How Seattle's most competitive mayoral candidates would address the city's top issues

The primary election is set for Aug. 5. In Seattle, voters will be casting ballots for the city attorney, three City Council seats, three school board positions, and, at the top of the ticket, the mayor.

Soundside host Libby Denkmann spoke with the four most competitive candidates running for mayor of Seattle about the top issues facing the city and what they’d do to address them.

Bruce Harrell

Harrell has been Seattle's mayor since 2021 and is running for a second term. If re-elected, he would be the city’s first two-term mayor since Greg Nickels; Nickels served two consecutive terms from 2002 to 2009 before losing his bid for a third term.

After Ed Murray resigned as mayor in 2017, Harrell, who was City Council president at the time, also briefly served as interim mayor.

Homelessness

Harrell said he has been doing everything possible to address the issue of homelessness.

“In 2023, we had over 2,200 [people] accept shelter referrals,” he said. “In 2024, we had nearly 2,000. That is at the same time as we had to remove encampments from parks and sidewalks.”

“I have a tight $343-million budget for housing, and our portfolio for housing has increased nearly 30%, so we’ve made remarkable progress,” he added.

He defended his strategy on funding city shelter beds after reporting from The Seattle Times found there were fewer shelter beds available since he took office. He said the city has invested in a homelessness strategy that works with the King County Regional Homelessness Authority and is meant to be funded by cities throughout King County.

“But so far, we are the only city that pays into this fund. We’ve changed the governance board and are putting forth a resolution to make sure that we get regional support,” he said.

Housing Affordability

Harrell pointed to the challenge of housing affordability that many cities are facing, but said it is a priority of his.

“I helped promote the $970-million levy. Our comprehensive plan is very conscientious that housing is a top priority for every person living in Seattle, and we’ve opened 33,000 units, of which 6,500 are affordable, and we will continue to do that,” he said. “We’re throwing the kitchen sink at this issue.”

Budget

When it comes to filling the $240-million gap in the city budget, Harrell commissioned an exploration of proposed progressive tax policies, like a vacancy tax, an inheritance tax, an estate tax, and a capital gains tax. He said the vacancy tax wouldn’t produce enough money, would further strain landlords who are looking for tenants, and wouldn’t solve the underlying problem.

His preferred tax is a business and occupation, or B and O, tax reform measure, which would give a break to 90% of businesses and increase the rate on the top taxpayers in the hopes of generating around $90 million.

Public Safety

When asked whether his metric for the success of the Seattle Police Department was hiring, he said it’s not the only metric, but it’s an important one.

“In 2020, we were getting around 700 applications a year. Now, we’re getting over 4,000,” he said.

He pointed to other important data, such as fewer homicides, shootings, and robberies, and he credited not just the police but also the Community Assisted Response and Engagement, or CARE, team that his administration created. He also credited the new police chief, Shon Barnes, with boosting morale.

Listen to the full interview with Bruce Harrell, in which he addresses some of the criticism he has received from his niece and former Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell and mayoral candidate Joe Mallahan.

Katie Wilson

Katie Wilson is the co-founder and executive director of the Transit Riders Union.

Homelessness

Wilson said she would aggressively open new shelters with tiny home villages.

“We have tiny homes sitting empty in SoDo and Interbay, and there are nonprofit service providers that want to operate these villages,” she said.

She also suggested filling empty studio apartments in the city through a municipal rent voucher program for those who are homeless and without complex issues, like addiction.

For those who need more support and services, she said she wants to make sure treatment is on site as much as possible to avoid having people working with a fragmented and disjointed system.

Housing Affordability

Wilson said she believes there are more opportunities to improve the city’s zoning and land-use laws to allow for more family housing to be built in neighborhoods.

“We can do more to support the new social housing developer by making sure the permitting process is as efficient and streamlined as possible,” she said.

She also wants to continue investing in affordable home ownership models, highlighting that the city has community land trusts and organizations that are built for low- and moderate-income families.

Budget

Wilson said Seattle has the second-most regressive tax system in the country, and she credited the JumpStart payroll tax that she helped design and pass as saving the city from service cuts.

“We should be developing a vacancy tax, reforming our property tax to make it more progressive,” she said.

She supports the B and O tax measure that City Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck has proposed, and believes a local capital gains tax could be an option. She said she wants to be cautious, though, as Amazon and other large employers have indicated they could shift highly paid jobs out of Seattle if that tax were to be implemented.

“At the same time, we also need to be using our existing revenue as effectively and efficiently as possible and reviewing all the programs we’re funding to make sure that revenue is getting the best results for the people of Seattle,” she said.

Public Safety

While Wilson is hopeful about the new leadership at the Seattle Police Department, she said there are still long-standing issues with its culture, pointing to what she sees as a conflict of interest in the Office of Police Accountability.

“People investigating allegations of misconduct are officers who rotate off the force and then rotate back on, so they're expected to investigate officers who are going to have to have their back later,” she said.

She also thinks the CARE team is great but very small compared to other cities around the country. She said it could go further to respond to more mental health calls, so the police don’t have to perform those duties.

Listen to the full interview with Katie Wilson where she also talks about her own experiences as a renter and transit rider, and why affordability is important to her.

Ry Armstrong

Armstrong is co-director of the nonprofit Sustainable Seattle, serves on the Seattle LGBTQ Commission, and is an elected National Councilor of AEA (AFL-CIO) and an MLK Labor delegate of SAG-AFTRA.

Homelessness

Armstrong said they want the city to build 1,000 units of shelter housing in the next six to eight months.

“I don’t believe that sweeping people around the city is actually fixing the problem,” Armstrong said. “That’s causing more harm for people who are down on their luck and trying to rebuild their lives. But if they’re a threat to themselves or others, that should not be happening on the streets.”

They said embracing capacity and getting those who need wraparound services into the county’s five new crisis centers is the best plan. They also said the fentanyl crisis could be treated with a medical approach, mentioning a new drug called Sublocade, which is an injectable buprenorphine to help reduce withdrawal symptoms.

Housing Affordability

Armstrong advocated for progressive revenue streams and “finding the richest among us to pay their fair share and invest back in Seattle.” They said if the richest people pay more taxes, rental supply will increase and rents will go down. They also said that by building more – like Minneapolis and Austin have done – rents would come down, but noted that Seattle doesn’t have as much land as those cities to build out.

“So, the Comprehensive Plan is the way to build housing density, upgrade transit, and make more urban centers, and balance that with our tree canopy,” they said.

They also said the city hasn’t been building fast enough, so they would look into the pre-approved design review, streamlining processes, making sure developers can build, and incentivizing affordable housing.

Budget

Armstrong said there has been a lack of transparency in how nonprofit partners and the city are running.

“I would want to see more transparency and less siloing of communication between departments, so we can find efficiencies in government,” they explained.

They also said the proposed vacancy tax could be really energizing for the city and could generate millions of dollars.

They cautioned that “the tools Olympia gives Seattle make it really difficult to handle the burden for the entire region, so until we can someday get an income or property tax that’s progressive, we are going to be fighting for these weird niche fill-in tax policies that are not going to ever be enough.”

Public Safety

Armstrong said they are a fan of Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes, but the public safety systems are out of date, especially after spending four hours shadowing a 911 call center and participating in two police ride-alongs.

“We have community service officers and a CARE team doing the same thing, so I would want to find efficiencies in those systems, so we can focus on the right response,” they said.

They said the police system has people working a lot of overtime. He wants to take the CARE team out of its pilot program status with the Seattle Police Department and expand it.

“There are 24 crisis response members citywide. That’s not enough to meet the moment. I would love to see that 10 times over the time I’m in office,” they said.

Listen to the full interview with Ry Armstrong where they also discuss how they’d handle the Trump administration.

Joe Mallahan

Joe Mallahan is a former T-Mobile executive and 2009 mayoral candidate.

Homelessness

Mallahan said he was compelled to run for mayor because he believes Bruce Harrell is mismanaging the homeless crisis.

“You can’t treat addiction on the streets,” he said. “I’ve sat down on the sidewalk with those folks, and they’ve come to Seattle because it’s an easy place to be addicted, with lots of services and no accountability.”

He said the city should provide low-barrier housing, let people recover from the trauma of homelessness, then hold them accountable to their addiction problem.

“I’ve had loved ones who suffer addiction, and we do interventions and we do other things to not enable them,” he said. “We let people continue to use in an apartment all by themselves. We don't provide adequate community and structure and pressure to have them deal with their home, with their addiction.”

Mallahan said tiny homes can be part of the solution and blamed the city for not issuing permits to tiny homes.

Budget

Mallahan would not propose new taxes in the near term, but if he did, he said they should be progressive and on wealthy individuals rather than businesses; he’s concerned that businesses will move employees out of the city if there are more taxes applied to them.

“We’ve already seen a shift. I have buddies at Amazon who live in Seattle and are now in offices in Bellevue,” he said.

He said the proposed B and O tax policy is ill-advised, as he’s concerned the tax would lead to a higher tax burden on goods retailers. He offered Elliott Bay Book Company as an example.

“The tax would be on the revenue, and their revenue comes from books and they have a pretty small margin. They’d have a higher tax burden because you can’t just raise prices on books,” he explained.

Public Safety

“We need a mayor who’s an activist with the police,” Mallahan said. “Police culture is broken.”

He listed understaffing, the cost of overtime, and being in a high-stress environment for long hours as the reasons for that culture.

He also said he wants to fix what he sees as a lack of trust in the police through a community policing model. He highlighted Police Chief Shon Barnes' apology for his department’s handling of an incident at Denny Blaine Park as the kind of accountable leadership the Seattle Police Department needs.

In May, officers threatened to arrest anyone naked at the park, home to a popular nude beach that is popular in the LGBTQ community. Officers did arrest one person, and Barnes apologized and promised to reevaluate how officers responded to complaints at the park.

Mallahan said ordinances making loitering in specified drug or prostitution-related zones present an opportunity, particularly on Aurora Avenue.

“It’s very important for officers to be able to act and shut down the ecosystem there,” he said.

But he added that it's hard when there aren’t enough officers, so he’s calling for a fully staffed police force and a more robust program for addiction and homelessness.

Listen to the full interview with Joe Mallahan, where he also discusses his history of community organizing and a website he made raising concerns about Bruce Harrell’s leadership and conduct.

Listen to Sound Politics analysis of the mayoral candidate pool.