Uh Oh: New Poll Shows Mayor Bruce Harrell Trailing Katie Wilson

Bruce Harrell clearly enjoys being mayor of Seattle, but Hizzoner faces a growing challenge to hold onto his challenging job. A new opinion poll, released Thursday, shows Harrell trailing Katie Wilson, who heads the Transit Riders Union.

Wilson gets 36 percent in the poll, running stronger among younger voters and millennials. Harrell posts 33 percent, running strong with Baby Boomers. Twenty-seven percent were undecided in the poll of 522 likely Seattle voters, conducted by Change Research for Northwest Progressive Institute.

Wilson and six other Harrell opponents are not well known. As an incumbent, however, Harrell must deal with the distemper of our times. Incumbent mayors have recently lost reelection bids in San Francisco, Pittsburgh,  Oakland, and Omaha.

The Harrell campaign has quickly responded to the poll, and tried to define Wilson negatively. Noting her “disproportionate support among moderate and conservative voters,” it said in a statement, Bruce’s numbers will climb when citizens contrast the achieving Bruce with Wilson’s “advocacy for defunding the police, unsafe tent encampments in our parks, and enthusiastic support for the divisive ideology of Kshama Sawant.”

Hizzoner is wise not to wait. Of the five Seattle mayors elected starting in 1997, only one — Greg Nickels — has secured a second term. When he sought a third term, Nickels didn’t make it past the 2009 primary.

More results of the poll, not yet released, reportedly show vulnerability up and down ranks of local officeholders. Harrell is on the down side of a 45% disapprove/37% approval job approval rating, but gets more thumbs-up than Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison, a Republican convert who narrowly beat a police-bashing opponent in 2021. Davison faces three challengers all of whom have out-raised her.

In 2021, the liberal city electorate was of a mind to punish excesses of the left, from the Capitol Hill occupation zone to the boorish camp followers of of Trotskyite Council member Sawant. (Sawant left the council on January 1). But the NPI’s poll shows dissatisfaction with the center-left council, a majority of them rookies, installed by voters. While losing popularity, Harrell is still registering higher than the legislative branch.

“Polls are a snapshot in time: They are not predictive to begin with; at best they suggest what might be happening when they finish fielding,” said Andrew Villeneuve, executive director of Northwest Progressive Institute, which commissioned the poll. NPI has established a solid record of suggesting victors and victory margins. No poll can forecast, however, election-shaping events.

Seattle voters are generous with government, even when it is taxing and annoying. A prime example: We’ve had soaring, transportation levies that have climbed from $360 million to $930 million to $1.55 billion, all of which passed. They were sold with such slogans as “Fix this Street” and “Move Seattle.” Yet many streets remain unfixed and SDOT projects have the Emerald City moving at a crawl. Individual construction projects have taken longer to complete than the Alaska Highway. For example, the Madison Street mess.

Elsewhere voters have been impatient is with mayors. “While incumbency is usually a weighty advantage, mayors of Seattle haven’t been able to take advantage of it in a long time,” noted Villeneuve. 

Mayor Paul Schell was bounced from office after the. 1998 World Trade Organization riots and Fat Tuesday violence. Nickels saw support freeze and melt away after pokey, inept city response to a December 2008 snowstorm.

With Mike McGinn, the mayor fumbled response to a consent decree under which the U.S. Justice Department oversaw police reforms aimed at defusing confrontations and curbing cops’ use of force.

Jenny Durkan, after a strong start, found herself enveloped in controversy. Gone was the gushing over Seattle being America’s “most liveable” city. The homeless were camped on Third Avenue. Signs on I-5 coming into Seattle warned of protesters on the freeway. Council members embraced defund-the-police rhetoric, prompting an exodus from the force. Kshama Sawant opened City Hall doors to demonstrators and brought protest to the mayor’s home. Durkan chose not to seek reelection.

If the election of Harrell seemed to herald a return to normalcy, not so. The city’s population stood at 610,000 in 2020 but has since soared to at least 762,000. We are deep into an ongoing housing crisis. The police department is badly understaffed. Certain categories of crime are undergoing a downturn, but TV news depicts a city of illicit drug dealing and nighttime shootings.

The center  is not holding. Seattle is a major tech center, home to medical research, and international trade magnet. Yet we are threatened by President Trump and demonized by the political right. The web is filled with the rants of Jason Rantz, Ari Hoffman and Brandi Kruse, and Seattle-as-Calcutta videos by Jonathan Choe.

The looney left beats up on a liberal Democratic mayor. Left media — The Stranger, Publicola, The Urbanist — peck at Hizzoner and target City Council boss Sara Nelson. Our demonstrators demonize Amazon and march down Pine Street chanting “what do we want? (Everything.) When do we want it? NOW.”  

Incremental, constructive change does not appear to be in fashion.  

Incumbency still carries an advantage — money. As of recent filings, Harrell has raised $390,585 to 256,318 for Wilson. A third hopeful, actor-activist Ry Armstrong, reports receipts of $89,853. No reports yet from ex-T-Mobile exec Joe Mallahan, a 2009 mayoral finalist who has filed again this year.

Harrell is running with backing of the M.L. King County Labor Council, which backed opponent Lorena Gonzalez in 2021. He has copped such effective supporters as the Seattle Firefighters. 

And he does have a record on which to run and good stuff, e.g. a rebuilt waterfront, to show off. As says the campaign: “The mayor is proud of his progressive record -/ over $1 billion for affordable housing, connecting people to shelter and services, passing national-leading Green Building Standards, and massive expansion of transit access and tree planting.”

He’s touching all the bases. Is he touching the voters? As the campaign notes, “there is more work to be done.”