At the start of the year, things were not looking particularly promising for urbanists. America had just elected a corrupt autocrat with a fetish for fossil fuels, suburban sprawl, and turning back the clock on racial progress. Seattle’s mayor was preaching placation and collaboration rather than pledging to stand up and fight back.

Like Trump, Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell appeared disinclined to tax the rich, or challenge the status quo of car-centric streets, parking mandates, and apartment bans pervading much of the city. Harrell’s housing growth plan arrived both late and severely watered down, like many major initiatives in his administration, and he opposed a funding measure for Seattle’s fledgling social housing development authority, which was put forward by grassroots advocates and passed by a wide margin despite the mayor’s efforts.

Nonetheless, the pundit class considered Harrell a shoe-in for reelection — too well-funded to fail.

But, an amazing thing happened over the remainder of 2025. Transit Riders Union leader Katie Wilson emerged as a viable urbanist alternative to Harrell and she rode into office in November on a wave of enthusiasm, largely from tenants, urbanists, and younger folks sick of being shut out of financial stability in Seattle’s supercharged market for housing, childcare, education, and other basic necessities. In addition to 15 years of organizing for progressive change, Wilson’s credibility was built on her thoughtful writing, including a “Policy Lab” column in The Urbanist.

While Wilson’s victory was a squeaker, other Seattle urbanists dominated against weaker opponents. Resounding victories for Eddie Lin and Dionne Foster mean urbanists have picked up two seats on the Seattle City Council. These wins could swing outcomes toward housing abundance as Seattle takes up phase two of its growth plan in 2026. Likewise, Seattle has more champions for transit and safe streets at the helm as the City contemplates a renewal package for the Seattle Transit Measure, set to go before voters in 2026, and decides how to invest transportation levy dollars.

Outside of Seattle, urbanists made big strides, too. Progressive urbanists swept the Burien election, winning control of a city council that had fallen to regressives hellbent on scorched earth policy to dealing with homelessness. Urbanists beat back an anti-housing backlash in Kirkland, winning three of four races, and dispatched a similarly regressive effort in Woodinville.

Organizationally, The Urbanist has never been stronger, as we integrated more members into our team and reinvigorated our programming. In January, Diego Batres joined our team as Director of Events and Development and set to work expanding our events offerings, hosting nearly 40 for the year, and working on a wide variety of other projects. One thing we have up our sleeve for 2026 is a website overhaul with new features for subscribers, thanks to Diego’s tireless efforts.

At its core, however, The Urbanist will remain a trusted, independent news source with no paywall. To make that feasible, we rely on reader support. Please keep us in your year-end giving plans and consider becoming a member or upping your monthly subscription.

Donations to our 501(c)(4) nonprofit are not tax-deductible. However, readers can make tax deductible contributions to our 501(c)(3) supporting organization, The Urbanist Fund, which can also benefit from corporate matches.

Thanks to steady reader support for our freelance program, Amy Sundberg also expanded her beat as our public safety and city hall reporter. And of course, our Contributing Editor Ryan Packer continues to be this region’s go-to reporter for transportation and housing issues and all the shades in-between, serving as a watchdog for an astounding number of local city councils and agencies. Overall, we produced more than 600 articles in 2025 and set new readership records.

Even with all that output, we still could not get to all the stories happening across the region. One goal we have for 2026 is to hire another reporter to help us reach more stories.

We have big plans for 2026 and we have huge opportunities with a growing group of allies in office. But it takes resources to keep reporting and trumpeting the virtues of urbanism. With your help, you know we’ll keep sleuthing and sounding the horn.

The post Looking Back on The Urbanist’s 2025 first appeared on The Urbanist.

Democracy vouchers

One starting point was the Democracy Vouchers initiative which Seattle voters overwhelmingly approved in 2015. Sightline Institute and its CEO, Alan Durning, deserve much of the credit for crafting the initiative language and gathering the signatures. Thanks to Democracy Vouchers, whereby Seattle residents can contribute up to four vouchers, or $100 in a campaign cycle, candidates who gather popular support can focus their campaigns on the voters rather than affluent funders.

In Katie Wilson’s race for Mayor, she garnered almost 32,000 vouchers and $800,000 in total voucher contributions. Bruce Harrell gained 19,500 vouchers and almost $500,000 in vouchers. Wilson (and Harrell, to a certain extent) were freed from spending hours and days on the phone and emailing for dollars from affluent people.

Transit Riders Union campaigns

Another starting point was the founding of the Transit Riders Union (TRU), primarily through the initiative and sweat equity of Katie Wilson and Scott Myers. TRU succeeded in becoming a voice and a crowbar for preserving transit and gaining economic security in Seattle, including free transit for middle and high school students, discounted fares for low income people, and 100% employer-paid transit passes for thousands of University of Washington workers.

When Trump was first elected in 2016, the Transit Riders Union and the Economic Opportunity Institute co-led the Trump-Proof Seattle campaign, getting the city council to unanimously pass an income tax on the affluent. While this was later ruled unconstitutional, that ruling opened the doors for other forms of progressive taxation.

In 2020, Wilson dreamed up and successfully lobbied for the JumpStart Tax, which has been a gamechanger, raising revenue for the City in a progressive fashion. JumpStart also saved Seattle from painfully deep service cuts in the midst of the pandemic. 

Going beyond taxes and transit, to the basic economic security of working people, Wilson spearheaded the efforts for raising the minimum wage in several Seattle suburbs and unincorporated areas of King County. She won stronger renter protections, including longer notice for rent increases, and caps on move-in fees and late fees, in Seattle and Kenmore, Kirkland, Redmond, Burien, SeaTac, and Shoreline. 

Electing Rinck to turn momentum back to progressives

These building blocks created the context enabling Seattle voters to respond to the return of Donald Trump and the Seattle City Council’s own rightward drift. Council was so confident that they appointed a centrist, business-oriented candidate to the city council who had just lost her election resoundingly. 

In 2023, Councilmember Tammy Morales, a progressive Democrat, won re-election by 1.5%. With the resignation of Teresa Mosqueda from the city council to take her newly elected position on the King County Council, the Seattle City Council turned around and appointed Tanya Woo, who had lost to Morales, to the open seat. 

For a few months, progressives complained about this appointment and Woo’s support for conservative policies, but no one immediately put themselves forward to run against her in the upcoming special election. In late March, Alexis Mercedes Rinck, who was 28 years old at the time, stepped up to the challenge Woo.

Rinck is a progressive policy wonk, a renter, a transit rider, as well as the progeny of two teenage parents who met in a gang. With her dad incarcerated and her mom dealing with addiction, Rinck went to live with her grandparents — certainly a “lived experience” lacking on Council. Now progressives had a candidate around whom to rally, and they did. Democracy vouchers made up three quarters of Rinck’s total contributions. She could focus her campaign and her appeal to the voters, not funders. Rinck won overwhelmingly, with a 17% margin of victory in 2024. 

In this same election, Trump received less than one quarter of the vote in King County. Voters were becoming restless and progressive. The corporate business community might have noticed that their power era was fizzling out. But they did not seem to get this.

Social housing win exposes Harrell

Instead, they, in the messenger agent of Tim Ceis, persuaded the city council to stall a vote on Initiative 137, the excess compensation tax to fund social housing brought forward by a grassroots campaign led by House Our Neighbors. In its place they suggested a competing measure that would raise no new money and undermine the mixed-income social housing mission. The corporate lobbyists persuaded Bruce Harrell to be the poster child for opposing the excess compensation tax. 

However, when the election was finally held this past February, the social housing initiative won with a 26% point margin. The House our Neighbors coalition included labor and progressive groups among them Katie Wilson and TRU. On the other side were Amazon, Microsoft, and Bruce Harrell.  

This overwhelming vote for progressive taxation created the opening that Katie Wilson noted and needed. She would run a campaign based on community organizing. “This is your city” was a perfect theme for voters fed up with Trump, Harrell, and business as usual in city government, which didn’t seem to prioritize meeting their needs.

Strong slate of progressive candidates

Progressive fortunes grew further as Erika Evans (granddaughter of the great Black Power advocate and Olympic gold medalist Lee Evans) accelerated her campaign for city attorney. When Dionne Foster decided to take on the very conservative and unfriendly city council president, Sara Nelson, the alignment for progressive power solidified. Rinck put the icing on the cake for progressives, running for re-election. 

These three women candidates, Evans, Foster, and Rinck, created the electoral context for Katie Wilson’s victory. They all won by huge margins, with Rinck gaining more than four out of five votes. 

Wilson had a different contest, facing a powerful, not unliked, and well-funded opponent. The Seattle Times did its utmost to boost Harrell’s candidacy and badmouth Wilson for her “lack of experience.” Harrell had a ton of money to amplify attacks on his opponent. The “Bruce Harrell for Seattle’s Future” Committee, run by Harrell’s Senior Deputy Mayor Tim Burgess, raised $1.8 million in “independent expenditures” from Seattle’s rich and powerful.

Fortunately, progressives had their own independent expenditure effort led by Ron Davis (who ran for city council in 2023 and came up 235 votes short). Dubbed “Katie Wilson for an Affordable Seattle,” the group raised their own warchest, albeit at a smaller scale, and put out effective mailers to help counteract the media blitz from the Harrell camp.

So what made the difference for Katie to gain a 2,000 plus vote margin? Grassroots organizing and campaigning, with thousands of volunteers helping out. It was the campaign equivalent of community organizing — the authentic Katie Wilson. Electoral momentum does not happen by itself. For Wilson, it was the product of at least a decade of economic, political and electoral organizing by tens of thousands of Seattle residents. These public organizers have proven that this is not just your city… it is our city for all of us! 

The post Op-Ed: Looking Back at the Movement That Elected Katie Wilson first appeared on The Urbanist.

The split was so pronounced that Wilson won only two of the seven Seattle City Council districts — Districts 2 and 3 — but she won them dramatically enough to make up for weaker performance elsewhere. Wilson lost three districts by a fairly significant spread — 1, 4, 7 — but essentially ran to a draw in North Seattle’s District 5 and 6.

• District 1 (Southwest Seattle) – Harrell won by 6.5 points.
• District 2 (Southeast Seattle) – Wilson won by 12 points.
• District 3 (Capitol Hill, Central District, etc.) – Wilson won by 16 points.
• District 4 (UW / Greater Laurelhurst) – Harrell won by 6.5 points.
• District 5 (Far North Seattle) – Harrell won by a narrow margin of 0.7 points.
• District 6 (Greater Ballard) – Harrell won by a razor-thin margin of 0.3 points.
• District 7 (Greater Downtown and Queen Anne) – Harrell won by 3 points.

Data scientist and local urbanist Jason Weill created an interactive final precinct results map that tells the tale. In Weill’s color scheme, precincts that Wilson won are orange and Harrell’s precincts are blue. The darker the shade of color, the greater the margin of victory. Washington Community Alliance also has a precinct results mapping tool that covers races statewide.

Zoning map mirrors political results

As many an urbanist has pointed out, Seattle’s zoning map strongly echoes through in maps of political results. Areas zoned for high-density housing swing toward progressives, to a large degree. Political shifts from election to election are largely a matter of how steep the turnout advantage is for single family areas and which way medium-density neighborhoods swing. Apartment zones are shown in orange, brown, or purple in the zoning map below, while single family zones are a canary yellow.

Facing a state mandate deadline, Seattle recently rezoned single family areas citywide to allow fourplexes and sixplexes — and in some circumstances going beyond the state minimum baseline to permit larger multiplexes, like 12-plexes or even 16-plexes. Harrell dragged his feet on embracing apartment zoning more broadly, overruling his own planning department, which proposed broader upzones for apartments.

The election map also mirrors the city’s redlining map, which indicates parts of the city where banks denied homeowner loans and mortgage insurance, targeting areas where Black, Asian, and Latino communities were established. While the use of redlining maps legally ended in 1968 with the Fair Housing Act, the impacts persist in diminished generational wealth in communities of color — not to mention voting patterns.

Wilson vs. rest of the progressive slate

Overall, Wilson defeated Harrell by 0.73 points or 2,011 votes, which the closest Mayoral race in modern Seattle history. In contrast, Harrell, won by 17 points in 2021, when the areas of progressive support shrank considerably on the map.

Other progressive candidates had a much easier time of it this cycle. Progressive challenger Dionne Foster defeated Seattle City Council President Sara Nelson by nearly 26 points. Harrell won nearly 40,000 more votes than Nelson. This means a significant subset of voters voted Harrell for Mayor, but backed progressives Foster and Rinck for Council. Eddie Lin defeated Adonis Ducksworth, more than doubling up on his opponent by winning 68% of the vote. Former federal prosecutor Erika Evans also doubled up incumbent Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison, who is the city’s only Republican in office.

This was not purely anti-incumbent mood. Progressive incumbent citywide Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck grabbed a whopping 81% of the vote facing a conservative challenger — a 63-point win. Wilson precincts were Rinck’s strongest areas, but she also won just about everywhere.

It added up to a clean sweep for the progressive slate in the city, all of The Urbanist Elections Committee (of which I am a member) endorsed.

District 1 – Harrell coasts

District 1 was effectively split down the seam, with Harrell dominating the western coastlines and bluffs. Wilson did much better to the east in Delridge, White Center, Georgetown, South Park and in Junction, one of the few pockets of significant urban density in West Seattle.

Seattle mayoral election results, visualized by city council district. (Approximate; some precincts have been redrawn since the last district-specific council elections.) In district 1, incumbent Bruce Harrell led challenger Katie Wilson by about 6.5 points. Wilson won by less than 1 point citywide.

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— Jason Weill (@weill.org) November 27, 2025 at 5:32 AM

District 2 – Wilson wins Rainier Valley

At first glance, District 2 precincts look fairly evenly split, but looks can be deceiving. Wilson won the heavily-populated precincts in the MLK Way light rail corridor and the frequent bus corridor along Rainier Avenue S, and she won many of them by wide margins that ran up her total to a nearly 12-point win in D2. The brightest orange precinct, in the heart of Columbia City, she won with just over 80% of the vote.

In district 2, covering much of southeastern Seattle, Wilson defeated Harrell by nearly 12 percentage points.

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— Jason Weill (@weill.org) November 27, 2025 at 5:33 AM

Harrell has some areas within D2 where he surpassed 80% as well, but they are limited to a few waterfront precincts and were not enough to turn the tide, given Wilson’s dominance across much of the Rainier Valley and in Little Saigon. Wilson did well in more apartment-heavy North Beacon Hill, but South Beacon Hill was more of a mixed bag. Harrell managed to win the lion’s share of precincts in the far south near Rainier Beach, but by fairly small margins.

It’s a somewhat surprising result for Harrell, who once represented D2 on the city council, before stepping down in 2019. His old district was his second weakest in the city. Results indicate progressive Eddie Lin is much more of a fit for the district now, rather than centrist Adonis Ducksworth, who in fact may have been weighed down by his association to the mayor, who tapped him to be his transportation policy advisor.

District 3 – Wilson’s stronghold

District 3 is where the Wilson campaign sealed the deal. Their 16-point margin in D3 was enough to carry the day citywide. The margin of victory stemmed from massive vote shares throughout Capitol Hill and a virtual sweep of Central District precincts. Wilson often surpassed 80% of the vote in Capitol Hill precincts and exceeded 90% in a few.

Katie Wilson performed most strongly in her home district, district 3, winning by more than 16 percentage points.

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— Jason Weill (@weill.org) November 27, 2025 at 5:34 AM

Ironically, Harrell also had his best precinct performance in D3, winning 95% of the vote in Broadmoor, a gated community enveloped in a private golf course. Wilson won just 19 of the 420 votes cast in Broadmoor. Harrell won handily throughout Montlake, Madison Park, and Madrona — with proximity to Lake Washington seeming to juice his totals.

On the other hand, Wilson pushed the old “Republican” boundary a bit farther north. The adage used to be that E Republican Street formed the border where the progressive bastion of Capitol Hill ended and gave way to the more conservative-leaning centrist precincts to the north. The people along Republican Street mostly voted with Wilson this year, as the orange stretched all the way to Volunteer Park. If this pattern holds, that would roughly make Aloha Street (three blocks to the north) the new boundary between the People’s Republic of Capitol Hill and conservative-voting mansion land. Aloha, hello and goodbye.

The only Wilson precincts north of Aloha Street in D3 are in Eastlake, where Wilson did well. Harrell did win one Eastlake precinct along the Lake Union waterfront. Meanwhile the eastern border, where orange precincts of the Central District give way to waterfront bluff blue, is 31st Avenue, which shows up quite clearly in the precinct map.

District 4 – Harrell gains edge in Northeast Seattle

District 4 was tied for Harrell’s best district, powered by a strong performance in its eastern half, a wealthy area dominated by single family homes. Broadly speaking, Wilson won East Fremont, Wallingford, the University District, Roosevelt, and Sand Point. However, Harrell won virtually everything else and with higher turnout rates, swamping Wilson’s advantage to the east. D4 should be winnable for progressives, but it’s a tall task if the turnout is tilted so heavily toward wealthier single family areas.

Harrell's most fruitful city council district was district 4, in which the incumbent outdrew the challenger Wilson by just over 6.5 points. There was a pronounced split between the UW area and the Laurelhurst area.

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— Jason Weill (@weill.org) November 27, 2025 at 5:36 AM

District 5: Split down the middle

District 5 was fought nearly a draw, which is good news for progressives heading into a special election next year to pick a replacement following Councilmember Cathy Moore’s resignation this summer. (For now, Debora Juarez holds the seat in an interim capacity.) Wilson did well in Greenwood, Crown Hill, Licton Springs, Northgate, Pinehurst, and much of Lake City. Harrell did well in Blue Ridge, Broadview, Matthews Beach, and Haller Lake. That was enough for him to win by 0.7 points.

District 5 was roughly evenly split between Harrell and Wilson. Harrell led overall by less than 1 point, winning all but one precinct on the shore of Lake Washington, Puget Sound, or Bitter Lake.

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— Jason Weill (@weill.org) November 27, 2025 at 5:38 AM

Since next year’s special election will happen in an even year, turnout should be significantly higher than in typical odd-year municipal elections. Generally speaking, precincts that Wilson won had lower turnout this year than precincts that Harrell won. Higher turnout across the board would appear to help progressives more than centrists, who already benefit from high turnout in odd-numbered years.

District 6: Draw

District 6 was the most evenly split district. Just 205 votes separated the candidates, with Harrell barely gaining the upper hand. Neighborhood by neighborhood, the divides were stark. Harrell swept Magnolia and won Sunset Hill, North Beach, and most of Phinney Ridge and Green Lake. Wilson handily won Ballard and Fremont.

In District 6, the closest result of any council district, Harrell defeated Wilson by 205 votes. Note the clean Harrell sweep in Magnolia.

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— Jason Weill (@weill.org) November 27, 2025 at 5:40 AM

The Wilson precincts are more densely populated and better served by transit. In fact, you can nearly see the gaps in transit service in where Harrell did well. Seattle’s crosstown bus service is infamously mediocre; where there is some crosstown service, like along Market Street and along 85th Street, Wilson generally won. Between NW 65th Street and NW 80th Street is a dead zone for crosstown service, and this is precisely where Harrell had his broadest band of support, stretching from Green Lake to the Shilshole Bay Marina nearly continuously.

District 7 – Queen Anne’s revenge

District 7 is perhaps the most mixed up district of all. Harrell did well in many corners of downtown, but Wilson mostly cleaned up in Lower Queen Anne, South Lake Union, Cascade, Belltown, First Hill, Interbay, and Nickerson. One citywide pattern that did hold is that Harrell did very well in the ritzy view corridor areas of Upper Queen Anne and the western Magnolia bluff. The end result is a three-point win for Harrell.

Harrell defeated Wilson in District 7 by about 3 points, including a sweep of upper Queen Anne precincts.

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— Jason Weill (@weill.org) November 27, 2025 at 5:41 AM

While Wilson came up a bit short in D7, the other progressives won there this year. Clearly, it’s a district that could break either way when centrist Councilmember Bob Kettle goes up for reelection in 2027.

How Harrell made it close

Why Harrell outperformed the other centrist candidates is a topic that many pundits have already taken a stab at explaining. The Urbanist Podcast discussed the topic recently on the first episode of our relaunch. One simple answer is that Harrell largely ran as a progressive, rather than emphasizing his centrism.

The greatest example of Harrell shifting in a progressive direction is his decision to back a tax hike on big business via the Seattle Shield Initiative, which restructured the business and occupation tax. Harrell opposed tax increases for nearly his whole mayoral term, but his conversion on his political death bed nearly saved his skin — recasting himself in a more progressive light to match the mood of the electorate.

In contrast, Nelson doubled down on her conservative messaging and record and paid the price. Without more of an effort at a rebrand, voters treated Nelson similarly to a Davison, who is an out-and-out Republican. And while Harrell has the local kid football star turned star lawyer backstory, Nelson’s personal narrative and charisma is less stellar.

The other key part of the Harrell overperformance was that he launched repeated waves of negative attacks on his opponent hard and appeared to land some hits. Rather than an earlier scattershot approach that tried to brand Wilson as an extremist by tying her to hardline socialist Kshama Sawant, the Harrell camp used a more insidious and surgical approach, criticizing Wilson for a lack of management experience and for not completing her college degree. That was enough to sap some momentum from Wilson, after she won the August primary by nearly 10 points.

The college dropout attack, and a last-minute push to ding Wilson for accepting financial help from her parents to pay for child care during her campaign, was part of Harrell’s effort to undermine her working class appeal. Harrell tried to make bolder promises himself to steal some of her thunder. After the primary, Harrell proposed an “anti-gentrification and reparations fund” that initially pledged $80 million in new spending. This turned out to be a rebranding of existing programs with no new money, when in reality his budget proposal actually tied his rhetoric down.

One area where the negative messaging clearly seemed to hit home was in depressing turnout in certain precincts. Some precincts that favored Wilson saw their turnout rate decrease from the primary to the general, even as turnout increased overall citywide in the general election. Notable exceptions included a handful of Lake City and Columbia City precincts, where Wilson won. The drop in turnout in those areas hurt her margin. Meanwhile, waterfront precincts were Harrell dominated saw some of the biggest spikes in turnout.

All in all, it was a remarkably close race, but a close win counts the same as a blowout. The progressive path to victory continue to run through urban centers, where voters are more likely to live in apartments and ride transit. As the co-founder of the Transit Riders Union and a long-time housing and tenant’s rights advocate, Wilson’s message resonated greatly with these voters and earned her big margins, and that was enough to carry her to victory.

Since Seattle’s trajectory is toward urbanization and building more multifamily housing and transit, it’s a formula that should get stronger with time.

The post Katie Wilson’s Path to Election Victory, Precinct by Precinct first appeared on The Urbanist.

Despite trailing by seven points in the first drop of results, Urbanist-endorsed challenger Katie Wilson pulled off a comeback in late returns to win the Seattle Mayor race. Amy and Doug discuss how Wilson was able to defeat an entrenched and well-funded incumbent, and why this race was closer than other Seattle contests, where progressives otherwise dominated by wide margins this year.

All around, it was a triumphant election for most of The Urbanist’s endorsed candidates, from Everett to Tacoma.

We aim to drop a new podcast every few weeks to recap our biggest headlines and peek ahead to stories on the horizon. Episodes will also air on KVRU 105.7 FM in Seattle. Our typical slot is 4pm Thursday. A big thanks to Crystal Fincher and Shannon Cheng of KVRU for their help getting this podcast off the ground.

If you’d like to do deeper on election results and implications, check out some of our recent coverage:

• Kirkland Voters Maintain the City’s Course, Rejecting Anti-Growth Push
• Pro-Housing Candidates Make Gains All Around Puget Sound
• Katie Wilson’s Transition Team Features Mix of Advocates and Insiders
• Harrell Concedes to Wilson, Ushering in a New Era in Seattle
• Wilson Defeats Harrell
• After Victory, Zahilay Announces County Executive Transition Team
• Katie Wilson Pulls Away from Harrell, Leads by 1,346 Votes
• Katie Wilson Takes 91-Vote Lead in Dramatic Seattle Mayor Race
• Evans Trounces Republican Seattle City Attorney, Shares Plans for Transition
• Wilson Trails in Early Results, Seattle Mayor’s Race on Nailbiter Course
• In Last Stand, Harrell Intensifies Negative Attacks on Wilson
• Progressives Rally Behind Katie Wilson in Home Stretch to Mayoral Election
• Katie Wilson Jumps In Seattle Mayor Race as Progressive Coalition-Builder

The post Urbanist Podcast Election Extravaganza: Puget Sound Progressives Prevail first appeared on The Urbanist.

• Karen Estevenin, Executive Director of PROTEC17 — a labor union representing more than 10,000 public-sector workers across Washington and Oregon.
• Tiffani McCoy, Co-Executive Director and Co-Founder of House Our Neighbors, a nonprofit which advocates for social housing, climate action and connected communities.
• Quynh Pham, Executive Director of Friends of Little Saigon (FLS), a community development organization dedicated to preserving and enhancing Little Saigon’s cultural, economic, and historical vitality.
• Brian Surratt, CEO of Greater Seattle Partners, “a private/public partnership focused on attracting new business, promoting international trade, and growing our major industries for the region.” Previously, Surratt was the Director of the City of Seattle’s Office of Economic Development, “where he oversaw small business, workforce, key industry, foreign-direct investment, and anti-displacement programs and strategies, and negotiated the city’s $1.2 billion development agreement to build Climate Pledge Arena.”

Like Surratt, Mantilla also brings experience leading a City department. Mayor Jenny Durkan appointed Mantilla to lead the Department of Neighborhoods in 2018, after a decade serving in various City government roles since first coming on board as a community outreach gig with the Greg Nickels administration in 2008. Additionally, Mantilla serves on the Board of Directors at Bellwether Housing and has “directed projects focused on homelessness policy development,” which was a major focus area for Wilson in her campaign.

The team brings “extensive knowledge of government, business, labor, housing, and community development to help ensure the new administration is set up for success immediately upon taking office,” a Wilson spokesperson noted in a press release. Wilson pledged to release a full roster of the transition team in coming days. That list was not yet up on the transition webpage at time of post.

While Mayor Bruce Harrell and his allies attempted to brand Wilson, who is a newcomer to elected office but a longtime fixture at City Hall, as inexperienced and lacking in management chops, Wilson countered that the job is about coalition-building and assembling a strong team. The Mayor-elect argued she is well on her way to doing just that.

“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,” Mayor-Elect Wilson said in a statement. “I’m so grateful to the Transition Director and Co-Chairs who have stepped up to lend their deep expertise in govern.”

The team includes a mix of close political allies and more moderate establishment figures that could represent an olive branch to constituencies that largely backed Harrell. Unlike King County Executive-Elect Girmay Zahilay, Wilson stopped short of putting a big tech executive on her transition leadership team.

McCoy was an early endorser of Wilson. Plus, House Our Neighbors did much to lay the groundwork for Wilson to even jump in the race by fighting and winning a campaign to fund social housing by taxing top salaries at large companies in a special election this February. Facing pressure from the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, Harrell became the face of the opposition campaign, which left him looking out of step with voters when they approved the measure by a decisive 26-point margin.

Within weeks, Wilson rolled out her campaign, and she has pointed to the social housing vote as the tipping point in her decision to run.

Estevenin’s PROTEC 17 sole endorsed Wilson just before the primary, giving the campaign a boost heading into voting. During the primary, Harrell leveraged his campaign head start (and reportedly the threat of political retribution in his second term) to lock up enough labor endorsements to win the sole nod from MLK County Labor Council. However, MLK Labor switched to a dual endorsement after Wilson’s strong primary performance, when she pulled off an upset nine-point win.

Pham doesn’t appear among Wilson’s public endorsers, but Little Saigon leaders did appear to grow frustrated with the Harrell administration’s lack of progress addressing crime and disorder in the neighborhood, with the 12th Avenue and Jackson Street intersection long a trouble hotspot. Under Harrell, the City periodically attempted emphasis patrols but never landed on a durable solution. Friends of Little Saigon took matters into their own hands and launched the “Phố Đẹp (Beautiful Neighborhood)” initiative to galvanize action to foster long-term change.

Wilson’s victory speech

As the election heads toward certification, Wilson’s margin of victory — sits at 2,033 votes or 0.73 points — is narrow but beyond the recount threshold. Harrell had led by seven points on election night, but lost margin steadily as more progressive-leaning last-minute returns to ballot drop boxes were counted. A recount likely would have delayed Wilson’s transition moves.

After much deliberation and a grueling interview process, I’m pleased to announce that I’ve accepted a new job and will not need any financial support from my parents to cover the high costs of childcare going forward. #AmericanDream #ThisIsYourCity

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— Katie Wilson for Seattle (@wilsonforseattle.bsky.social) November 18, 2025 at 8:38 AM

Wilson declared victory on November 13, a few hours after Mayor Bruce Harrell delivered a lengthy concession speech at city hall. Wilson’s speech was shorter, and she only took a few questions from reporters. She emphasized the need for pragmatic action and bridging divides, while also making it clear the status quo isn’t working and that she is willing to take on powerful interests, if they stand in the way.

“Wealthy interests poured nearly $2 million into a political action committee to prevent my election,” Wilson said. “Because for some people in our city, the status quo is working exactly as intended. It may look like an affordability crisis to working with poor people, but to others, it simply looks like business as usual. They might have the money, but we have the people and the results of this election prove that.”

Clinging to a hopeful message, Wilson laid out an ambitious platform to make the city more affordable for working people. Harrell once quipped that “this is not the time for hope,” but rather experience and his own “proven” leadership.

“The working people of our city are tired,” Wilson continued in her victory speech. “They are ready for something new, something more hopeful and just and equitable, and I am committed to fighting as hard as humanly possible to realize our shared vision. There is an awful lot that I want to accomplish as mayor. I want everyone in this great city of ours to have a roof over their head. I want universal childcare, pre-K through eight summer care. I want world class mass transit. I want great, safe public spaces where kids can run around with abandon.”

Wilson also emphasized her commitment to social housing and building tenant power.

“I want stable, affordable housing for renters. I want social housing. I want much more land and wealth to be owned and stewarded by communities instead of corporations,” Wilson said. “I want a robust economy with thriving small businesses, great living wage jobs and strong rights for workers. I want a city where everyone has the basics of a dignified life, including healthy food, access to health care and supportive communities. I want a city where your health and your life expectancy and your children’s future doesn’t depend on your zip code or your race. I believe that I will be stepping into office with a strong mandate to pursue this vision.”

Seattleites share the vision, Wilson argued, pointing to the clean sweep for progressive candidates in the Seattle election and the fact Harrell’s campaign focused on negative personal attacks rather than disputing her policy vision.

“I believe it is notable that all of that money focused on attacking me, but not my vision or platform,” Wilson added. “And that is because this vision and platform are supported by an overwhelming majority of Seattle residents, as demonstrated by the resounding victories of the other progressive candidates running for office in Seattle this year.”

During the speech, Wilson gave a shout out to her pre-election transition planning team led by Rian Watt and Kate Brunette Kreuzer, who both filled the roles in their personal capacities. Watt is executive director of Economic Opportunity Institute, a local progressive thinktank, and board vice president at The Urbanist. Brunette Kreuzer is director of external affairs at Futurewise, a land use advocacy nonprofit, and previously she served on the board of Transit Riders Union, the nonprofit that Wilson long led before running for office.

Early press

In the first week as the Mayor-elect, Wilson has largely been shying away from interviews and public appearances, with a few exceptions.

Her first interview out of the gate was with CNN’s Erin Burnett, a national anchor based on the east coast. Burnett’s first question was about the significance of the socialist label which Wilson has used — though she has not really emphasized the label in her campaign. The segment also emphasized the similarities between Wilson’s campaign and fellow socialist Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral win in New York City.

Wilson also appeared on the Seattle Nice podcast, which features PubliCola‘s Erica Barnett, KUOW’s David Hyde, and centrist political consultant Sandeep Kaushik. The trio’s efforts to push Wilson to reveal her immediate big moves as mayor largely came up short, as she stayed high-level in her remarks. Asked if she was planning to sack Police Chief Shon Barnes, Wilson declined to share her plans.

However, the 40-minute discussion offered plenty of interesting nuggets at that less granular level. Asked if she embraced the urbanist label and what it meant to her, Wilson noted she used to write for The Urbanist and is fully bought on the concept.

“Certainly, a lot of my policy positions would rightly be called urbanist,” Wilson said. “For me, that means that Seattle’s a big city, and I love living in a big city, and I want Seattle to become a bigger and better city where it’s possible, for example, for someone to live like I do right now, which is raising a child in an apartment. And that means that the city kind of becomes your backyard or your living room. And I think that urban lifestyle is something that we need to promote, and we need to make it possible for more and more people to live in this city without owning a car.”

Likely it won’t come as a surprise: The Urbanist Elections Committee (of which I am a member) endorsed Wilson’s bid.

The post Katie Wilson’s Transition Team Features Mix of Advocates and Insiders first appeared on The Urbanist.

“Ahead by almost 2,000 votes, we now believe that we’re in an insurmountable position,” Wilson said in a statement.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Katie Wilson (@wilsonforseattle)

With election officials estimating no more than 1,320 ballots remaining to be processed, insurmountable does appear the correct word for her lead. Nearly all local media outlets called the race for Wilson after Wednesday’s drop, including the Seattle Times, PubliCola, KING 5, KUOW, and The Urbanist.

Even Decision Desk HQ, a national outlet, called the race for Wilson, after prematurely calling the race for Harrell last week. That move and subsequent retraction earned plenty of ribbing from Seattleites, who likened the move to the famous “Dewey defeats Truman” headline from the Chicago Daily Tribune in 1948. President Truman definitely won, it turned out, much like Wilson.

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— Sanders Lauture (@golf1052.com) November 11, 2025 at 4:06 PM

KUOW, which is Seattle’s local NPR affiliate, contracts with Decision Desk for its election results. Given the screwup, it’s not clear that will continue in future elections.

Wilson trailed by 11,183 votes the day after Election Day, but steadily gained ground on Harrell from that point onward. By Friday’s ballot drop, Wilson trimmed Harrell’s lead to 1.9 points, and surpassed him by 91 votes by Monday. On Tuesday, that lead grew to more than 1,300, as Wilson continued to build momentum.

Mayor Harrell has yet to issue a statement, but is expected to give a concession speech on the steps of Seattle City Hall at noon Thursday.

Wilson’s victory completes a clean sweep for The Urbanist-endorsed slate in Seattle. Progressives in the city picked up two city council seats and retained another.

In a repudiation of centrist leadership over the last two years, Seattle City Council President Sara Nelson mustered just 37% of the vote. Her opponent, progressive nonprofit leader Dionne Foster, cruised to victory, winning nearly 63% in the citywide Position 9 race. In District 2, Seattle Office of Housing attorney Eddie Lin won 68% of the vote, defeating Adonis Ducksworth, who is Harrell’s transportation adviser.

Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck, the Council’s most progressive voice, easily won reelection with 81% of the vote. Former federal prosecutor Erika Evans trounced Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison by a two-to-one margin, unseating Seattle’s sole Republican officeholder.

Many reasons exist for the progressive shift, from stronger candidates and messaging to Trump backlash to rising economic anxieties to voter frustration from centrists leading differently than they promised during their previous campaigns. Plenty of time remains to conduct postmortems on moribund centrist campaigns and voter motivation.

Disclosure: I serve on The Urbanist Election Committee, which endorsed Wilson, Lin, Rinck, Foster, and Evans.

The post Wilson Defeats Harrell first appeared on The Urbanist.

“We’re going to wait for all of the ballots to be counted, but I think we won this race,” Wilson told the Seattle Times.

In Tuesday’s drop, another 6,121 votes were counted, and Wilson took 61% of the batch, her best margin yet. Across King County, officials report 2,300 remain to be processed, with the lion’s share likely in Seattle.

Update: On Wednesday morning, King County Elections said they expect to count around 1,400 accepted ballots in Seattle on Wednesday afternoon. These ballots are a combination of late arrivals trickling in from the postal service and challenged ballots that are being rectified.

Before Monday’s drop, election officials reported roughly 1,800 Seattle ballots they could not count due to a lack of a signature or a lack of match to the signature on file. By Tuesday’s count, that number had shrunk to just under 1,500 as voters rectified signature issues and succeeded in getting their vote counted.

The number of curable ballots from Seattle has edged further downward since this morning. There's now just under 1,500 curable ballots, which continue to skew younger.

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— The Urbanist (@theurbanist.org) November 11, 2025 at 6:48 PM

Ballot curing efforts

In Washington state, these ballots are often “curable.” To cure a challenged ballot, a voter should reach out to King County Elections to verify their identity with a valid signature. Voters can track their ballot status on King County’s ballot tracker to see if their ballot has been challenged.

This race could come down to your vote! As of yesterday, we were just 91 votes ahead. Additional votes will be counted today. Do your part and check on your ballot with King County ASAP: info.kingcounty.gov/kcelections/…

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— Katie Wilson for Seattle (@wilsonforseattle.bsky.social) November 11, 2025 at 9:45 AM

Both campaigns continue to mount ballot curing efforts. Statistically, challenged ballots tend to come from younger voters, who generally break for progressives. This suggests Wilson would hold the advantage in cured ballots, though her campaign is taking nothing for granted.

“We’re just inside the mandatory recount threshold, but as we continue to cure ballots with our huge turnout of volunteers, we’re hopeful that we can put the campaign behind us soon and focus on governing the city,” Wilson campaign manager Alex Gallo-Brown said in a statement. “Katie will be a mayor for the entire city, and Seattle residents are going to expect results. We’re eager to begin that process.”

The road to a comeback

On election night, when about 118,000 ballots were tabulated, Harrell claimed a seven-point lead. Wilson gained ground on Thursday, closing the gap to 5.7 points by grabbing 51.6% of that batch. Friday’s ballot drop was even more favorable to the progressive challenger. Wilson trimmed Harrell’s lead to 1.9 points or 4,300 votes by winning nearly 55% of Friday’s batch. 

Seattle elections have long had a pattern where the early vote leans conservative, while the late vote skews toward progressives. Progressive candidates have closed large margins to pull off late comebacks before, which gave Wilson supporters hope, despite their early disadvantage.

Since Washington is a vote by mail state, election officials often count less than half of the ultimate votes on election nights, with the rest tabulated over the coming week. Despite a three-week voting period, many voters procrastinate until the last day of the election. It can make for dramatic comebacks, like it appears Wilson may have just pulled off.

Author’s note: I serve on The Urbanist Elections Committee, which endorsed Katie Wilson.

Update: At 3:38pm, the article was updated to note that Wilson had expanded her lead to 1,976 votes or 0.71 points. This is out of machine recount territory. She won 66% of the Wednesday batch. This article was updated on Wednesday morning with the latest figures for challenged ballots.

🚨🚨 Just in: Katie Wilson has expanded her lead in the Seattle mayor race. She is now leading by 1,976 votes, which means that the race is no longer in automatic recount territory.

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— The Urbanist (@theurbanist.org) November 12, 2025 at 3:27 PM

The post Katie Wilson Pulls Away from Harrell, Leads by 1,346 Votes first appeared on The Urbanist.

So far, officials have counted 272,041 ballots in Seattle, which is nearly 54% turnout. After Monday’s batch, Election officials report about 13,000 votes remain to be processed in King County — with likely a bit over half in Seattle.

On election night when about 118,000 ballots were tabulated, Harrell claimed a seven-point lead. Seattle elections have long had a pattern where the early vote leans conservative, while the late vote skews progressive. In the past, progressive candidates have closed large margins to pull off late comebacks, which gave Wilson supporters hope, despite their early disadvantage.

SEATTLE!!! We’ve now taken the lead by 91 votes! 🤯 This thing is certainly not over! Over 1,000 ballots have been challenged, so if you haven’t tracked your ballot yet get on it! Our trusty volunteers have been working hard to "cure" ballots so they count! We're so close!

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— Katie Wilson for Seattle (@wilsonforseattle.bsky.social) November 10, 2025 at 4:16 PM

Wilson gained ground on Thursday, closing the gap to 5.7 points by grabbing 51.6% of that batch. Friday’s ballot drop was even more favorable to the progressive challenger. Wilson trimmed Harrell’s lead to 1.9 points or 4,300 votes by winning nearly 55% of Friday’s batch. At that point, Wilson predicted that she would win.

“We’re on the right track,” Wilson said in a Friday statement. “If the drop on Monday follows the same trajectory, we will be squarely ahead.”

As it stands Monday, Wilson has won 49.83% of the vote to 49.79% for Harrell, a slim 0.04% advantage, which would be in recount territory. However, Wilson could continue to gain margin in remaining ballots and take the race out of the recount threshold. Wilson won 55.5% of the batch on Monday, slightly improving her trajectory from Friday.

Even if a recount does happen, it rarely changes the outcome of a race, particularly in favor of the more conservative candidate. Statistically, challenged ballots tend to come from younger voters, who generally break for progressives.

There's still a lot of curable ballots from Seattle (about 1,800). Most are unsigned or signature mismatches, and most skew younger.

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— The Urbanist (@theurbanist.org) November 10, 2025 at 1:02 PM

Election officials report they have received 1,800 ballots they could not count due to a lack of a signature or a lack of match to the signature on file. In Washington state, these ballots are often curable. To cure a challenged ballot, a voter should reach out to King County Elections to verify their identity. Voters can track their ballot status on King County’s ballot tracker.

Election implications

The election has big policy implications for Seattle. The long-time head of Seattle Transit Riders Union, Wilson cobbled together a broad grassroots coalition on the strength of her affordability-focused message. In addition to seeking to lower the cost of essentials like housing, food, child care, and transportation, Wilson also emphasized the need to take bolder action to improve transit service and road safety.

The Urbanist Elections Committee (of which I am one of 14 members) was won over and endorsed Wilson over the incumbent, whose focus on those issues has been inconsistent.

Wilson won the primary election by nearly 10 points, but Harrell was able to close the gap by shifting his rhetoric and espoused stances in a more progressive direction, aggressively attacking his opponent, and enticing more than $1.8 million in independent expenditures on his behalf from a corporate-backed political action committee (PAC). Wilson had a PAC backing her as well, but it was outspent by at least four to one.

Other Seattle results

Harrell outperformed the other centrists by a wide margin in what has been a wave year for Seattle progressives.

Seattle City Council President Sara Nelson has won just 37% of the vote, with progressive nonprofit leader Dionne Foster cruising to victory with 62% in the citywide Position 9 race. In District 2, Seattle Office of Housing attorney Eddie Lin is winning 68% of the vote, defeating Adonis Ducksworth, who is Harrell’s transportation adviser. Former federal prosecutor Erika Evans trounced Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison by a two-to-one margin, unseating Seattle’s sole Republican officeholder.

The sole Seattle incumbent to do well was its progressive firebrand, Alexis Mercedes Rinck, who won 81% of the vote versus a Republican challenger.

Wilson supporters have been anxiously watching results, running the numbers, and concocting scenarios for how the race will shake out. Later this week, we should have a definitive answer. Suddenly, Wilson is the favorite. With a few thousand more votes to count, it’s her race to lose.

The post Katie Wilson Takes 91-Vote Lead in Dramatic Seattle Mayor Race first appeared on The Urbanist.

Evans will be the first person of color to hold the office of Seattle City Attorney.

While the Seattle City Attorney’s Office serves both criminal and civil functions, the city attorney only handles low-level misdemeanor cases. More serious felony cases are handled by the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. The city attorney also defends the city from lawsuits, advises the city on legal matters, and enforces city regulations such as labor laws and renter protections.

And as Davison has ably shown, the city attorney can act as an advocate to advance criminal legal policy. 

Davison was elected in 2021 as a rare Republican in office in Seattle after a tight race with abolitionist Nicole Thomas Kennedy. Her election, along with that of Bruce Harrell as Seattle Mayor and Sara Nelson as a city-wide city councilmember, was hailed as a backlash against the more progressive ideas championed during the 2020 George Floyd protests. 

At the same time, crime numbers were going up, most likely caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. The Seattle Police Department’s crime numbers peaked in 2022 and have shown a marked decrease this year. 

The results of last week’s election signal another shift in voter sentiment, delivering a resounding rejection of Davison’s punitive tough-on-crime policies and what some residents have perceived as an insufficiently hard line against the Trump administration from the City’s only Republican elected official. 

In contrast, Evans touted her federal experience, her community connections, and her commitment to supporting evidence-based policies proven to help folks suffering on the streets. She’s also a mainstream Democrat who has pledged to stand up to Trump overreach.

“I’m just really excited for bringing in that heart and compassion and care that aligns with our values here in Seattle,” Evans said.

Evans told The Urbanist that she would focus the City Attorney’s Office on bringing cases they could actually win and expanding pre-filing diversion to keep less serious crimes out of the court system and into restorative justice pathways.

“Last year, there was a 60% dismissal rate for all cases set for jury trial, and that’s too high,” Evans said. “Too many cases are just being overcharged for numbers.” 

Councilmember Sara Nelson, who won in 2021 on a law-and-order platform that mirrored Davison’s approach, also lost her re-election bid last week by more than 23 points. Nelson endorsed Davison, along with many of her centrist colleagues. Challenger Dionne Foster emphasized affordability, progressive revenue, and addressing root causes of crime during her run.  

Davison’s four-year term

Upon winning office, Davison faced a huge backlog of cases, which she blamed on her predecessor Pete Holmes, but which was almost certainly partly due to pandemic chaos. Within a few months, she’d announced she was dismissing almost 2,000 misdemeanor cases. Later that year, she dismissed even more cases.

Although she campaigned against Holmes by criticizing the time his office took to file cases and his failure to prosecute the more serious cases of the office aggressively enough, an analysis by PubliCola shows that Davison often performed very similarly. Her opponents in this year’s race were especially critical of the lengthened filing time for domestic violence cases under her tenure.

Davison came out in strong support of both 2023’s new drug criminalization law and the subsequent Stay Out of Drug (SODA) and Stay Out of Area of Prostitution (SOAP) zone laws in 2024. Both Evans and Matt Sanders, the director of the King County Department of Public Defense (DPD), have said these laws are ineffective, likening Davison’s enforcement of them to a new war on drugs that disproportionately impacts communities of color and particularly Black men.

In the first six months after their passage, the SODA and SOAP orders were rarely issued, but their use ramped up later this year, assisted by Davison’s new Drug Prosecution Alternative program that requires defendants to agree to SODA orders in order to have the chance to get their drug charge dismissed. A recent report from the DPD stated the City has been falling short in offering diversion and treatment to people criminalized under the new drug laws.

While in office, Davison began the High Utilizer Initiative, which focused on a specific cohort of people who were cycling through the City Attorney’s Office for low-level crimes. The program focuses on booking these people in jail to reduce misdemeanor referrals, even though most of the people suffer from some combination of homelessness, behavioral health disorders, and substance use disorder. 

Davison’s antagonism against homeless people didn’t stop with this initiative. She wrote an amicus brief for the Grants Pass Supreme Court case, with the court ultimately ruling that it’s legal to arrest or fine homeless people who are sleeping in public places, even if they haven’t been offered any alternatives. Advocates said they saw an increase in “brazenness” around homeless sweeps in Seattle after the ruling.

Davison also became notorious for interfering with the Seattle Municipal Court (SMC), first by unilaterally ending its Community Court program that tried to connect people to services, and later by announcing her office would be filing a blanket affidavit of prejudice against a single SMC judge, Pooja Vaddadi. This policy basically served to sideline Vaddadi from the job she’d been elected to do. In addition to interfering with the independence of the judicial branch, this decision hampered SMC’s ability to run efficiently since they’ve essentially been down a judge for almost two years. 

Change of the guard

Evans already has plans for what her first term as Seattle City Attorney is going to look like.

On the criminal side, Evans plans to prioritize domestic violence and Driving Under the Influence (DUI) cases, with especial emphasis on filing domestic violence cases faster. She told The Urbanist she wants to be careful and intentional in filing cases because of the huge impact it has on the lives of those involved. 

Evans wants to expand the office’s partnership with Let Everyone Advance with Dignity (LEAD) and increase pre-filing diversion within the office. While campaigning, she committed to no longer asking judges to issue new SODA and SOAP orders, prioritizing wage theft and tenants’ rights cases, and not seeking cash bail for nonviolent misdemeanors as long as a judge doesn’t think the person is a significant risk to the public. 

Near the top of her list, Evans wants to institute a new community court in Seattle, which she imagines as a kind of resource hub that would connect people to services, potentially including medical and substance use disorder treatment, housing, and a pet fostering program for people interested in in-patient treatment. She’s hoping to get the program up and running as quickly as possible. She expects the main barrier to be funding and will be looking for grants, organizational backing, and potentially City dollars to bring the project to fruition. 

“If Bellevue can do it, I know we can here in Seattle too,” Evans said. “So I have high hopes that we’re going to be able to get it up and running.”

Evans is excited to start up an anti-hate and -bias unit in the office, which will have its own dedicated prosecutor. 

“Making sure that those cases are getting the attention and dedication with a dedicated, trained prosecutor to work on those cases is really important to me,” Evans said. “Because that was not something that has ever been in that office, and it’s needed to properly charge those cases because those instances of hate- or bias-related crimes have been increasing in our city.”

Creating a hate crime unit is likely to lead to more prosecution of such crimes, but addressing the root causes that allow and even encourage hate crimes to propagate will be a more difficult endeavor, especially in the current federal environment that is painting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts as anathema. 

Evans said she wouldn’t be issuing a blanket affidavit of prejudice on any judge, instead dealing with any issues with judges in the standard manner.

The City Attorney does not have a seat at the bargaining table with the Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG), but the office does advise the Mayor’s Office on these negotiations. Given the new SPOG contract currently waiting for City Council approval, The Urbanist asked Evans how she’d approach this issue moving forward.

“I think it’s important that we lead with accountability and what we’re hearing from community. So that was one of the big things at the consent decree hearing with Judge Robart that he talked about,” Evans said. “How is accountability going to be measured? Or how is this still going to be at the forefront of people’s minds, ensuring that we have leaders and a City Attorney like me that’s going to make sure that that is at the forefront?”

The morning before The Urbanist spoke with Evans, the Seattle Police Department (SPD) announced they had fired two of their top civilian command staff: Chief Operating Officer Brian Maxey and General Counsel Rebecca Boatright. Both Maxey and Boatright worked closely to move SPD into compliance with the consent decree, an effort that finally bore fruit when the consent decree was concluded in September. 

Former assistant chief Leslie Cordner, who also played a large role in compliance with the consent decree, retired last year. The loss of these key players in the consent decree might leave the department with little remaining institutional knowledge at a time when they need it most. 

Pushing back against federal overreach

Evans’ other main priority is preparing the City to stand against federal overreach, whether that takes the form of U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) ramp-ups, National Guard deployment, or the withholding of federal dollars. 

Evans said the office needs to make sure “we’re just being proactively ready to prepare the City for any federal overreach, attacks from the administration, and being really good partners with our Attorney General Nick Brown on that.” 

Evans expects President Donald Trump to send the National Guard to Seattle at some point, which she says would violate the 10th Amendment. As City Attorney, she can file a temporary restraining order to try to prevent that from happening. She also said she is ready to file lawsuits to protect immigrant communities from unconstitutional arrests and other illegal ICE actions. 

The recently passed Laken Riley Act means that undocumented immigrants charged with petty crimes like shoplifting could be in danger of detention and deportation. Evans hasn’t committed to not filing cases that might fall into this bucket, although she said she’ll want to have a good partnership with the DPD so her office is aware of this kind of information before filing.

When The Urbanist asked about the recent surveillance expansion in Seattle, Evans emphasized that community leaders were saying the expansion was too fast, given the initial surveillance pilot had only just begun. 

“I think it is important to be listening to community stakeholders before quickly moving on things like this, especially when we know what’s happening at the federal level with the federal government getting access to DOL [Department of Licensing] records and wanting our mailing record,” Evans said. “It just seems like it’s just not a safe time right now for our communities and what’s happening at a federal level.”

Evans will be sworn into office on January 1, 2026.

Editor’s note: The Urbanist Elections Committee endorsed Erika Evans in the primary and general election. Amy Sundberg is not a member of that committee.

The post Evans Trounces Republican Seattle City Attorney, Shares Plans for Transition first appeared on The Urbanist.

If she continues to claim 55% of remaining ballots, Wilson would mathematically be on course to win this election in a dramatic comeback.

“We’re on the right track,” Wilson wrote in a campaign statement. “Today we won about 55% of the newly counted ballots. We are within 2% of the incumbent. If the drop on Monday follows the same trajectory, we will be squarely ahead.”

We’re on the right track! Make sure you track your ballot to confirm it is accepted, NOT challenged. Check our links in bio to do so! More votes will be counted on Monday!

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— Katie Wilson for Seattle (@wilsonforseattle.bsky.social) November 7, 2025 at 4:32 PM

Harrell claimed a seven-point lead on election night, when about 118,000 ballots were tabulated, largely from people who voted early. Ultimately, election officials are expected to count more than 280,000 ballots in the hotly contested Seattle race.

That means less than half of Seattle ballots were counted on election night — about 42%. Thus, those later counts will end up being more pivotal than the first drop.

Harrell also won Wednesday’s ballot count, expanding his lead to 8 points. However, Wilson turned the tides in Thursday’s count, narrowing the gap to 5.7 points. Wilson grabbed 51.6% of Thursday’s batch, but won an even greater share Friday with 54.8%.

Harrell is still ahead by 4,300 votes. That lead was cut down by 5,608 votes in today’s count, down from a 9,908 vote lead yesterday.

— The Urbanist (@theurbanist.org) November 7, 2025 at 3:52 PM

It’s a common pattern for Seattle elections: younger and more progressive leaning voters often wait until the last minute to turn in their ballots. Earlier voters skew older and more conservative, which often makes it appear like centrist candidates are going to win based on election night results. However, progressive often gain significant ground as late returns are counted later in the week.

Among the notable progressive surges from election night to final results include Kshama Sawant 13-point swing in 2019. Even in a losing effort against Harrell in 2021, Lorena González’s final margin narrowed 12 points from election night. Teresa Mosqueda gained 13 points in the same election. In 2017, mayoral candidate Cary Moon gained 8 points on Jenny Durkan by the time final results were certified.

As with election results, the mayoral race has been hotly contested in endorsements and has a cleaved a number of constituencies, including labor and transportation groups. The Urbanist Elections Committee (of which I am a member), Transit Riders Union (which Wilson founded and long led), Seattle Bike Blog, and Seattle Subway endorsed Wilson. However, WA Bikes and Transportation for Washington endorsed Harrell — the two groups are the campaign arms of Cascade Bicycle Club and Transportation Choices Coalition, respectively, and two of the state’s largest transportation advocacy groups.

The race could plausibly end up being so close that it’s in recount territory. Both campaigns have already pledged ballot curing efforts.

“Make sure you track your ballot to confirm it is accepted, NOT challenged,” the Wilson campaign said in a Bluesky post. “Check our links in bio to do so! More votes will be counted on Monday!”

Harrell sent out a similar message to supporters on Wednesday, including a fundraising ask to fund the ballot chasing effort.

“Thanks to your support, we’re in a strong position right now, but make no mistake, this race is too close to call,” Harrell’s campaign wrote. “We need a robust ballot-chasing operation in place to track, follow up, and secure those votes.”

The next ballot drop on Monday afternoon will be closely watched.

The post Wilson Pulls Within Two Points of Harrell in Friday Count first appeared on The Urbanist.