In 2021, when he won his race for the Seattle mayor’s office, CHS focused on Bruce Harrell’s Central District story as the political veteran rose from Garfield High School to City Hall. Four years later, Harrell is in the fight of his political life and the focus has shifted.
Coming out of a soft showing in the August primary, the best news Seattle’s incumbent mayor has received came from “Mayor Pete” as Democratic national leader Pete Buttigieg blessed the Harrell campaign with an endorsement. Harrell is not alone in his campaign struggles as Seattle’s incumbents have been up against a wave of support for progressive first-time candidates. But the mayor — who likes his sports metaphors and stories about past athletic feats — is sticking to his game plan with a campaign that mirrors his administration. HIs 2026 budget plan echoes with his platform: spending on police and public safety, preserving but not growing existing spending on affordability and social services, and cautiously pursuing new tax revenue by centering the increases on the largest companies operating in the city. Will Team Harrell win? Along the way, Mayor Bruce is taking hits from all sides. You can read more about his platform at bruceforseattle.com.
Below, CHS talks with Harrell about his case for re-election, what went wrong with leadership on the county crisis care center, who is “progressive” in this race, and what comes after “One Seattle.”
You can read the CHS interview with Harrell’s opponent here: The mayor of Capitol Hill: Why you should vote for Katie Wilson*
CHS: During your first run for mayor, CHS focused a lot on your roots in the Central District. Do you still feel at home there?
Harrell: Sure. First of all, you do some really good work, and I think you’re good at what you do. So let me answer your question directly. I literally go back to visit friends who still live in the Central District, right off 24th and Olive. I literally just left the Central Area Senior Center. And there are the people who lived across the street from me, and a lot of them still live in the Central District. But you know, as do I, that it has gotten somewhat gentrified, and a lot of people have been priced out. So it’s bittersweet for me. It’s sweet to see people who are still there that I grew up with. My old house on 24th and Olive is still there, and it’s basically still the same shell. So I have friends. It’s bitter in the sense that house now, that my mom and dad bought for $6,000 and sold for $30,000, is now a $1 million house.
It was interesting that last week, as I was walking the streets in the Central District, a person came up to me. They were white, just to be candid with you, and they asked me what I was doing there. That was pretty offensive, given the fact that my grandparents, my Japanese grandparents, grew up in the Central District, and I grew up there. They asked me what I was doing there.
CHS: Wow.
Harrell: And I just smiled and said, “Working.” So let’s change. What I hope that we can establish once again is that when you do have newer people who move into the neighborhood, there’s better integration of culture, people speaking to one another, and people looking after elders. One of the complaints that I do hear is from people who have been there. It’s that some of the younger people who moved in are not going out of their way to be friends with people who have been there for a while.
CHS: A lot of the feeling of alienation can happen anywhere in the city, but in the Central District, it can take on special dimensions given the history and the rapid changes there. I want to talk about Garfield also because it’s such a central, connective part between Capitol Hill and the Central District. How are the efforts to increase safety there going? How do you feel about it? It feels like progress has been made, and there’s certainly a lot of energy around it.
Harrell: There’s a lot of energy around it, and I will address the issue of the real-time crime center as well because that’s an area where we’re trying to expand.
I feel very optimistic that the principal and many of the students that I’ve talked to feel as though the shadows are giving them the attention that they need, both from a holistic standpoint and from a public safety standpoint. The officer who is there, they love her. She walks around the campus. She doesn’t go inside the school; she walks around the Teen Life Center, and she befriends these kids, and I think they try to trust her. I get a good feeling that they realize with the murder of Amarr Murphy-Paine and the young girl that was shot at the bus stop two years ago,that they realize there were some real challenges. So I think that they feel a little more optimistic about it.
And if I could talk about the real-time crime a little bit, I recognize the anxiousness and fear that warranted people opposing that kind of technology was governmental overreaching with this crazy man in the office, the president. I get that. So what I tried to impress on them is, number one, literally the father of Murphy-Paine, his name is Arron. We took him to the real-time crime center. We explained to him how the technology works, and he came out saying, “I get it.” He says, “This just helps first responders get to people in crisis.” I talked to the mother of the young girl that was shot at the bus stop; she supports it. I talked to Apolonia who runs a daycare center right across from Garfield who supports it because she was a victim of having gunfire right around her premises.
We think, number one, it’s helpful technology that people most impacted support, and we also think we have the safeguards in place to protect them from getting into the wrong hands, such as the federal government. And I’ll shut it down if it’s not working and it gets into the wrong hands. That very recent shooting in Capitol Hill, that murder, we could have really gotten on camera if that technology had been in place.
CHS: I want to make sure to talk to you about the crisis care center on Broadway and Union and the opposition from nearby businesses and property owners. Can you tell from your perspective how the situation got off track and why there’s so much opposition to what seems like a really needed resource in the neighborhood?
Harrell: Well, fair question, good question. I definitely get the concerns of the opposition. They are looking at small businesses shutting down, looking at some drug trafficking activity by the use of scooters in the parking lot. Just so you know, I walked around that area many times as of three weeks ago. You have the problem with the grocery store. Now, of course, the grocery store shut down. So you have a challenging area, and people are saying this is going to exacerbate it because you’re going to get people who are struggling with addiction and committing crimes to support their addiction, and you have drug traffickers preying upon those folks.
So why do it there? I get that. What I said is we have to treat these people. I try to lead. I control the police department, but you’re dealing with that intersectionality between public safety and college health. So I want to treat these people, so I support a crisis care center, of course. And so I support it there, at the Polyclinic. Fun fact, that was my doctor’s office growing up from 6 to 18, Dr. Lane. So that place has fond memories. We have to treat these people, and we need those who are struggling with addiction, and we need the brick-and-mortar to do it. So if we do it right, it should be a success.
By doing it right, it means there’s a nearby school in that area, that we don’t have people loitering around, having drug use or trafficking in that area. The area is physically clean. And so when I strongly advocate at the Star Center and the ORCA Center, which is right down from City Hall on Third Avenue, you see a police presence, you see police out of their car walking around the block. You see caseworkers there and our care officers and our care unit walking around there, making sure that the place looks like a place for people are getting help.
CHS: CHS has described this campaign with words for you and for Katie Wilson like “centrist,” “business-friendly, “progressive,” and those kinds of terms because it’s difficult sometimes to describe the difference between candidates. So is that how you see the difference in your campaigns? Is it centrist vs. progressive? How do you talk about it?
Harrell: Yeah, that would be a hard no. I don’t see it as centrist vs. progressive because when you really look at our records, I am actually the most progressive.
And you know, from a person who has been in politics for a while, when my progressive credibility is ever put in question, I say, “Look at my record.” An example would be, look at the race and social justice legislation that everyone takes credit for. That was my idea as a biracial boy from the Central District. I mean, I could end with the B&O tax that we proposed, looking at these large corporations like Amazon that made $60 billion in profits. That was the most progressive tax policy in our city’s history.
Let’s go back to the climate change legislation that I passed, my building emission performance standard. That doesn’t stop there, but let’s look at the “Ban the Box” legislation where you cannot ask someone if they committed a crime before the job interview. Let’s talk about the human rights legislation that I created, and you had many progressive politicians on the city council before I created Seattle as a human rights city. Let’s look at the anti-racial profiling bill that I sponsored over many objections to biased policing. Let’s look at the proposed body cameras that I was the first one to come out with. And then let’s go beyond my political career. Let’s look at the fact that I actually sued the city of Seattle for racial discrimination as an attorney and led two national class actions on gender and race discrimination, two separate causes of action. Let’s go to the fact that I have the most diverse executive team in the city’s history, both gender-wise and race-wise.
So, when people say I’m not progressive, what the hell does that mean? Because I also want our businesses to do well because they employ people, they employ janitors and C-level people. People think, “Well, because he wants a healthy business environment, he’s not progressive.” So no, those are artificial labels, and they’re inaccurate.
The fact that my opponent has just cheered on the sidelines and is taking credit for some very progressive work that we, in fact, that I did while in office, she just takes credit for it. I mean, she mentioned in a forum the other day that she worked with the Urban League and the NAACP. They became unglued about that.
First of all, I was on the executive committee for the NAACP. They largely support what I’m doing. My godfather’s original founders in the city in the Urban League. Of course, the CEO endorses me, and I’ve been working with the Urban League for 30 years, and they said, “We don’t know who she is.” Literally, the CEO of the Urban League said, “I don’t even know who you are.” So she has been masterful at taking credit for things like JumpStart. She says that all the time, and so does that make her more progressive than me? How about the guy who has actually been fighting the fight for 16 years? Wouldn’t that say that I’m more progressive?
CHS: It stood out when I was looking through your budget plan for this coming year how important JumpStart really is in the city. Talk about how your mind has changed around JumpStart.
Harrell: Justin, what you did, and this is all in respect, I did not give you a token compliment when I said, “I like what you do.” I’ve always thought when I read your work, I think you’re very factual and you’re fair, and that’s the only thing I am. So let me say this — there’s usually a “but” right?
CHS: Yes, I’m ready for the “but.”
Harrell: Here’s the “but.” So are you, are you, or any other person going to talk about being progressive boils down to tax policy? Because that is not what progressive means to me as a black man growing up.
Being progressive means being a disruptor, changing the system with forward-thinking ideas, disrupting the status quo to fight for underrepresented people. Tax policy is a component of that, but look, I said I was suing the largest corporations in this state, right? And this B&O tax policy is the most progressive tax policy. So about wanting to support a state tax and inheritance tax, progressive real estate tax, and income tax, a vacancy tax, those cannot be done in this city. It’s bullshit. It has to be done on a state law basis, and she knows that. When she says I didn’t incorporate any of the ideas of the progressive revenue task force.
First of all, I was the one that convened it, and I’ve used the best tool we could have, which is a JumpStart payroll tax, which, by the way, the council passed, and she’s taking credit for that.
And when she’s talking about a city capital gains tax, we thoroughly exhausted that. It is problematic that it is still on the table. If you look at the implications of that right now, that’s why we did not use that tool to balance the budget. So if we’re going to agree for the moment that progressive policy boils down to tax policy, I just made my case that the state’s only given us a limited amount of tools, and the biggest tool they gave us in terms of being a tax policy, we showed how progressive we would be.
CHS: Questioning your record around JumpStart is fair. When it comes to political change, it’s the most fascinating thing, right? It can reshape cities. The idea that this is part of your platform or your plan now is interesting. I think from a…
Harrell: So, you know, I’m hoping to be transparent. Number one, I’ve never opposed JumpStart. Let’s just make that clear.
I’ve never opposed the JumpStart tax ever. So the tax was a different creation, and you may recall that the council, including progressives like Lorena González or Teresa Mosqueda, and others on the council, we all opposed the head tax because at that particular time, we had it in place that we knew that it was going to go down. If you look at what’s happening to the sector right now as an example, there are people being let go left and right. 40% of our jobs are high-tech jobs, and there’s a layoff of over 46,000 people. Don’t think that’s not affecting our time here when I’m trying to have employees in vacant buildings downtown. My policies are to make sure that, from a B&O tax standpoint, from a JumpStart tax, and from all the other tools that we have, we can have a balanced budget. I do not accept the fact that being progressive simply means tax policy.
FACT CHECK: Mosqueda co-sponsored the original bill that led to JumpStart and joined Kshama Sawant as the only members of the council to vote against that legislation’s repeal in June 2018.
We all know we don’t have choices as to how we’re born. The fact is this: she was born of privilege. I mean, her parents were college professors. My parents were not. They just graduated high school, right? My mother was interned, you know, during World War II as Japanese. My father came from the Jim Crow South. He was a lineman for Seattle City Light.
She went to Oxford as a physics major, right? So progressive. So when I look at what she’s taking credit for, I look at persons who live their life relative to the fight they’re saying. I believe in a North Star for every human being. I have not changed drastic opinions on my values. So when she was a chief architect of the “defund” movement, saying, “You know how cool it is that defunding the police or abolishing police is even on the table? Let’s defund it by 50%.” And now she’s saying a completely different story just a couple of years later. I question the person’s commitment to anything.
It’s not about progressive versus centrist; it’s about an improving commodity versus a malleable, pliable, position-taking person. That’s what this is about.
CHS: OK, well, I will have to ask Katie Wilson about her “chief architect” role there but let’s look back at one more thing with your first term, and we will leave it there. I’m just going back to the idea of “One Seattle.” I am curious, how do you build something like that? What comes after “One Seattle” ?
Harrell: First, let me tell you what “One Seattle” was in action. It was passing a $970 million housing levy. You know how much collaboration that required. It was passing a $1.55 billion transportation levy, getting industry on board, manufacturing on board, the business community on board. We passed a $1.3 billion education levy. Even the B&O tax policy was a huge negotiation with everyone affected. You’re not seeing a campaign against the B&O tax. So “One Seattle” means, for example, when I met with the sales audit board, I explained to them about the education lev. I said, “This is the time to invest.” That’s what “One Seattle” was.
And you may recall four years ago, my departments didn’t work together. The city council was always arguing with the mayor, and I have disagreements with the city council, all the city council I’ve worked with, but you don’t hear me publicly battling with them very much. I try to make sure that my city government is working as one unit. This takes a lot of work, you know, no finger-pointing, taking responsibility, bringing all sides together. So that’s what it looked like, and you’ve seen some huge wins in that, and that’s why we started the “One Day of Service” to tell the whole community, “Come and help us” clean some graffiti and pick up some litter, and we get, you know, 4,000-5,000 people coming out on one day to celebrate our success.
I think that the gift that this maniac of a president we have, President Trump, has given us is we should be one unit against his ignorance. That we fight for our immigrant refugee communities together, we fight for LGBTQ+ neighbors together, we fight for reproductive health together. That’s why I changed the welcoming city status to include women seeking reproductive healthcare here in Seattle. “One Seattle” is going to look like all of us preserving our values against Trump until we get him out of office and get a real president. That’s what it’s going to look like.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
CHS will be there as Wilson and Harrell are scheduled to appear at the joint Capitol Hill Community Council/First Hill Improvement Association Mayoral Debate on October 21st.
The General Election is Tuesday, November 4th. You can find all CHS Election 2025 coverage here.
The mayor of Capitol Hill: Why you should vote for Katie Wilson*
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LET’s GO BRUCE! Real cap hill residents know everyone is tired of these Kshama-aligned candidates.
Sure Jan
lol “real cap hill residents” is such a giveaway. i mean let bruce make his case but his actions have spoken already.
“real” residents?
That’s your “one Seattle” isn’t it? Bruce’s empty promises and cosplaying progressive.
Real Cap Hill residents call it “Capitol Hill, ” and have rejected your techbro shorthand.
No candidate can possibly turn the tide of 40+ years of failed national republican policy and the ongoing tsunami of poverty it’s caused.
Half of those years Democrats were in charge.
Trickle down is a 45 year thing. Deregulate and offshore. NAFTA and work first smashed the economy and made slaves of the American labor force. Smashed unions and deregulated and crash the economy. Clinton balanced the budget and did it on artificial terms.
You clearly are not a historian
Simple as that…
world poverty has never seen a larger decrease than the last 45+ years…literally 2 billion people moved out of severe poverty. yes i know it sucks that it wasn’t in the developed world, but people are people…
Are you even trying to make sense every once in a while!?
neoliberalism brought 2 billion asians out of desperate poverty. what “republican” policy is being spoken of that spanned both republican and democratic administrations over the last 40 years if not for that?
smooth is talking about trade and immigration just like trump. the far left and the far right are the same – anti-asian.
Yeah it’s called the Chinese Communist Party if we’re talking about the bulk of those who were lifted out of poverty in the last 45 years
Oof. With Mayor Pete’s blessing I was seriously considering changing my vote to Bruce, but he did not paint himself in a great light in this interview.
Interviewer: “Can you talk more about how you’ve changed your mind on the JumpStart tax?”
Bruce: “Wow, screw you, Katie Wilson SUCKS, you know she was the chief architect of the defind movement (that never happened) right?”
Politicians not answering questions by going on the attack is just never a good look.
Yeah, Bruce is desperate. His career is ending.
It’s outright weird how Harrell keeps pretending Wilson was some major player in the defund movement, while ignoring all the organizers who focused on defunding as part of the police reform of Black Lives Matter. If he’s trying to figure out why people doubt his progressive credentials, he could start there.
Just say NO to Bruce. I cannot wait to elect Katie. And get all my friends to elect her too.
That’s the problem. We tell Bruce “NO” and he steals housing money. We tell him “NO” and he gives that money to the cops. And we tell him “NO” and CCTV and Kiosks are forced onto us. We said “NO” and he still wanted ethics rolled back. We said “NO” and he still wanted to claw back minimum wage.
Recall Bruce Now
Yes, this is the candidate for our times. Until visible homelessness is GONE from the Hill, we can’t do Sawant style performative socialism.
i have been verrrrry disappointed with bruce on this though. north capitol hill has gotten worse during his tenure as he just pushed it up the hill from downtown and chinatown. how about jail for these cretins?
A lot of my friends are at the brink of homelessness, they’ve been looking for jobs, all with experience, can’t go anywhere else because otherwise they lose the social circles they worked on getting, their despair is palpable, some losing themselves to drugs because they can’t do anything else, a lot of us try to pay their rent or help with jobs— no extra bedrooms so I can’t offer a place, I don’t have tech money to help them out. I wish you weren’t so dehumanizing— this is what collapse looks like and the people you are hating on all had friends or family that to help but they themselves were sinking.
i’m dehumanizing to the fen users doing drugs at all hours in the open while screaming at the top of their lungs or piling garbage and feces on the sidewalk. your friend doesn’t sound like that.
It’s compassion fatigue. It sucks. But this isn’t a problem that’s gonna get solved by people simply getting nicer and more tolerant.
I don’t think “jail for these cretins” is a better solution, though.
work camps would be fine too. something. “tolerance” to let people kill themselves on the street and destroy the city for everyone else is unacceptable.
I genuinely don’t understand this comment. you want homelessness… invisible? there is no durable, real solution in play right now, it will take years of funding and coordinated effort. If you’re saying just ship them to another neighborhood that’s insane.
just lock up the fen users
There is if you live in Bellevue, right?
So why is this a Seattle, specifically, Capitol Hill problem?
I mean….it isn’t. There are also drug users in bellevue. And plenty of other neighborhoods here. Do you not ever leave Capitol Hill?
do you seriously think there are fewer homeless folks in bellevue because they have a well funded, proactive, “durable, real solution” there? or could it be something else, like that even folks with nowhere to go don’t want to go to bellevue? it’s not just seattle or capitol hill btw, open your eyes. you’re asking why do homeless folks go to the densest population centers in every region, really? come on.
and bojangle, where do you want to lock them up? jails and courts are maxed out. prosecutors can’t keep up. nonviolent drug offenders, as little as anyone likes encountering them on the street, have to be low priority. so it’s a revolving door. if you have a solution that addresses all this, we’d love to hear it. and don’t say a bigger jail, because for that cost you could house every one of these folks.
Vote Katie Wilson
Harrell has been failing on homelessness and housing, and not living up to his campaign promises last time. Both for permanent housing:
“When we say we’re going to build 1,000 units the first six months and 2,000 in the first year … we try to make sure that our city realizes we are headed in the right direction,” Harrell told KNKX in 2021.”
But Axios found the dashboard didn’t accurately reflect the number of units added citywide during Harrell’s term, and that it counted replacements, relocations, and projects already in progress as new openings.
“Harrell’s campaign team now argues that his 2021 pledge was merely to “identify” 2,000 units in a year — although media outlets including The Seattle Times, PubliCola and KUOW reported it at the time as a plan to add or create new units.”
https://www.axios.com/local/seattle/2025/09/30/seattle-homelessness-housing-harrell-promise-shortfall
And for temporary housing:
“By December, Seattle taxpayers were paying a hefty $4,200 a month per empty room — at a time when thousands of Seattleites were without a roof over their heads.”
“She also asserted that CoLEAD had a high rate of returns to homelessness and a low rate of placements in permanent housing.
Data provided by the mayor’s office and the King County Regional Homelessness Authority shows otherwise. The year before, CoLEAD moved a far bigger share of its clients from its city-funded beds into permanent housing than emergency shelter operators as a whole: 65%, compared with 26%.”
https://www.propublica.org/article/seattle-homeless-shelter-vacancies-civic-hotel
Unfortunately, I’d say it’s gotten WORSE under Bruce, not better…he has yet to say much that makes me think that’s going to change anytime soon.
Do I think Wilson will do any better? Unclear…but at least she’s trying to bring fresh energy and new ideas to the table. Bruce’s whole thing so far has been “continuing what he’s started” or whatever & I haven’t seen much I have been all that impressed by.
yes, i agree with Gem – bruce has failed here big time. katie might be worse, but bruce has shown no backbone on actually making a dent on street disorder.
Since Bruce is leaning hard on the black card, does he realize there’s a good portion of Denny Blaine nudists who are black? When is he going to apologize to them for calling the Denny Blaine nudist community disgusting
Hey! Do you need to be reminded again? Bruce is multiracial. I repeat. He is a man of color! Pro DEI equal rights for the brothers and sisters and a double shaka to you all! Because he’s also some kinda islander or something too!
Also? He’s biracial. You should also know he is from 2 different nationalities!
But most important of all? He’s white. But mostly multi national. But white. Like a brown paper bag. But darker. But NOT too dark. Just dark enough. Unless you are really dark. In which caSE? sO AM i.
I have a future as his speech writer.
I need to make a call…brb
Could the CD incident literally be a Seattle resident asking their mayor what the mayor of Seattle is doing? I’d like more investigation here please
I wondered about that! If they didn’t recognize him, that’s fucked up to ask someone what they are doing. But if they know he’s mayor, and especially if they’ve never run into him before, totally different story. He’s not had a great record of telling the whole truth during the campaign and I do wish Justin had followed up on that. I know people definitely experience racism! But it’s not wild that the mayor would be recognized when he’s out and about and be asked what brings him to the neighborhood.
Bruce’s story doesn’t ring true. His snobby friends know exactly who he is at 300 yards. Right, the mayor is a stranger in his own neighborhood. Mkay.
It is a bullshit line ‘o crappola. Steamy and stinky and stanky too. Why he blurts out stuff like that is working for his base. It’s red meat as a preemptive attack on anyone who’d say “you are not one of us(black)”. Remember, because he won’t let you forget. He’s a minority.
i am very disappointed that bruce couldn’t deliver on eliminating disorder in the streets. it would be a close call for me if he delivered order and wanted to be so terrible on new housing. the fact that he’s terrible on new housing and has just given us continued encampments and open drug use means that he’s a hard no for me.
Bruce is the best of the options. Katie Wilson is not even close to being ready for prime time. She manages a $200,000 budget of an activist organization falsely representing itself as a union. The “union” is essentially just her. What a grifter. The city budget is $9 billion. Her past work with Sawant to “stop the sweeps” and “defund the police” is also a deal breaker. Lastly, her resume is so thin that The Stranger tried to frame her dropping out of a prestigious college and being the daughter of scientists as her qualifications. What a joke.
I agree; Bruce is the best of the options. It’s why I voted for him last time. I wish he had been able to accomplish more, but it seems that disappointment in one’s mayor is pretty standard here in Seattle. Have not been truly excited about a mayoral candidate for decades.
Katie would be a complete disaster though. Having a country under Trump, and a city under Wilson, would be the worst of two worlds.
How many fenced off parks for gun violence does it take to fail as the Mayor of Seattle?
Weird. Based on your user name I assumed you’d be a huge fan.
Breaking News – Mayor Harrell listens to violent criminals stories 9 times rather than jailing them. Same Bruce Harrell accused White Seattle Voter of racism just for trying to talk to the mayor
While I def do not consider Katie Wilson a joke – after being on the fence between the two: the experience wins out. This city is a HUGE huge challenge. Katie Wilson will drown off the starting block. Period. We will be worse off.
Bruce literally has failures everywhere in Seattle. Fenced off parks, murders etc. literally a cop helicopter was spent on graffiti while a criminal violently tried to carjack two different people.
This “Katie has no experience” is sexist bullshit
It’s bad experience tho
Wrong. Bruce has been in a position of power for 16 years in this city and has ZERO to show for it.
I read this whole thing twice – who the hell is the “Mayor of Capitol Hill”?
That’s just the title for the series of posts where this blog interviews mayoral candidates.
Thanks for doing the interviews! It’s great to see how candidates respond when they’re pressed on complicated issues.
RE his anecdote about being asked ‘what he was doing’ walking around the Central District, I would have also asked what the mayor was up to if he was walking around my neighborhood. He’s a pretty recognizable guy lol.
I happily voted for Bruce last time, but his mayoral tenancy has been an abysmal failure. So much of his focus has been on unsuccessfully battling homelessness in a weird, adversarial manner, to the detriment of many other aspects of city government. I won’t be coming back for seconds.
As a center right Republican, I’m voting for Katie Wilson. The centrist Democrat policies of Harrel, Durkan, Murray, etc have not been good for Seattle. Might as well give the far left a chance. At least when Wilson’s policies fail to improve homelessness, crime, etc. I can say “I told you so” to my lefty friends.
a slightly weird form of open mindedness that nevertheless I support
Please don’t. 20% of Seattle wants Katie. 50% of Seattle are cos-playing Progressives that don’t live in Capitol Hill or the few dense neighborhoods that have to deal with the consequences of soft policies.
“…my opponent… is taking credit for some very progressive work that we, in fact, that I did while in office”
That was close! He almost acknowledged other people’s contributions.
No one can control capitalism or any political system, That is why there are organized crime syndicates in all four corners of the world. The choice in this election is obvious, Seattle is uncontrollable, but we citizens do have order in our hearts, even if some of us are too politically depressed to recognize it. Asking for change immediately is irresponsible as it cost a lot of money to address the issue that need to be addressed. (Remember when equity was the key word?) stability in our politics is what Seattle needs the most right now. Bruce has done what he can do, and it’s not all that bad. It’s not his fault Seattle has seen an influx in addicts and homelessness, it’s not his fault Seattle has seen jobs leave our downtown corridor, it not his fault crime is up. But it is his goal to organize this city in an equitable manner, and he has the experience to do it. New wave politics are a danger to Seattle’s prosperity. Capitalism is gonna happen no matter how progressive Seattle wishes to be. We need someone willing and experienced in being at the bargaining table with the citizens and the businesses responsible for this great city’s growth and development. If a better candidate is willing and able to rise, let them, but we have the answer already. Let this be another time and Seattle, and I’ll be more willing to try something new, but now is not the time.
Well said. +1
Things are much better now in Seattle than before Mayor Harrell took office. Of course not yet where they should be, but at least now the city makes an effort to remove tents. If you submit encampments via Find It Fix It, they do get actioned. That was not happening prior to Mayor Harrell. So while yes we all wish things were even better, I will vote for Harrell. I am frightened of how bad the streets would become if Wilson wins and takes us back to Sawant style.
“One of the complaints that I do hear is from people who have been there. It’s that some of the younger people who moved in are not going out of their way to be friends with people who have been there for a while.”
First world problems. One of the complaints that I do hear is from people who have been in my neighborhood is that some of the younger people who moved in are shooting and robbing us.
“It was interesting that last week, as I was walking the streets in the Central District, a person came up to me. They were white, just to be candid with you, and they asked me what I was doing there.” BULLSHIT. Stopped reading right there.