(Image: Jessyn for Mayor)

When Jessyn Farrell first ran for mayor in 2017, Seattle was facing many of the core issues it struggles with today: homelessness and housing affordability, public safety and policing.

But the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated these problems since Farrell, a former state lawmaker and public transit champion, finished a distant fourth in the mayoral primary four years ago. With that in mind, Farrell is making another run for the office.

“People are really suffering in so many different ways, whether it is economic hardship, racial injustice, isolation, the challenges of remote learning,” Farrell told CHS Thursday afternoon, citing her own experience as a parent. “Times are really, really hard and city leadership has really lacked the creativity and the scale around responding to these multiple crises.”

She breaks all of this down to two questions: “Is this going to be a city that people want and can afford to live in?”

Farrell, 47, represented the U-District and North Seattle in the state House from 2013 until 2017, when she resigned to focus on her first mayoral run. In high school, she was voted most likely to become a politician and went on to graduate from the University of Washington and Boston College Law School.

She was the executive director of the Transportation Choices Coalition, leading charges to fund an expanded light rail system. Since her previous run, she’s worked at Civic Ventures, the think tank headed by progressive taxation advocate Nick Hanauer.

Jenny Durkan’s announcement that she will not seek reelection after finishing her first — and only — term this year has led to a surge of candidates making moves to win the office.

The primary is still five months away and more than a dozen candidates have already filed to run for mayor, according to the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission, including Chief Seattle Club executive director Colleen Echohawk, who would be the city’s first Native mayor, city council president Lorena González, former council president Bruce Harrell, and Capitol Hill architect Andrew Grant Houston.

SEED Seattle’s interim director Lance Randall also announced his candidacy last year.

Another factor helping to power the 2021 race is the Seattle’s Democracy Voucher program which, for the first time, has been extended to include mayoral candidates. Farrell said Thursday that she is participating in the “innovative policy to keep big money out of our politics.”

In trying to delineate herself among the other candidates vying for the job, Farrell not only separated her opponents between progressive and moderate, but between insider and relative outsider, tacitly calling out González and Harrell, the early frontrunners in the race.

“There is a real hunger for problem solving and someone who has a track record of problem solving and I think that I fit that bill,” she said. “If you’re happy with the status quo, there are candidates who are currently and have been before in city government, then those are your candidates. I think though that most people are not satisfied with how things are going.”

Continue reading →

(Image: Bruce for Seattle)

With incumbent Jenny Durkan opting to step aside and not seek reelection, a Seattle political veteran is now the most downtown chamber-tolerable frontrunner in the 2021 Seattle mayor’s race.

Former city councilmember — and one-time five-day Seattle mayor — Bruce Harrell is announcing his candidacy for the mayor’s office Tuesday in a press conference with “a small number of family and supporters” outside the Central District’s Garfield High School, the political veteran’s alma mater and part of the old school Seattle base on which his personality and career as an elected in the progressive city has been built.

“Seattle needs a mayor committed to a real recovery, rooted in uniting everyone around our progressive values,” Harrell says in a video introducing his campaign.

“Committed to building equity and opportunity for every family, I was elected to the city council where we accomplished big things, raised the minimum wage, invested in transit and affordable housing,” the candidate says. “Now after divisive politics, a racial reckoning and a terrible pandemic, I’m running for mayor to help lead Seattle forward, to come together and work together. I know we can and will fix our city.”

UPDATE: We have added Harrell’s “open letter” announcing his candidacy and early platform proposals to the end of the post.

Included in the letter is a swipe from the council veteran at #defundSPD efforts. “We need to move beyond arbitrary and divisive public safety budget debates and align the needs of our entire community with the mandate of ending bias, improving response times, and reducing crime,” Harrell’s letter states. “We need the right kind of personnel to respond—like social workers and addiction specialists when an armed officer isn’t needed or appropriate. Accountability and training—and appropriate staffing for our growing city—require resources and reforms. We can do both.”

Harrell’s political career and long ties to the city and its Black community vault the candidate into a neck and a neck race with Lorena González, the current council president and biggest name so far in the run to replace Durkan after leading the city’s legislative body through the tumultuous 2020 political battles over COVID-19 crisis and recovery and the fight to reduce spending on the Seattle Police Department. In anticipation of Harrell’s run, González’s campaign is issuing “a public call for other candidates in the race to reject corporate PAC money and corporate independent expenditure assistance.”

Chief Seattle Club executive director Colleen Echohawk has also joined the race while Capitol Hill architect Andrew Grant Houston has made waves among progressives with an urbanist and social justice focused campaign. Meanwhile, Nikkita Oliver, another community leader many hoped would consider a run for mayor, instead is making a push to join the city council.

Harrell is cut from different cloth entirely. A standout high school athlete who grew up in 1970s-era Seattle, Harrell seems to approach his take on politics with a jock’s swagger and a habit for quips and jokey asides. Continue reading →