Six Months In: Mixed Reviews for Seattle’s Mayor

With Mayor Katie Wilson’s honeymoon period over, Seattleites are grading her six-month performance as the city’s mayor. Opinions range from a few sour remarks to positive comments that credited Wilson working to chart a new pathway for the left.

There is no disputing Wilson began badly. She committed three initial rookie mistakes: bidding “bye” to departing businesses, hasty firing of a City Light superintendent, and strained relationships with the City Council.

Wilson reacted by shuffling her cabinet. She traded Chief of Staff Kate Brunette Kreuzer for Esther Handy, an experienced staffer. She put council relations fully under Deputy Mayor Brian Surratt and made changes to her communications staff. She replaced Seferiana Day as a mayoral spokesman with Sage Wilson, an experienced communicator, while drafting Dawn Schellenberg and Crystal Fincher to oversee office communications. In recent weeks, Wilson has moved on, leaving yet another opening.

Nevertheless, former council president Sara Nelson, speaking to KIRO radio host John Curley, recently ranked Wilson’s first six months as “unsatisfactory” and “below standard.” When asked about awarding the mayor a letter grade, Nelson, rumored as a possible future mayoral contender, conceded, “I’m not going there.”

For her part, the mayor was hesitant to grade her own performance in an interview with  PubliCola’s Erica C. Barnett. Asked about her accomplishments, Wilson cited the city’s overwhelming passage of the Families, Education, Preschool and Promise (FEPP) levy. However, the mayor’s pledge to offer universal school lunches beginning this fall has been revised. Seattle Council President Joy Hollingworth and other councilmembers voted to delay starting the universal lunch program. Hollingworth, a long-time food bank volunteer, instead opted to provide vouchers to low-income families for weekend and holiday meals.

Meanwhile, the city’s World Cup games provided an unexpected opportunity for the new mayor to shine. She excelled in the unanticipated role of sports cheerleader, even heading out to play a pickup game of soccer on a West Seattle playing field with visiting Australians. In retrospect, Wilson wrote a celebratory op-ed about the city’s success “welcoming the world to Seattle.” She credited the work of the local organizing committee and others who worked long hours in preparation, resulting in “collective joy filling our street and public spaces.” She described the smooth operation as “what it looks like when government delivers.”   

Despite pressures from activists opposed to surveillance cameras, the mayor had been persuaded to install cameras throughout the stadium district, turning them on just prior to the first World Cup games. Since conclusion of the Seattle games, Wilson left those cameras in place but turned off for now. Her decision is being attacked by both right and left factions. At the same time, the mayor, despite earlier promises, elected to permit hiring additional police and to retaining SPD Chief Shon Barnes.

While she had campaigned promising to set up 500 new shelter beds within a year, Wilson admittedly fell far short. In another campaign promise, Wilson had vowed to end sweeps of illegal encampments, but she did continue clearing of high-priority areas like sidewalks and parks. Critics said it sounded much like the policy of her predecessor, Bruce Harrell.

But unlike Mayor Harrell, a long-time councilmember, Wilson has experienced more difficulty when dealing with the City Council. For example, although her proposed doubling of the transit sales tax finally gained councilmembers’ approval, it first suffered through numbers of proposed amendments. The issue eventually will be decided by voters in the November election. 

The more critical test of mayor-council relations lies ahead during this fall’s budget deliberations. The city is dealing with an anticipated $175 million budget shortfall that was not addressed during the Harrell years. Although city departments are already being asked to propose percentage reductions, expectations are that Mayor Wilson will be looking for new sources of revenue to balance the budget and fund future programs.

The mayor already has harmed a possible source of help. Perhaps taking a page out of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s successful left-wing slate, Wilson endorsed challengers to two powerful state legislators: Sen. Jamie Pedersen and Congressman Gerry Pollet.  Wilson’s endorsements of opposition candidates Hannah Sabio-Howell, a community organizer, in the 43rd, and Ron Davis, a failed council candidate, in the 46^th are bound to have consequences, even if neither is elected.

Wilson’s test of her political power in opposing the two effective long-time incumbents seems an exercise in political foolishness. While Mamdani, who also is a Democratic Socialist, won his mayoral race in New York City decisively, Wilson’s win was more narrow and less likely into translate into success.

In her Seattle Times’ opinion piece celebrating Seattle and its success participating in the World Cup games, Wilson expressed her enthusiasm for her adopted city, saying that it felt like “falling in love with Seattle once again.” Her optimistic conclusion: “Cities are where innovation happens and we all have an opportunity to write the next chapter.”