First-term Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell conceded his reelection struggle to progressive activist Katie Wilson on Thursday, handing one other victory to leftist Democrats across the nation pissed off with unaffordability, homelessness, public security and the actions of President Donald Trump’s administration.
Harrell, a centrist Democrat who beforehand served three phrases on the Metropolis Council, led in early outcomes. However Washington conducts all-mail elections, with ballots postmarked by Election Day. Later-arriving votes, which traditionally pattern extra liberal, broke closely in Wilson’s favor, including to a progressive shift to the left nationally.
In a concession speech at Metropolis Corridor on Thursday afternoon, Harrell stated he had congratulated Wilson in a “delightful” name.
“I feel very good about the future of this country and this city still,” he stated.
However she additionally spoke to the resonance of her volunteer-driven marketing campaign amongst voters involved about affordability and public security in a metropolis the place the price of dwelling has soared as Amazon and different tech corporations proliferated. Common little one care, higher mass transit, higher public security and secure, reasonably priced housing are amongst her priorities, and he or she stated she would take workplace with a powerful mandate to purse them, although she acknowledged the town additionally faces a major price range shortfall.
Wilson known as herself a coalition builder and neighborhood organizer, and stated she would additionally work with those that questioned her {qualifications} to guide a metropolis with greater than 13,000 workers and a price range of almost $9 billion: “This is your city too.”
“When I say this is your city, that means you have a right to be here and to live a dignified life — whatever your background, whatever your income,” Wilson stated. “But it also means that we all have a collective responsibility for this city and for each other. … We cannot tackle the major challenges facing our city unless we do it together.”
She might be working with a comparatively new Metropolis Council: Solely two of the seven council members have served a couple of time period.
Harrell was elected mayor in 2021 following the chaos of the COVID-19 pandemic and racial justice protests over George Floyd’s homicide by Minneapolis police. With crime falling, extra police being employed, much less seen drug use and lots of homeless encampments faraway from metropolis parks, the business-backed Harrell as soon as appeared prone to cruise to reelection.
However Trump’s return to workplace — and his efforts to ship in federal brokers or reduce funding for blue cities — helped reawaken Seattle’s progressive voters. The lesser-known Wilson, a democratic socialist, ran a marketing campaign that echoed a few of the themes of progressive mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani in New York. She trounced Harrell by almost 10 proportion factors within the August main and shortly grew to become favored to win the mayor’s workplace.
Wilson studied at an Oxford College school in England however didn’t graduate. She based the small nonprofit Transit Riders Union in 2011 and has led campaigns for higher public transportation, increased minimal wages, stronger renter protections and extra reasonably priced housing. She herself is a renter, dwelling in a one-bedroom house within the metropolis’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, and says that has formed her understanding of Seattle’s affordability disaster.
Wilson criticized Harrell as doing too little to offer extra shelter and stated his encampment sweeps have been beauty, merely pushing unhoused folks across the metropolis. Wilson additionally painted him as a Metropolis Corridor fixture who bore duty for the established order.
Harrell, 67, performed on the Rose Bowl champion College of Washington soccer group in 1978 earlier than going to regulation faculty. His father, who was Black, got here to Seattle from the segregated Jim Crow South, and his mom, a Japanese American, was incarcerated at an internment camp in Minidoka, Idaho, throughout World Conflict II after officers seized her household’s Seattle flower store — experiences that fostered his understanding of the significance of civil rights and inclusivity.
Each candidates touted plans for reasonably priced housing, combating crime and trying to Trump-proof the town, which receives about $150 million a yr in federal funding. Each wish to shield Seattle’s sanctuary metropolis standing.
Wilson has proposed a city-level capital features tax to assist offset federal funding the town may lose and to pay for housing. Harrell says that concept is ineffective as a result of a metropolis capital features tax may simply be prevented by those that can be required to pay it.
