Don’t underestimate Katie Wilson

Katie Wilson, from her campaign website.

Katie Wilson is running for Seattle mayor. She is almost certain to raise less campaign money than incumbent Bruce Harrell, who is hoping to be the first Seattle mayor to win a second term since Greg Nickels won reelection 20 years ago. The previous two more lefty challengers for mayor got creamed with Cary Moon losing to Jenny Durkan 43-56 (a gap of 27,191 votes) in 2017 and Lorena Gonzalez losing to Bruce Harrell 41-59 (a gap of 46,162 votes) in 2021. There's no well-worn political lane Wilson can take to win, but it would be a mistake to underestimate her.

It's only April, but at least some of the transportation power brokers in town seem ready to call the race over a half year before election night. Both Transportation for Washington (the politically-active sister organization to Transportation Choices Coalition) and Washington Bikes (the politically active sister org to Cascade Bicycle Club) endorsed Bruce Harrell this week. They both cited the genuinely exciting passage of the Seattle Transportation Levy last November. Washington Bikes also cited the many bike projects that have been completed or are in construction.

But Mayor Harrell has also shown a willingness to subvert community efforts to make safety improvements, such as his resistance to expanding Bicycle Weekends on Lake Washington Boulevard. A lot of the major bike network improvements the city will need to build over the next five years will be difficult and may rile up opposition. While Harrell has been good on bicycle safety work so far, he has never claimed to be a champion on the issue (in fact, he suggested the opposite during a TV debate against Gonzalez, whom Seattle Bike Blog endorsed). SDOT does not have a permanent Director, so 2025 is a big test for how Mayor Harrell will handle bicycle safety now that the need to pass a politically-important levy is behind us. I would want to see Seattle continue the accelerated pace of bike project delivery we saw under now-departed Director Greg Spotts before endorsing the incumbent mayor.

One huge make-or-break test will be early project development for a remake of the north section of Rainier Avenue between S Jackson Street and MLK Jr. Way S. The RapidRide R Bicycle Facility Alternatives Analysis start planning" section of SDOT's 2025 workplan. Improving safety for people walking and biking along and across this stretch of Rainier Ave should be priority number one for our city. It is horribly dangerous for all road users and the single biggest barrier to bicycle access in Rainier Valley, but the solutions will not be easy. We will need strong and clear political leadership from step one because half measures will not get us to the Rainier Ave remake the people of our city need.

Wilson's campaign website has yet to roll out her transportation policies, so we can't say yet how she plans to differentiate herself from Harrell for folks who care about improving conditions for people biking, walking and taking transit. However, transportation should be one of her strengths since she co-founded the Transit Riders Union. She has also been an organizer for many big wins in the Seattle area such as the JumpStart payroll expense tax that has saved the Seattle budget in recent years. She had a hand in designing the ORCA Lift low-income fate program, which is great, and helped lead minumum wage campaigns throughout King County. Based on my interactions with her, she is an impressive and hard-working organizer who doesn't shy away from a campaign just because it hasn't been done before or looks too difficult.

Now as a mayoral candidate, her challenge is to translate her issue-based campaign skills into a general-purpose political campaign. Cary Moon's doomed run in 2017 is perhaps the best guide for what will not work. Moon also had some successful and popular organizing wins under her belt before running. Moon was also great on public policy details, having all the right stances and a better grasp of city issues than her opponent. But Moon failed to build a genuine and wide-ranging grassroots movement around her campaign, and that's the only way to win an election against a competent opponent who is better-funded and higher-profile.

This is not 2009, when Mike McGinn won a race for mayor that few would have predicted in April of that year. The big difference is that the incumbent Nickels placed third in the primary, something that seems highly unlikely in 2025 barring some major unexpected developments (recent revelations about a 1996 incident in which he reportedly pulled a gun on a pregnant woman over a parking spot dispute have not yet stopped Harrell's flow of endorsements). Joe Mallahan, McGinn's better-funded opponent in 2009, was not a familiar name and was not a quality candidate. Wilson will likely need to do even more than McGinn.

Perhaps a closer example would be in 2013 when Kshama Sawant defeated longtime incumbent Richard Conlin (who was, fun fact, a founder of Bike Works) in a citywide City Council race. On the same ballot that Ed Murray defeated McGinn 52-47 (8,449 votes), Sawant defeated Conlin 51-49 (3,151 votes). Interestingly, fewer people voted for Sawant than voted for McGinn, but way fewer people voted for Conlin than voted for Murray. Sawant was riding a strong wave from the Occupy Seattle movement, and for a lot of people being part of her campaign was about being part of something bigger. I'm not saying Wilson should become a part of Socialist Alternative (and she definitely shouldn't speak at Jill Stein rallies), but that 2013 campaign reached into the city's milieu beyond just socialists and activists. The Kshama campaign also attacked Conlin relentlessly, which felt very different from Seattle's usual more polite political tone but perhaps also explains why Conlin got so many fewer votes than Murray. It also helped that Conlin underestimated her.