The team formed to help Katie Wilson prepare for the start of her administration in the new year should be able to give the mayor-elect any help she needs finding her way around Seattle City Hall.
Wilson has announced a squad of transition team leaders that includes years of experience working in previous administrations and one of the driving forces behind the city’s move into social housing development.
“I ran for mayor on the vision that we can tackle big challenges, address our affordability crisis, and make our city a great place to live, work, and raise a family. Now it’s time to get to work,” Wilson said in the announcement. “I’m so grateful to the Transition Director and Co-Chairs who have stepped up to lend their deep expertise in government, business, labor, housing, and community development, and help me put that vision into action.”
Leading the transition planning effort will be Andrés Mantilla who served as the longtime head of the Department of Neighborhoods under both Ed Murray and Jenny Durkan.
The transition team leadership will also include union leader Karen Estevenin who also served on Bruce Harrell’s massive 2021 transition team, Harrell ally and an important representative for issues in the International District, Quynh Pham of Friends of Little Saigon, former director of the Office of Economic Development and policy lead on the city’s minimum wage Brian Surratt, and Tiffani McCoy who has helped lead the House Our Neighbors effort to create and fund a public Social Housing Developer in the city.
In the announcement, Wilson said the team will “engage community members to identify short, medium, and long-term priorities to advance the Mayor-Elect’s vision.”
Following her victory over the incumbent Harrell, Wilson has said she enters office “with a strong mandate” to pursue policies to attack the affordability crisis, address homelessness, “and build a city for working people” following a sweep of progressive victories in the election.
A strong early focus will be on homelessness.
“I think obviously the homelessness crisis is going to be a very, very top priority for me,” Wilson told CHS following her victory. “We have an aggressive timeline in the first six months of next year, leading up to the FIFA World Cup to really tackle the homelessness crisis as it affects the downtown core and adjacent neighborhoods.”
In the meantime, Wilson is building a transition team around the just announced leadership team. In modern day Seattle, these efforts can get pretty big. Harrell’s 2021 team included around 150 people. His leadership team included a more business-oriented mix including United States Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell, Equal Opportunity Schools CEO Eddie Lincoln, Uwajimaya President and CEO Denise Moriguchi, and Sea Mar founder and CEO Rogelio Riojas,
Wilson’s full transition team roster will be announced in coming weeks.
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McCoy keeps failing upwards. I put the over under on units of social housing built during Wilson’s term at one. I expect to easily win that bet taking the under.
Much like Wilson’s campaign, the HON campaign was mostly vibes completely free of facts based analysis or a critical look at where the funding would come from.
We need to build housing. The HON approach is doomed to fail and will.
We’ll see how this goes. As a Black woman, I can tell you that the Black community is not happy with this. I’m just so frustrated that a privileged white person was elected and seems to think she’s going to “save” us. Be an ally, not a savior.
We need to be realistic — privilege is alive and well in Seattle. A wealthy white woman gets to be mayor of the largest city in the Northwest, while Black folks have to work so much harder just to be heard. This is implicit racism at its finest.
There’s a guy on Tik Tok that made some of these points. He changed his account name so forget what his handle is at the moment but I get what he’s saying, at least to a degree.
If a wealthy black woman had grown up the daughter of two prominent academics and had Katie’s resume I don’t think there is a chance in hell she gets elected in seattle.
Quite a few Seattle folks 20-50 saw themselves in Katie. They’d never have done that for a black candidate imo.
I didn’t like how so called “progressive” media covered Bruce this cycle. They downplayed his accomplishments like he was the nepo baby here. Bruce came from nothing man. That counts. He is the American Dream basically. Katie is what exactly? Vibes.
I’m curious. Bruce has held positions of power in this city over the last couple of decades. I’m trying to think of any major accomplishments to credit him with. Can you help?
He lived
And I didn’t like how Bruce used funds from wealthy donors to launch toxic, ad hominem attacks on Katie, but here we are.
You really just didn’t like that the “progressive” media reported the truth on Bruce.
Don’t know what to tell you. Harrell, while of color, was a slimy corporate lawyer who failed at his job and hence the electorate fired him. And no one else was running. So here we are.
Harrls staff consisted of mostly white men and he mostly did favors for his rich white buddies. Draw from that what you will.
But in the trickle down economic model? That’s how it works!
The more money They get? They MORE money WE get! Just shovels full of white money. Falling like the pure and driven snow.
This is a false narrative perpetuated by biased sources. You can look up his staff publicly. The mayor’s office is 2/3 women and over 1/5 PoC.
Not only were they his rich white buddies, they were some of the most toxic people he could find. So toxic, in fact, they forced out Bruce’s niece, a professional black woman.
She’s a White chick on vibes. White Liberal progressive women always think they know what’s best for everyone.
Seattle will need to get a lot worse until we get a pragmatic business and home owner friendly mayor.
The last THREE mayors were Seattle taking the so-called “pragmatic, business-friendly” option. Murray, Durkan, Harrell, were all endorsed by the Seattle Times and the Chamber of Commerce over their opponents. Wilson is us finally trying something different.
Exactly. People here get uncomfortable the moment race is mentioned, and suddenly I’m the problem for bringing it up. That’s white fragility at its finest. I didn’t even mention Bruce in my original comment. I was pointing out a larger truth: a white woman with significant privilege just won the Seattle mayoral race on a list of big promises that many of us already know she won’t be able to deliver on.
If this were a Black woman, the scrutiny would be relentless. She would be grilled endlessly about how she planned to accomplish anything, and if she fell short, she’d be dismissed, blacklisted, and harshly criticized. That double standard is real, and it’s exhausting to watch people pretend it isn’t.