Seattle’s election of Katie Wilson as mayor comes days after New York chose Zohran Mamdani, giving two major cities socialist leaders.
Seattle will be led by a democratic socialist after incumbent Bruce Harrell, a Democrat, conceded the city’s mayoral race on Nov. 13 following the counting of final ballots to self-described socialist Katie Wilson.
Wilson pulled ahead as later-arriving mail ballots were tallied under Washington’s all-mail election system, which allows ballots postmarked by Election Day, which was Nov. 4, to be counted.
In an interview on Nov. 14 with CNN’s Erin Burnett after the race was called, Wilson said that while she does not “shy away from the label” socialist, she “certainly didn’t run on it,” and said voters “care a lot less about labels than they do about results.”
For her, she said, “being a socialist is really, first of all, it’s about a belief in good governance,” adding that it is “really damaging when people lose faith in the ability of their government to successfully tackle big challenges, when they lose faith in their government’s ability to deliver services for the people.”
Wilson officially took the lead in the race on Monday, Nov. 10, from which Harrell never bounced back. The latest unofficial election results, updated on Nov. 17, had Wilson just over 2,000 votes ahead.
Harrell spoke to supporters in a speech on Nov. 13, saying he had called “Mayor-Elect Katie Wilson to congratulate her on a hard-fought victory.” He told the crowd that his administration would “begin the transition work without hesitation” and said he looked forward to welcoming Wilson to City Hall “in the near future.”
Harrell said his loss is part of a broader shift in who is participating in Seattle politics. Citing voter turnout, he said there were “12,000 more ballots of people who voted, new people with new ideas” and “over 15,000 new registered voters” since his win in 2021.
“We have to listen to these young voices,” he said, saying that many feel “their voices are not being heard.”
Wilson, speaking a short time later, described her victory as a mandate for “a new direction” on affordability and governance. She told supporters that when the year began, she “had no intention of running for any type of political office,” but decided to launch a campaign nine months ago because she believed “the people of Seattle and its government were out of step, that voters were in search of a new direction, and that our problems required new leadership.”
By Chase Smith
