsement for months. That said, it's not like the Democratic Party doesn't love her — she won the endorsement of every single rank-and-file Democratic organization in the city — but she's very clearly on the far left side of it.

How They'll Do What They Promise

While you can tell a lot about people by the company they keep, what really matters is the tangible stuff: what they've done, what they are doing, and what they will do. As the election drags on, and as Wilson's primary win drags Harrell to the left, that gets increasingly harder to parse. Both say they want more affordable housing (including social housing), increased public safety (including via police hiring), and better transit.

The devil is, as always, in the details.

On cops, Wilson wants to break up precincts into something smaller, like neighborhood offices, and get cops out among the people, on foot. She also wants to improve police hiring practices by recruiting people from the neighborhoods they will ultimately be tasked with policing, with the goal of bringing in officers who have a more understanding, human-centric approach to the role.

However, Harrell wants the same thing. And, in fact, says that recent hiring has improved SPD's demographic profile and brought in more officers from areas with historically low-trust relationships with the police, like South Seattle. That, he says, has a lot to do with one of his newest hires: Chief of Police Shon Barnes.

"I think he has changed that culture," Harrell said. "If you look at how we are recruiting right now, you see people that speak English as a second language, and you see a high effort on recruiting locally from people who come from communities they serve. We have people that have gone to Rainier Beach High School or Cleveland High School."

That's admirable, but again, small distinctions mean a lot.

Wilson, citing a recent conversation with a community leader in South Seattle, says her contact complained that community members who had recently been hired by SPD were being assigned to north Seattle precincts.

"And then they have, like, folks from God knows where policing the South End," Wilson said. "That seems fixable."

Harrell, in discussing the issue of restoring trust in the police, cited the accomplishments of a police officer assigned to the Garfield Community Center, saying she was a model for what officers should be. He then proffered Det. Denise "Cookie" Bouldin, who Harrell said has been a friend of his for several decades, as another example of a great police officer. When asked how we can expect more officers like Det. Cookie to join the force, given that she filed a lawsuit describing ongoing harassment during her years at SPD, we arrived at an impasse: As mayor, he can't comment on pending litigation.

One Race, Two Approaches

On the topic of civilian response, Harrell touted his accomplishments in standing up the city's CARE Department, an unarmed, emergency response agency. Wilson agreed that we need more civilian response, pointing out that the police union contract negotiated under Harrell limits the number of CARE responders to 26.

The whole contract, in fact, is not her favorite thing.

"Our accountability system is pretty broken, and some of that is governed by the [Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG)] contract," she noted, arguing that we need to do whatever it takes, up to and including entering binding arbitration with SPOG, to renegotiate a better contract. A contract that allows for more civilian responders, she notes, would ease budget issues. Harrell — who has been criticized for siphoning off funds from the city's JumpStart tax, earmarked primarily for affordable housing, to give to SPD — asked for an extra $35.5 million for cops in 2026. In Harrell's defense, his budget includes money to double the number of CARE staffers.

But when it comes to affordable housing, this is where they differ perhaps most vehemently. Wilson was a staunch supporter of Initiative 135, to set up the Seattle Social Housing Developer (SSHD), and the subsequent Proposition 1A, to fund it with $50 million by taxing corporations on employees making over $1 million per year. Harrell, on the other hand, supported Proposition 1B, a corporate-backed spoiler law that would have taken from existing affordable housing funds to give the SSHD $10 million. Now, he says, he is in full support of social housing, but the distinction here is emblematic of their different approaches.

It's not that Harrell doesn't want more housing or a more robust civilian response or more frequent transit service. He agrees with most progressive policy positions, even some that his corporate donors might take umbrage with, and he has a personal connection to many issues, including anti-gentrification efforts. It's just that he wants to take the incremental approach. He wants to go slow, be reasonable.

But the time to be reasonable is past, Wilson says. While she has drawn criticism from Harrell's camp for "unrealistic" ideas, his approach hasn't brought any real change to people's lives, she argues.

"People want to see action, and I think they look at the current mayor's office, and they don't see action."

The Seattle Mayoral Forum at The Royal Room on Saturday, Sept. 27, is sold out, but you can watch it on Instagram starting at 2 p.m.