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 46th 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.”
Discover more from Post Alley
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
“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.”
If you have a minute to go back and read the comments after your earlier stories about those matters, it seems to me you’d have to take that “there is no disputing” claim back.
The endorsements thing doesn’t look so good. It exposes an unfortunate combination of doctrinaire policy commitments and factional politics that is really what I think is to worry about here. When she could make out a mayor’s endorsement to a turkey like Ron Davis. Wilson is smart enough to get somewhere thinking for herself, but she apparently hasn’t turned that on her own political environment yet.
I feel like this article dropped a week early.
Let’s face it: Wilson’s terrible!
Mixed reviews must be between terrible and horrible …..how sad for our beautiful city of Seattle as she is driving business at all levels out of town ……her good bye approach to Starbucks should be transitioned to good bye and good riddance to her
Who can forgive her, “okay, bye!” comment? I won’t. Full disclosure: I voted for her and bitterly regret it.
I think that the biggest issue is that Wilson is a really bad communicator. Mandami in New York has many of the same policies but is much more popular primarily due to how good he is at communicating issues. I saw Mayor Wilson interviewed in the Seafair Parade and she came off like a deer in headlights, blinking a mile a minute. Let’s face it – style and delivery matter. I think that the Mayor is a policy wonk — a nerd for lack of a polite term – thrust into a job she’s not ready for.
She can’t be an activist and be mayor. I don’t think she can say, “That was my personal comment on my personal time,” and have people believe that. She is the mayor 24/7 and the mayor’s jon is 24/7. Someone she respects needs to explain that to her, because she keeps making the same mistakes over and over- trying to be an activist when her job is to manage the city.
She needs to bring back the gang unit immediately and propose actually needed upgrades at Seattle Center (like cameras), not silly architect’s dreams for a clear roof over the armory.
The city is faced with a lot of budget challenges and not enough police. Back to basics. Not politicking!
I agree with Todd Rosin, this article dropped a week early.
The true test of a leader is how they react and respond in crisis. The mayor and her team clearly have not responded with the level of leadership the people of Seattle (and the nation) needs in a crisis such as this. The long delay before communicating with the community Sunday evening was the first of many misses.
I understand and appreciate the safety concerns for elected officials going to Seattle Center before the site was fully secured. The initial press briefing could have been held at City Hall, or SPD’s trained communications team could have been empowered to provide an initial briefing. The key element of crisis communication is to brief the community on what has happened and what leadership knows, acknowledge the victims and their families, provide empathy, acknowledge the bravery of first responders who ran into harms way, and provide assurance that the short and long term issues will be addressed. It’s about instilling confidence in leadership and the professionals that are working the problem.
Subsequent briefings on the tragedy have not provided more confidence.
I am particularly troubled by the mayor’s intransigence on cameras. This is not new technology. Major global cities have all employed these to great effect—and for some time. Swaying to the fear mongering approach of her special interest groups is not the type of leadership we need from our mayor.
Let us not forget, we got ourselves into this mess when Mayor Durkan withdrew support from the police force and certain council members also pushed for defunding SPD. Prior to 2020, Chief O’Toole and Chief Best were effective in addressing the issues in the consent decree and in so doing built a strong, capable, and diverse force that included a gang unit. We are still struggling to recover from those actions of 6 years ago.
We need to provide SPD with the tools they need and support their efforts. The mayor’s initial effort to fire Chief Barnes was another Gaffe.
We need Mayor Wilson to be a mayor for the whole city, not just the special interest groups whom she perceives elected her. Many (not just special interest groups) voted for her as a referendum on Seattle and a perceived need for a change in leadership. We are still waiting . . .
Worth noting that 1) the city council, in a reversal, voted to support the mayor’s universal lunch program and that 2) the mayor fired the chief of police after his underwhelming performance in the wake of the Seattle Center shooting.
I had several gripes about Harrell, but clearly he would be competent in a situation like what happened at Bite of Seattle.
She has no executive experience and it shows. Firing the mayor was probably the first time she ever was in a position to fire somebody.
She failed badly at dealing with a Bite of Seattle crisis but it was not like this was a one time faux pas. She has no experience managing crisis or managing multiple department coordination.
Imagine if this had been a major terrorist attack. I suspect for those who have not turned in their vote yet and might cause people to sway to the more conservative experience candidate. We are finding out in real time what happens when you hire somebody who’s an ideologue with no experience. On a side note, I noticed Grace Takawaga, candidate for County Council District 2, is posting all over her Instagram account her plan for zero youth detention and ending incarceration in general. I mean she is posting this in the aftermath of a shooting that was most likely caused by this activism. It’s amazing and not in a good way.
“Bite of Seattle crisis”??!!
What is going on?????!!!!
Police didn’t immediately report to the media.
So what?
And hardly a firing offense.
Yes, Wilson seems to have blown it but so do what appears to be a great number of observers.