No. of Recommendations: 5
Katie Wilson, a community organizer and first-time candidate who pushed for higher taxes on the wealthy, will be Seattle’s next mayor, unseating the incumbent, Bruce Harrell, who conceded on Thursday following one of the tightest elections in the city’s history.
Ms. Wilson’s election is a Pacific Coast victory for progressive Democrats that matches Zohran Mamdani’s rise in New York.
“I wished her well,” Mr. Harrell said after speaking to the victor. “It was a very delightful conversation. I feel very good about the future of this country and this city still. That is the attitude we have to have.”
Ms. Wilson is a co-founder of the Transit Riders Union, an advocacy group behind a number of local measures to expand transit access, increase renter protections and add housing through new and higher taxes on the rich. She had never sought public office before this year, and was prompted to enter Seattle’s mayoral race only after the incumbent, Bruce Harrell, became the public face of an effort to block a new tax on high earners to pay for housing construction.
Ms. Wilson, 43, is a Pacific Northwest avatar of the generational and ideological shifts rocking the Democratic Party. She lives with her husband and 2-year-old daughter in a rented 600-square-foot apartment, does not own a car and presented herself to voters as a champion of people, particularly Millennial and Generation Z voters, who expect to spend their lives struggling to do as well as their parents did.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/13/us/politics/sea... 