Election Extravaganza: Puget Sound Progressives Prevail

The Urbanist Podcast is back after a hiatus, just in time to break down 2025 election results. Urbanist-endorsed Katie Wilson pulled off a comeback in late returns to win the Seattle Mayor race. In this episode, Urbanist publisher Doug Trumm and reporter Amy Sundberg discuss results in Seattle and other interesting races across the region, including Tacoma, Bellevue, Kirkland, and a progressive sweep in Burien.

Chapters

• 1:34 Regionwide Election Trends
• 6:09 Burien's Progressive Wave
• 9:21 Tacoma
• 14:53 King County Executive
• 23:01 King County Council
• 25:49 Seattle Mayor's Race
• 39:17 Seattle's Other Races
• 43:23 Balance of power at Seattle Council

Transcript

0:11

Hello and welcome to the Urbanist Podcast., A new show, not just touching on the urbanist biggest headlines, but also offering a deeper look from the reporters breaking the stories. The Urbanist is an online publication covering the Seattle Metropolitan region since 2014. We do advocacy journalism for better cities. I'm Doug Trumm, publisher of the Urbanist, and with me is Amy Sundberg. Hi, I'm Amy Sundburg, an urbanist reporter. I cover public safety and a lot of other topics. And we , ultimately have a bit of a rotating cast. Obviously the rest of our newsroom is Ryan Packer, our contributing editor, and they're out in the field right now, reporting, so they're not available today, but , we'll be bringing in other voices, as we get this thing going. The idea is every couple of weeks that urbanist podcasts will be there to. Stories on our site, and what else is going on with additional analysis and maybe a sneak peek at stuff coming on the horizon. Obviously this episode's gonna be dominated by the election, what election it was. I have been on the edge of my seat. I can't remember an election cycle. I care a lot about elections in general, but this one has been particularly riveting, I have to say. Yeah. And obviously the big comeback in Seattle mayor race dominated the election, but there were a lot of other interesting races both in Seattle and around the region. Yeah, maybe we can start by talking about some of the broader trends that you saw around the region as a whole. Lot of pro housing candidates who could speak to affordability issues did well not just in Seattle, but we saw, some similar comebacks in Kirkland. Where the three of four seats are gonna be with urbanists endorsed pro-housing candidates over, the opponents end up being fairly housing backlash type candidates. The one candidate who didn't, didn't pull it out Kurt Dresner, he was going against, uh, incumbent. So that one certainly was a little bit taller order. But in an open seat. Shilpa Prem did, did pull out a victory, in the comeback fashion. Didn't look like she had an election night, but a little progressive kick at the end, and she got it. So Kirkland is gonna continue to go in that direction. And we saw in Bellevue a seat held for a very long time by Conrad Lee is now gonna be held by a more pro-housing candidate , in Naren Briar. He was in that seat for over three decades. Is that Yeah. Yeah. And he donated to Trump, the inauguration fund. But, I think that sort of pushed it too far for a lot of voters in addition to sort of, well, what have you accomplished for this long? One thing I think is really interesting is that in past races over the last few years, public safety and homelessness, I feel like have been two of the key issues that really seem to be driving voting trends. And I don't think that those things are not important to voters. But this year we really saw the, increasing prominence of the idea of affordability. Right. And I do think that that seems to be resonating not just in this area but nationally. And it does seem to signal some kind of shift. Yeah, for sure. I think that that is twofold, right? It's partially that's resonating more with voters from get go because of they're feeling it in their own lives, in their pocketbook. But also I think the progressive candidates have done a better job at not shooting themselves in the foot in that issue. They're not totally ceding it, which was unfortunately sometimes felt like the case in previous elections. And they're talking about solutions that might not, not only be just hiring cops because there's so many other solutions that are important, which is really a thing that you talk about a lot in your reporting, Amy. It is true. There's a lot of other solutions for public safety that are both more humane, often, and more, cost effective. They're cheaper and more effective, whether that's addressing root causes or kind of meeting people and helping them along the way so that they can create a better life for themselves. Yeah, and it didn't stop some of the more conservative candidates and, centrist candidates from saying, Hey, you're a defund candidate. Because maybe something you said four years to five years ago or, or because you, of who you're associated with, but it seemed like the stickiness of that attack, uh, decreased because candidates weren't, that wasn't their platform when they ran this time. Yeah, I agree. And I think we saw that a little bit in last year's race to Alexis Mercedes Rinck in Seattle, who definitely wasn't running on a defund platform, but was very much, you know, focusing on alternative response, and things like that for public safety, but really focusing more on how to make the city more affordable, more livable, like how to have a better quality of life for everybody. Yeah. And not being shy about saying, we want to tax the rich to do that. That seemed to be something that was, at least in the Seattle race in particular, a big thing. And people realizing some of these problems are big and it's not something you can fix with a little tweak here or there. We talked about homelessness being a big issue in previous election. I think it still was. Some of these places we had centrist leaders in power who had big promises. And the homelessness problem is still pretty severe in most Puget Sound communities. So I think it gave it an opening for progressives to talk about their solutions rather than kind of getting pigeonholed into being in the way. Yeah. And I think too, some people who have perhaps less compassionate responses to homelessness have been in office now for a while. And I think people have seen kind of what, what that looks like and what the results are. You know, in general the results are that are homeless population continues to increase year by year. Which I mean, makes me think about Burien, which was a really interesting race, . So there were four city council members up for reelection this cycle. And there were four kind of more progressives running against the more moderate candidates and all four more progressive candidates won. I think one thing that's really interesting about it, that is that two of them were incumbents and two of them were new candidates. I know we hear a lot about an anti incumbent bias, but certainly in Burien that that isn't what we saw. It was more about the messages that were being delivered as opposed to whether they had been in office before or not. Yeah, totally. And those candidates on the progressive side definitely ran as a slate. And they got some big endorsements in some cases, Pramila Jayapal, , the local Congress person, endorsed, later on in the campaign, all four of them and had an appearance with them. And I think that sort of solidified maybe for some voters who consider themselves more stidently Democrat or progressive, that okay, there's a clear choice in this race. And, the backlash that we saw in it was really the issue of homelessness that seemed to be blowing up in Burien. Okay, there's this new approach and these candidates that are poised to kind of take the reins here. Yeah. And if you look at what's been happening in Burien the last couple of years, the old council had taken a very aggressive stance towards homelessness. They passed a series of anti homeless camping legislation over the past few years, which was so extreme that at one point the King County Sheriff's Office said they couldn't enforce that ordinance and they actually sued the city of Burien over this ordinance. So at the point in which you have your law enforcement agency telling you that you've gone too far, I think that did register with people that live in Burien. And then there's been other things going on, like the voters in Burien passed a new higher minimum wage, and then the council was trying to prevent that from going into effect. There was some grant money that King County was trying to offer Burien to deal with helping provide services for homeless people. And the council did not want to accept that money. They passed a comp plan and they were trying to basically go backwards on the comp plan in terms of density. Yeah, it didn't seem like the most savvy moves, to be honest., Especially , voters on a minimum wage they're there already, and to sort of take this incrementalist, get in the way approach that didn't do the incumbents any favors. I mean, the voters actually, it was a, it was an initiative, right? So the voters already said that's what they wanted. yeah. So I feel like at that point it almost feels disrespectful, to try to go back on what the voters have clearly said. It definitely made it seem like centrists are outta step and doing the bidding of the wealthy business folks more so than looking after the typical Burien resident. Yeah, and we see what happened with their record in the results of this race with all four progressive candidates winning. I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about what happened in Tacoma. Yeah. Tacoma was another place where we're gonna see a changing of guard. They have term limits, so that there was an open mayor race where, urbanist endorsed seen as a more progressive candidate. Anders Ibsen prevailed rather easily, over council member John Hines and Ibsen was also a council member, but that was farther back. He left council, went to the private sector, um, actually was working on housing development. And, I think that gave him a lot of credibility. He's kind of owned the issue of affordability over the incumbent who, just increasingly went towards the center in conservative direction, as a campaign went on, Tacoma has a camping ban near their shelters, and he proposed to greatly expand that camping ban to the point where it covers a lot of Tacoma, uh,'cause it was gonna be around parks and things like that, other public resources. You pull out a map and you're like, oh, there's actually most of the Tacoma. So, it seemed like a desperate move and it really solidified a punitive approach was where he was going uh, rather than building housing and focusing on affordability issues. So that mayor race is the big one , but there's also some change on the council, where there was another open seat. Latasha Palmer prevailed over Jessica Johnston, who is a landlord backed candidate, a landlord herself. Palmer works at a community land trust. So she's, again, you, had direct experience working on housing issues and land trusts definitely resonates with folks who feel like there just isn't really a route to owning property in our region for folks who aren't rich. So, similar theme, it's about affordability. Right. Well, and rents are going up everywhere. It's not just in Seattle. Right. Yeah, totally. I know at the beginning of the pandemic, that effect was more pronounced in Tacoma because, you know, Tacoma had traditionally been the affordable place people went. A lot of people who got priced outta Seattle went there. With the work from home stuff, a lot of folks decided to go up and go to Tacoma at once and suddenly their prices weren't as affordable anymore. They still are more affordable than Seattle and the Eastside, but, the rent increases they were seeing were significant for a bit. So it's definitely something that's on people's minds. They had a big Home in Tacoma package in process even before the state came in with mandates to deal with phasing out single family zoning , which we saw with House Bill 1110 , back in 2023. And, that deadline came and went here at the turn of the year. Tacoma was able to get their, unlike Seattle, get their package done, because they had all this home in Tacoma work done. And, you know, it's probably not perfect, but it seemed like they were a lot more embracing it and maybe that that sort of voter saw that there was some progress being made on that issue because other than that mayor race, which was gonna be a change. But otherwise incumbents did well in Tacoma. That seemed like maybe they thought the city's mostly going the right direction, but with mayor, they were ready to go with a more progressive person. So it's kind of a mixed bag, but it kind of goes to show how each city's a little different and voters are really tracking are you making headway on some of these core issues? Right. And again, I feel like I've heard several times that, this cycle has not been good for incumbents. So I think it's just important to reiterate that some incumbents have done fine. It really varies a lot, by race and by region or specific place. And it was close, like I, I'm curious to see if that'll continue to shift. Um, the closest race was Silong Chhun versus Sandesh Saldalge, that was a race decided , 48, 51, like that's three point race. So certainly, it doesn't seem like that incumbent was invulnerable. It just came up a little bit short. And I know Chhun got an endorsement from former Governor Jay Inslee that probably helped a lot. And another race you saw Tacoma for all organizer Zev Cook. She didn't do quite as well, you know, she was more branded as the Democratic socialist candidate and, as being the lefty's lefty that didn't resonate in Tacoma. Obviously they're gonna keep fighting and try to get there. But it shows that there's still a ways to go and, the incumbent was able to hold on in that race. I think this lets me make one of my favorite points, which we might make again later in this episode, which is how much votes matter in local races.'cause a lot of these races were very close. I think often as American voters, people focus on the top races and especially the presidential election, which because of the electoral college feels like maybe your vote doesn't matter as much. But in these local races, your vote is so incredibly pivotal.'Cause sometimes these local races are decided by margins of a hundred votes or less. And even 2000 votes or less, it is not that many votes. So people voting at all and who you vote for really does make a difference in these local races. Since we do municipal races in odd-numbered years, that turnout is even lower. So you'll get even, even bigger potential swings if people do turn out. I think especially in South King and Pierce County, the turnout is particularly low. In Seattle we saw turnout reach 55%, on the strength of a competitive mayor race. But that number is pretty much an outlier. You're getting a minority of voters determining many of these races. Absolutely. Okay. Well let's talk about the King County executive race because that's a huge one that will have large impacts on the entire county, and, and we haven't had a new King County executive for quite a while. Yeah, not an elected one. So the little background in this race is that, you know, Dow Constantine won four straight terms, and huge influence on the county, obviously, especially through his post on Sound Transit. But, that Sound Transit work was so important to Dow that, he decided to take the CEO position. Board members appointed him early this year and he took the post in the spring of this year. And his deputy executive, Shannon Braddock, is interim county executive. And since she's interim and wasn't elected , Girmay Zahilay who won this election pretty handily will be taking over in a faster timeline. Since that's the state rules as soon as votes are certified, Zahilay will get sworn in and he will start his executive term early. That race was two county council members going at it. The other county council member was Claudia Balducci. And I mean, compared to some of these other races, it sort of was a quiet race. I dunno if that's how you felt Amy, like it, it didn't get nearly as much attention. I agree. I think people were confused by this race. At least people I spoke to, they were like, I don't know who to vote for. They both seem pretty good. Like, what should I do? So I think that, you know, there was also a feeling that whichever one won, it would probably be okay. That that is the feeling that I got from the people that I was talking to. Yeah, the stakes felt a little bit lower on, on this one just because you didn't get that sharp ideological contrast. I'll just lay our cards on the table. The Urbanist election committee endorsed Claudia Balducci. But, you know, in the writeup we talked about how both candidates were very strong. With Zahilay you're getting someone who's definitely is viewed as a rising star. And, that was something that really allowed him to catch fire, uh, just because not only is he seen that way, but has a extreme talent on the campaign trail for communicating and and just reaching folks. Even though there weren't like huge disputes between the candidates, he got The Stranger endorsement, which sort of connotes to people, this is the progressive in this race. And ran up huge totals in Seattle in particular. Ended up putting by nine points. I'm really curious to see how, he leads on some of these issues because, they're huge challenges. Like I don't envy him in coming in at this time. No. I mean, when we're talking about King County or Seattle, one of the things that always comes to the front of my mind is the the budget issues that are facing really our entire region because, there's a property tax cap so that basically taxes don't keep up with inflation. And we've had a few years of very high inflation, which means that now, the municipalities are behind in their tax collecting, Way behind. So then there's less money to pay for all the things and people still want all the public goods and services that they're used to getting. So it can be quite a challenge. Yeah. Especially in a fairly fast growing county a property tax levy is just flat. It doesn't automatically increase as the population increases too. So you're fighting both of those things and one of Zahilay's biggest endorsers was Governor Bob Ferguson. He was hesitant to lift the property tax cap , that was one of the asks from the county. They didn't get it done this last session. Maybe they're gonna try to take it up again. But, it's a similar thing as California has struggled with, where it's on paper, sounds good to do this, 1% property tax cap , but in times of high inflation, it's a huge hindrance to actually making the budget balance. And counties don't have a huge amount of other tools. Well, and what Governor Ferguson did instead was he threw a, little sales tax increase. And, we in Seattle and King County have one of the highest sales tax rates in the nation. And it's about to get higher with these public safety sales taxes that Governor Ferguson supported. But of course, sales tax is probably the most regressive tax that you can levy on people. Yeah, it definitely falls hard on poor folks who, who end up spending more of their, their income, taxable goods. It's pretty clear. So yeah, it's gonna be a challenge and it doesn't get any easier budget-wise for the other big thing you do as King County executive, as you have the most influential seat on the Sound Transit board, and there are also huge budget challenges there. That ended up being one of the factors that, that weighed heavily on The Urbanist endorsement as far as Balducci's been on the sound transit board longer, has been the system expansion chair, and, there's a lot of things she can kind of hang her hat on. Not to say that she can solve all these problems with the wave of her hand,'cause they're, they're really big. The Sound Transit 3 package, which will add light rail to West Seattle and, to Ballard, and to Everett , and Tacoma Dome, is facing huge financial hurdles. 20 billion dollars shortfall, 20 to $30 billion. It's a lot. It's gonna be a huge thing for the board to come up with a rebalance plan over the next year or two. So Zahilay won big in Seattle. Balducci won big on the Eastside, I believe, and she's from Bellevue. Aside from Zahilay's top-notch public speaking and communication skills, do you think there were other factors that decided this race? Definitely, part of why I describe this race as a little bit sleepy is because it seemed like after the primary, both candidates were like, well, we're both democrats, but there is this share of voters in King County are republicans or are conservative, independents or whatever you want to call them. And both candidates were cognizant of if they galvanized all those voters towards their opponent, you know, then that could throw the race. And, and ironically you have this county that has a huge democratic advantage that could be decided by which way conservative voters swing. I don't know that it ultimately went that way. There were some people who argued that Balducci was gonna try to court those voters. I think both candidates ended up courting those voters. And what polling data we have suggest they didn't like break single handedly hard either way. Actually, maybe Zahilay might've had an advantage with Republicans. You know, because you don't always know if they're just gonna go towards a centrist Democrat or go all the way the other way. I don't know the mindset of Republican voter, but, yeah, they, after the primary day, and we're talking a lot about things like fiscal prudence and auditing and, and, oh, and shoplifting. I think progressives kind of felt like they, maybe the candidates weren't speaking to them as much, at least after that point, maybe more in the primary. They were. And that might've left people with the same impression they had maybe in the primary or lean more on endorsements since there wasn't like this big public debate about some core progressive issues. Right. Now you know, Zahilay has definitively won. Balducci will stay on King Council. She retains her seat on the council. Uh, Zahilay is vacating his seat on the council. So someone will have to be appointed to fill that seat, sometime in the not so distant future. Yeah. Yeah. And, it's sort of a question of how big a role he'll play in that he may recuse himself since it sort of would normally be the executive's role to, to offer the recommendations on who would fill a county council seat. I'm not sure, we haven't seen those names thrown out there yet, but, his district covers the Rainier Valley covers a good chunk of Seattle and, I think part of Renton and, so, think of people in the 37th district, those would be the kind of candidate pool , more or less. It actually goes all the way up to Ravenna too, so it's a big chunk of Seattle. So you could get someone who's from more central district area or even U District, or you could get someone from the Rainier Valley who would be put forward. And then the county council will kinda get to pick who their new colleague is, at least for the interim year. And then at the next general election, that person would have to defend their seat or someone else would come in to, to fight for it. So that could end up being influential. Yeah, no, that will be interesting. I know that, King County Council had other elections and most, mostly they were highly favored for the incumbents who did actually win their seats back. And then there was the one open seat. Yes. And in the open seat , it was kind of a landslide victory. Peter Kwon gave it a college try, but Stephanie Fain was too much for him. She had a lot of business backing, and actually both the Stranger and the Seattle Times went with her. Peter Kwon was trying to run this untraditional kind of campaign of more local connections and kind of a chameleon, but he was pretty conservative. Like he was very much arguing against raising taxes. You know, south King is kind of the budget area of the metro where there's still relatively affordable housing. I think voters there especially attuned to, okay, like, well, don't, don't hit me with anything that's gonna hurt my bottom line. So that, that race ended up feeling like you had two fiscal hawks there , but I think people went with Fain on the strength of I guess endorsements and just seeming like the more resume-heavy candidate. What did you think of that race? I thought it was really interesting what happened in the primary, because there were a couple more progressive candidates and they kind of split the vote, and so neither of them made it, to the general. I think that's why we saw the race that we saw. And I do think that it will shift the balance of the King County Council a little bit. So yeah, it'll be interesting to see how that plays out in practice. Totally. The interim member De'Sean Quinn, I think he is to the left of both of these candidates. Yes definitely. He was clear from the beginning he was gonna be a caretaker and didn't wanna run for the seat, but, I liked what I've seen from him so far. So I'm curious, like if we would've been better off if he decided not to be a caretaker and just run. But it is what it is. And also he has a background at King County Metro, which I'm always as a transit advocate, I'm a big fan of. I liked him too. I don't have a transit background and, and I thought he asked very thoughtful questions. So I really appreciated the way he approached the role. Yeah, totally. And sometimes King County Council gets forgotten about., But there's huge implications, the county runs the healthcare system and then the transit system are the two biggies for them. And that stuff is under attack from our current administration. So there's gonna be huge challenges and there's gonna be a lot in their shoulders. So hopefully the new people coming in are up to the task. I mean, we'll find out. There's going to be a lot to watch in the new year, I think on multiple levels. Right? In many of these cities in the county and in Seattle. Yeah, maybe we should move over to Seattle. You know, that's the really dramatic race here anyway. We survived. That, that was a rollercoaster of a week. Oh my gosh. Like I knew historically what tended to happen, and my knowledge did not help me as much as one might have hoped, like I was still on the edge of my

seat, very nervous looking at 4: 26:07

00 PM every day waiting for the next ballot drop to see what would happen because, you know, I thought that this was race would be close and I thought it would be close even after Katie Wilson won the primary by almost 10 points. And the reason I thought it would be close, frankly, is because I knew that Bruce Harrell would just have a ton more money on his side. And he did. Yeah, he had 2 million more, I think, or close to it. So for me, at a certain point there's so much money, it just becomes a lot harder because the other person can just really communicate well with the voters. And meanwhile, if you don't have that money, you're playing a bit of a catch up game. Yeah, he had a lot of money. I think the PAC backing him raised over 1.8 million and maybe it got close to 2 million towards the end. I mean, she did have a PAC too, but it raised far less money. So there's like four or five times as much that his political action committee had. And, they were doing big things like running TV ads during big playoff games for the Seattle Mariners and stuff like that, that probably really spread the message , such as it was. I thought it was gonna be close, but I don't know that I thought it was gonna be quite as close as it actually turned out to be. No, it was a squeaker. And I remember feeling pretty depressed on, on Wednesday, when Mayor Harrell actually gained ground in that count, which isn't unheard of. Like sometimes the Wednesday count just continues the trend from election night, depending on which set of ballots they're counting. But yeah, Mayor Harrell actually expanded his lead to eight points on Wednesday and over 11,000 votes. You kind of start thinking, well, if the momentum's going that way, is it really gonna be like normal? In the primary we saw an eight point swing towards, Wilson as far as the margin between the candidates goes. So on election night, you're down seven, you're thinking, well, maybe we'll win by one point. And it didn't quite end up being a full one point, but in retrospect the math was fairly simple, but emotionally doesn't prepare you for like, seeing that. Going the wrong direction, or going in the right direction pretty slowly at first. Well, and at least for me, I felt like a Harrell administration, a second term would be very, very different than a Wilson administration. So when you kind of have an idea of what some of the tangible differences might be, it really, really brings into stark relief how much the results matter. What are some of the key drivers in this race? Yeah. There's, there's a couple different narratives going on. It's clear that affordability, like we mentioned earlier, was a huge theme. It was what Wilson made the main theme of her campaign. But what you saw that was different in this race was that you know, Mayor Harrell really recalibrated after losing the primary by more than nine points. He didn't just take that sitting down. He repositioned as a more progressive candidate after the primary. Some of that stuff had already started as the primary is going where you see him signing on to the Seattle Shield Initiative, which was a reform of the business and occupation tax that would raise taxes on larger businesses, which was the exact thing that he spent the first three and a half years of his administration fighting. The fact that he was supporting a major new progressive revenue for Seattle, it makes sense because of the election, right. But when I first heard that this was a thing that was probably gonna happen, like I was shocked. Even though it makes sense strategically, it just wasn't, you know, in the wheelhouse of things that Bruce Harrell had been doing as mayor up until this point. Of course, Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck was a huge driver behind developing that B&O restructuring. And really was a great force pushing it. But because Bruce Harrell came behind it as well, I think that's why the council gave it the support that they did. Yeah, he really greased the skids and that probably helped make sure that that got on the ballot this November. And by the way, that that passed. Yeah, it passed easily. And, and I will say as well, he needed that money because he had a tough budget to balance this year. And without that b and o tax restructure, he would've had to make like painful cuts , potentially layoffs, right? Stuff like that, which would've been deeply unpopular and he would've had to announce it six weeks before election night. So, you know, it really was to his benefit to pass this tax. But even so, it still really surprised me 'cause he was just so anti progressive taxes up until that point. And it was pretty politically savvy tax because it lowered taxes on the smaller businesses while raising them in the larger businesses to net more money. But at the same time, you're not selling it as a tax raising measure. It's actually, it's true reform where you're actually lowering the bill for some folks, and I think that sort of makes sense since B&O taxes really hated by businesses since it goes right off the top of their proceeds, rather than only in profits. Yeah, their revenue. If I'm remembering correctly, I don't have the best memory for numbers, so check this if you need to know, but I think it was like 90%, um, of people who would be paying less under this restructure. Yeah, I think it was quite a few, something like that. I mean, just 'cause there's so many small businesses compared to there's only a select few really large businesses. So , like you said, that's key because the budget is in a, in a messy place right now, especially if, if there is another economic downturn. So, Wilson is gonna have And, that came up in the campaign too. Like we talked about affordability being the main issue, but she also definitely had a critique of the mayor, that he had shied away from the big battles to the detriment of good governance, and getting ahead of these huge problems. It seemed that he was having trouble running on his own record. Because you know, of course if you're a new candidate, you can't run on your record. You're presenting your vision for the city. But as an incumbent, it's probably easiest to run on the things that you've achieved, right? The things you've done already for the city. But a lot of the messaging I saw was not about what he had achieved. Some of it was, but a lot more of it was kind of negative attack oriented communications about Katie Wilson. Oh, a hundred percent . that's the other thing that happened besides the him position is a little bit more progressive after the primary was going on the attack in a big way. He hadn't, hadn't really done a ton of attacking in the primary. But changed that in a big way very quickly. And definitely, didn't hold back and got kind of personal too. I mean, first it was just a resume based. They mail, you know, you've probably seen a mailer if you're a Seattleite that sent out a decade old resume of Katie Wilson's, which that's kind of a dirty trick in my book, I think. But her resume has filled out in the decade since, um, and just said that she didn't have enough executive leadership. On top of that, later in the campaign, started attacking her for allegedly taking too much money from her parents to help with caring for her daughter, which felt like we're getting into personal issues there and, and a low blow maybe. I found it to be misleading. I feel like I am probably one of the higher information voters that you can find. And when I first read about Katie Wilson accepting money from her parents, I, I felt a certain way about it. I mean, not particularly negative, but it, it did impact my thinking. And then, you know, it turned out that the narrative that had been advanced was not really accurate and that she had just been given money for childcare after she decided to run for mayor because, running for elections is hard. Obviously, she and her husband would be very busy campaigning and the grandparents were like, well, we'd like to help, but we live across the country, so we're just gonna help by helping you pay for some extra childcare. And I'm like, that's very different than saying Katie Wilson can't afford to live in Seattle without help from her parents. Those are two very different messages. And the second one, to be clear, is not true. So I thought that was not great. Yeah. And unfortunately KUOW contributed to that. I guess it's fair of them to ask the question if they want, but they didn't really make it clear in the initial version of the story that, oh, okay, this has only started recently because of the mayoral campaign. I don't know if they just, like, didn't follow up with her enough or what, but once that story blew up, Wilson put that information out there and, and she seemed a little annoyed why they didn't make it into the story initially, or if they're gonna bring it up, at least ask her. He portrayed it as, or at least his campaign manager, that she had been taking help from them for a very long time, which just unsubstantiated. To be clear, childcare is so expensive that I feel like if anybody gets help from their parents who can afford to give them help to pay for the very expensive childcare, I don't actually think that's a big deal. But I also think it was misleading because it had only been because of the election in the first place that she was taking the help. So people ashamed. I mean, it is ridiculous. Like you going like, oh, well this is as much as I make in my job, like to get this childcare. Like unless you're making a really big money. Like sometimes it's maybe I am now should quit my job instead of paying for childcare. Right, and it's villainizing people who are having trouble paying for childcare. I mean, and that's one of the affordability issues that is making it hard for people to make it, or, making people decide not to have kids or, like you said, decide to quit their job because it just doesn't make sense financially to pay someone else. Yeah, it felt like some parents said, like, this actually made me like Katie Moore, and maybe those people already predisposed to like Haiti in some cases. But , that attack getting he saw outta hand that it was blowback. But , it was very interesting because, now on Thursday you get Harrell's concession speech and he had a no regrets attitude towards, towards everything he did in office and in campaigning. And he was trying to be in a pretty good mood throughout this speech. But one thing that did set him off right at the end of the appearance, which is pretty long, he gave a long speech and then took several questions, was a reporter asked him, do you think you kind of missed this affordability issue or that you overlooked it or something like that. And, and he went on the attack and like, no, no way. Like I still have the scars from not having a whole lot of money when I was a kid and, and having to get an athletic scholarship to go to college. And, he didn't really take responsibility, you know, okay, like maybe Katie has her own scars , and it was a little bit opportunistic to try to criticize her for getting some help from her family. Well, and at the end of the day, I feel like for Bruce Harrell, he had four years as mayor to try out his ideas, and make life better for the residents of Seattle. And, perhaps one could say he was unlucky because he did have to deal with the high inflation that happened after the COVID pandemic. But, you know, I think that really did affect people's ability to live comfortably. I don't think his answer was, I mean, it wasn't really an answer. Everyone goes through stuff, but the mayor's in his sixties and all those struggles that he's talking about are in a different millennium. He has a net worth of over $15 million at his last, uh, public disclosure, and has a 7,000 square foot mansion just off of Lake Washington and right next to Seward Park. And, you know, Katie Wilson made a decision not to make his personal wealth an issue, but certainly other surrogates who are talking about it to some extent. But, that is just the reality is that sure, he has maybe a memory of, of 30, 40, 50 years ago, but recently he's been very comfortable. I think it was like actually election day, there was a Publicola story that came out talking about how he tends to upgrade his travel to first class and stay at five star hotels and stuff like that. And not all of that's on the company dime. He has his own money to pay for that, and that's not how most Seattleites are living, first class and elite hotels and stuff like that. So, it makes it harder for people to see you as their true champion when you're not living it. You're kind of vicarious at that point. And, he mentioned about how his wife was CEO of United Way and how they do a lot of, talking to and mentoring and, donating , so charity. But I think folks are looking to the mayor for leadership on the structural issues too. Not just, donate to charity. Right. Well, and I feel like at the end of the day, regardless of his background or how much wealth he has, we have four years to look at to see what progress he's been making. I think, it's clear voters were, had mixed feelings about it, right? Because it was a very close race. But, at the end of the day, enough voters didn't like the progress he was making. He's a fascinating figure. He certainly outperformed the other centrists in the race by a lot, so you could argue that he was still a strong candidate in a way considering the wave of the year. But, some of the cracks did emerge in the persona that he portrayed in 2021, that that led him into office in a fairly decisive manner over Lorena Gonzalez. Clearly he did a better job than like Sara Nelson or some of the other centrist candidates. Ann Davison City's attorneys like long gone. Yeah, I've actually found that discourse to be fascinating because it seems like a lot of people are like, well, why did Katie Wilson not do as well as the other progressive candidates? And to me, I'm like, well, Bruce Harrell is a very different opponent than Ann Davidson, who's a MAGA republican, who became a Republican after Trump was elected president, I believe. And has been leading some deeply unpopular policies. And he's also a very different candidate than Sara Nelson, who had her four years, and did a lot of very unpopular things. She tried to roll back the ethics rules, tried to do stuff with gig workers rights and all of that kind of stuff. cutting into their wages. Yeah, exactly, kind of ghoulish stuff. I mean, it's not like gig workers are getting rich, driving people's food around or driving them around. So, I mean, very unpopular. I think comparing Bruce Harrell to Sara Nelson or to Ann Davison just doesn't make sense to me 'cause they're just such different candidates. Yeah, voters definitely didn't see them the same way. The results speak for themselves on that. But on top of her doing those things, like, she didn't campaign on there should be less wage protections and, they didn't actually end up doing it, but there was a lot of talk that they were gonna weaken tenant protections and, you know, she was saying that she was pro-housing, but always just stayed in the background on the zoning changes that were being contemplated during the one Seattle's comprehensive plan process. It was a lot of stuff where it didn't quite match up with the who she played on TV during the campaign. In Seattle, I think that the moderates like path to winning is often portraying themselves as progressive. And, saying some things that sound kind of progressive. And then when they get into office, you can tell by what they're actually doing that they are definitely on the more moderate side of that. But I mean, the flip side of that is, then when you come up for reelection, you can't necessarily paint yourself as progressive again, which I think is the problem that Sara Nelson had. Whereas I feel like Bruce Harrell did a better job hovering over that line and doing enough progressive things, especially this year, that it was less clear if he was a progressive or not. I think for a lot of voters. Certainly. And, she didn't make an effort . She could have just followed the mayor's lead and she ended up voting for the Seattle Shield initiative, I guess, but she didn't really get out there in front and like try to grab onto that like he did. So there wasn't really like a come to Jesus moment or anything like that. No, I feel like she did a small pivot. This is Sara Nelson. She did a small pivot after the, the primary, but, but not enough yeah. and maybe too late as well. And one of the things she made one of our signature accomplishments, which was getting a small rezone done in the SoDo Industrial District, near the stadiums for a Maker's district and some housing to be intermixed with the warehouse uses there. Um, which kind of split the urbanist community, to be honest.'Cause like it's hard to be against new housing, but it was hated by the Port of Seattle and other industrial interests. They appealed the rezone and, ended up prevailing, at least at the growth management hearing board so far, which they can appeal. But that means that Sara Nelson's signature win on housing, which she kind of said was gonna magically get these affordable housing units in place in SoDo. You know, it was gonna be a few hundred, but it was something she was trying to hang her hat on. It's pretty much erased. So unless they went an appeal, that is not happening. So next year Seattle is gonna have a new mayor and Katie Wilson, and two new council members. Dionne Foster won Sara Nelson's seat. And then we have Eddie Lin for district two. And then Alexis Mercedes Rinck will be coming back. She won her election handily. What do you think that's gonna look like?'cause we have a very progressive mayor now. Well, we will in a couple months, and a kind of mixed council. Yeah, I think there's a good amount of uncertainty or different ways this could play out. We, we got rid of one of the most strident more conservative centrists, I guess we'll call them on council in Sara Nelson. But there's some on there still who are pretty, pretty conservative, like Maritza Rivera. And then, I guess all the action is because you have these three new progressives coming in and Dan Strauss is traditionally more progressive, although to win a reelection, he definitely tacked more towards the center. So he's a little bit more of a chameleon. But, I think he's pretty much a pro-labor guy, so he's with them a lot on those type of votes. So you have maybe four progressives there. But it's not clear if they have a fifth. There's maybe some people who are a little curious, like you kind of wonder about maybe Joy Hollingworth voting for them. The District 3 council member who's in Kshama Sawant's former seat, especially if she wants to run for reelection, which it's not clear all of them do. It's been a rough few years, so there's murmurings from city hall that many of the centrists do not wanna run for reelection. So, maybe Hollingsworth will, if she does decide to run for election, we'll, we'll wanna moderate a little bit. And for her that might mean going more progressive. And then Rob Saka sometimes is a little curious on some issues, although he certainly all over the place generally. And, Debra Juarez on housing, she's often pretty decent, but has some more business friendly impulses on other issues. So, really could be a wild card and she's a appointed member. That means we're gonna have another election next year, get ready for that. That if, if all those centrists stay strong and it's four progressives and five centrists, then that seat could end up being the one that controls which way the council really goes. And to what extent their council's acting as a foil to Wilson. Right. I mean, I've been definitely interested in, you know, who might be a swing or will some of the council members who are more in the center decide to lean a little bit more left after seeing the results of this election. Um, but I will say that one thing that's happening actually as we are recording this, so I don't know the results yet, maybe I'll find out when we leave today, but, there's a budget amendment that council member Saka has put forward that will proviso about$30 million for a unified care team. And the unified care team is the team that does the homeless sweeps. And basically, what a pre proviso means is that that $30 million will not be able to be spent on anything except for those activities that have to do with sweeps and cleanups, et cetera. So, I, I don't see why they would do that if Bruce Harrell was still the mayor. So clearly they're proactively trying to push Katie Wilson in a certain direction. But I also always love to remind everybody that while the city council gets to choose the budget, the mayor gets to choose whether or not to spend the money. Yeah, and we saw Jenny Durkan, and to some extent Harrell used that power pretty liberally to sabotage things it seemed like initially council had successfully passed, but then, well, lo and behold, they don't wanna spend it. So it becomes a moot point. It's a pretty aggressive way and led to some deterioration of relations between the mayor and the council particularly in Durkan's case. But, it is technically a power that mayors have and the proviso is especially an, aggressive move to make when it looks like Wilson's gonna have to deal with a large budget deficit next year. So even if you were a fan of keeping the homeless encampment sweep policy the way it is for the most part, like maybe you would want to skew squeeze a few million outta that program just out of a budget tightening thing, which I thought I heard the Seattle Chamber of Commerce that they don't wanna have sacred cows and they want budget efficiency, and we should be trying to trim the fat or whatever. But there apparently are some sacred cows, so maybe they will get that revisited later. Thing is that she has a big budget problem likely staring her down. Yeah. And, she was asked about that budget problem at her victory press conference. And her answer to how she was gonna deal with it was that she is gonna look closely at the budget and see, see how they can be more efficient, which is the same thing, to be clear, that a moderate would say. And, fine, see if there are places that they can streamline or potentially cut, right. And then also she said, we're also gonna need new progressive revenue. So, I think she's gonna have her hands full, playing both of those angles to try to get the budget into better shape. Yeah, if some of the worst case scenarios happen, it's unlikely that she could use progressive revenue alone to solve the problems single handedly. Maybe, maybe certain levers are quicker to scale up, but if she's talking about a new tax that takes a while to scale up, especially like a capital gain tax or something like that, and she was pushing for that throughout Harrell's term. There was a progressive revenue task force that had all these recommendations that Harrell proceeded not to really follow through with until the very last moment with that, the one particular b and o tax reform. She'll probably get the ball rolling on that instead of Harrell's approach to just keep punting and using kind of one time money or budget gimmicks to patch this together. Like the thing is held together with twine now and duct tape. And it is gonna probably face a reckoning at some point over the next term. I would definitely agree with that. So I think in conclusion we have a lot of exciting news to look forward to in 2026, both in Seattle and in all of these other cities across the region that have had really interesting results for these races. yeah. Now that we real work begins. Now the real work begins, and of course we will be covering it.