The Big Squeeze? Reflections on a Candidates Forum for Mayor

Twice in recent years, a Seattle mayoral incumbent was “primaried,” meaning squeezed out in the primary. It might happen again this year, in the primary, August 5, though the dynamics for this squeeze play don’t really align.

The first squeeze-out happened when Mayor Paul Schell foolishly decided to seek a second term in 2001. Applying the squeeze from the business community was City Attorney Mark Sidran, while the eventual winner Greg Nickels ran to Schell’s left. The second instance was when Nickels sought a third term in 2009, eight years later. He was squeezed from the left by the eventual winner, Mike McGinn, and from the right by Joe Mallahan, an executive at T-Mobile and a political unknown. Since then, we’ve had a dispiriting sequence of three one-term-and-out mayors (McGinn, Ed Murray, Jenny Durkan).

Mallahan is a surprise candidate again this year, but so far he has shown little oomph, in part because Mayor Bruce Harrell has pretty much locked up the business/moderate vote. At this point and judging by a mayoral panel I witnessed this week at Horizon House, Harrell looks a shoo-in for surviving the primary, as does his candidate to the left, Katie Wilson, a smart, articulate, labor activist. 

There are two wild cards in this analysis. Mallahan is trying to say Mayor Harrell has the right ideas (more cops, fewer encampments, reviving downtown, some progress on housing) but not able to show much progress or executive potency. Mallahan insists he knows how to be an effective manager for change. After all, in these sour times incumbents are fair game and voters look for someone to blame. And so Mallahan, running as a Harrell-cum-moxie, might catch on, as he almost did in 2009. No one else in this unimpressive field of candidates seems likely to press Harrell from his right flank.

The other wild card is on the left, where the leading candidate, Katie Wilson, faces two problems. One is a split vote on the left, where Ry Armstrong lays claim to the gay vote, the artists’ vote, and the defy-Trump coalition. Ballotopedia reports that by early July Harrell had raised $450,000 and spent $132,000; Wilson had raised $450,00 but only spent $60,000. Armstrong raised $101,000, spending $81,000 (apparently to garner democracy vouchers), and Mallahan raised $116,000 and spent a meager $11,000. 

In media endorsements, Wilson predictably grabbed The Stranger‘s nod, while Harrell unsurprisingly nabbed the Seattle Times’ tepid endorsement. Another Wilson danger: labor might spend its big bucks on other races (particularly the city attorney’s race), or split its dollars between Wilson and the union-friendly Mayor Harrell.

One other worrisome factor for Wilson is voters’ strong dislike for the Lorena Gonzales city council of yore, keeping in mind that Harrell thumped Gonzales in 2021 by 55-48 percent. The electorate has a strong aversion to reverting to the bad old days of the ideological, defund-police city council of the recent past. Wilson, at the panel, spoke guardedly and vaguely about “civilianizing police work,” while Harrell boasted about his new police chief, declining crime rates, and fewer campsites.

Wilson is an impressively informed candidate, resembling a smart staffer. As an inexperienced candidate, she needs to pass the sniff test for being a mayoral leader, and she landed few blows against the incumbent. (Mallahan tried clumsily to tag Harrell as “a misogynist,” which Harrell deftly deflected by saying “that hurts,” and citing all the women on his senior staff.)

The real case against Harrell is his penchant to appoint weak managers and to avoid hard decisions, yet few of the challengers seemed able to spot those flaws or make a compelling case for change. (With an eye on the New York mayor’s race, many tried to strum the affordability chord, with one candidate, Joe Malloy, pleading that he wanted his mother in Texas to be able to afford to move to Seattle.)

The star of the show turned out to be Erika Ellis, who is running for city attorney and mastered the art of addressing the jury.

Maybe it was the one-minute-answer rule that Horizon House insists on, but I ended up thinking that this was a dispiriting mayoral class of 2025, and that Mayor Harrell will probably coast to an unrousing victory.