2025 Seattle city and King County elections

Based on local tv news, you’d be hard-pressed to know there are city and county elections happening now. (But if you want to know the number of car jackings city-wide over the weekend, they for sure cover that). I’ve tuned into the debates and Seattle channel’s coverage, but would love to know what other voters think, who you’re supporting and/or canvassing for in the home stretch. Main races being:

Seattle Mayor: Bruce Harrell v Katie Wilson City Attorney: Ann Davison v Erika Evans City Council pos. 8: Alexis Mercedes Rinck v Rachel Savage City Council pos. 9: Sara Nelson v Dionne Foster

King County County Executive: Girmay Zahilay v Claudia Balducci

All points of view (hopefully in a civil and thoughtful way) are welcome. I’m struggling with this election. Candidly, I’m a progressive, but I’m not confident about some of the progressive candidates. I hate to be this particular cliche, but for several races, I’m disappointed with both candidates. Ultimately I will decide and vote for someone, but I feel frustrated by some of the choices and the overall “lack of imagination” of local Democrats. (not an endorsement for the insanity that is the other party). We’re once again relegated to the same yo-yo we always do between moderate and progressive policies. It plagues Seattle every cycle. We haven’t solved the most complex intransigent problems doing what we’ve already tried over the years, so where are the fresh ideas? Some thoughts:

• I think Seattle is in a jobs crisis. Yet “jobs” is almost never uttered in these debates or in candidate platforms. Seattle’s tech industry is being decimated. I read somewhere that there have been 11,000 tech layoffs in Seattle since 2022. That’s equivalent to laying off the entire city government and then some. Then you have other professional/white collar jobs that service/partner with tech being impacted. Next are the retail and restaurant industries once bolstered by a city with more disposable income. Industries like tech evolve and that’s normal, but is anyone talking about what replaces an industry accounting for roughly 30% of Seattle’s economy, as its jobs dwindle? I’m all for affordability and increasing housing, but people need to see a path to earning a good income too and building a life, or they’ll leave. On the other end of the spectrum, there are service, retail, manufacturing and even healthcare jobs that range from not paying a living wage to wages have been stagnant for 20 years as costs have gone up. We’ve already done what we can with regard to minimum wage requirements; what’s left is doing something to create a growth environment that increases opportunity and pay. One of the largest unskilled industries in Seattle is working for Uber eats, instacart and other delivery services…companies that rip off workers and customers. Are we really okay with that being the best job out there for unskilled or entry level workers? If we lose our economy we can’t support any of the services we need.

• The progressive ideals resonate, but I’m scared of the talk of finding “progressive tax income.” I support taxing the historic profits of large corporations and wealth and capital gains taxes. But somehow we keep inventing new ways to tax the middle class. Wilson supported the jumpstart payroll tax which sounds great if you want to tax large corporations, except that its unintended consequence has been layoffs, moving jobs out of Seattle, and lowering salaries. At first this generated lots of revenue; then as businesses adjusted to it jobs went down so the tax revenue went down. When this has been pointed out to Wilson, she talks about the services impacted by lost revenue and not the job loss. It just makes me think that she is not even wired to think about jobs/growth on any level, she may only be wired to think about affordability from the cost perspective. The other B&O taxes seem like they could have similar consequences. We won’t see job growth if we penalize businesses for the number of Seattleites they employ and for paying them $180k. Tax their profit, create a tax for mass layoffs, something, anything but tax them per employee making a middle class wage. (even the one for workers making above $1m probably hurts jobs, tho less so). Property taxes also go up every year. I don’t know that we can trust the moderate or progressive candidates not to somehow increase taxes on a tapped out middle and low income sect – ironically in the name of affordability.

• Apart from Zahilay, no one is talking about better using tax revenue. I like Zahilay’s message on this. We’re hearing many of the same old talking points about investing in mental health resources, diversion programs, rent assistance, etc. All great, but these aren’t new ideas. I think all voters are thinking…well we’ve been doing these things, so is the problem that we aren’t doing enough or that they’re not working? Candidates should acknowledge that concern and explain their unique take. And they should be looking for ways to make what we’re doing more efficient or cut things that haven’t worked. I’m starting to feel wary of activist challengers with good but familiar talking points, who are critical of current policy but not visionary themselves.

• they are all talking affordable housing. Whose ideas stand out as having the most potential?

• the incumbents are equally frustrating. So many issues haven’t seen meaningful improvement ever, much less in the last 5 years or so.