BREAKING: Progressive triumph in Seattle mayor election

A leftist populist wins another huge municipal election

Welcome to a Tuesday night edition of Progress Report.

Just 24 hours after Senate Democrats brought spirits crashing down to earth with their logic-defying capitulation to Republicans in the government shutdown standoff, the hopeful vibes return with some great news out of Seattle.

A pattern is emerging: spineless corporate centrists buckle and disappoint nationally as progressives begin to seize power from them at the municipal level. The future may be determined by the left’s ability to catch up to the failures of the establishment and take control before fascism fully takes root.

If that’s a grim future, don’t worry, the rest of tonight’s newsletter will give you hope.

Note: The far-right’s fascist takeover of this country is being aided by the media’s total capitulation to Trump’s extortion. It’s never been more critical to have a bold independent media willing to speak up against the powerful. That’s what I’m trying to do here at Progress Report.

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Katie Wilson is all but assured to be the next mayor of Seattle.

The progressive organizer’s lead grew to more than 1,300 votes after Tuesday evening’s ballot drop, putting her comfortably ahead of incumbent centrist Mayor Bruce Harrell. With just north of 1400 ballots left to count and late votes dramatically skewed in Wilson’s favor, Seattle is poised to become the second major US city this month to reject an establishment politician in favor of a young democratic socialist.

The incumbent finished Election Night ahead by more than 10,000 votes, but Seattle’s late-minute drop box votes tend to lean left, allowing Wilson to close the gap over the next few nights. She pulled ahead for the first time on Monday night, taking a slim 91-vote lead before Tuesday’s huge result put the race out of reach. It is the second time that Wilson has bested Harrell this year, having thumped the long-time Seattle politico in the August top-two primary.

Wilson rose to prominence as the founder of the Transit Riders Union, a democratically-run membership organization that advocated for better public transportation across the Seattle area. Founded in 2011, TRU branched out into the broader fight for economic justice in the late 2010s and scored a number of signifiant victories. The organization has been part of coalitions that have won increases to the minimum wage in Seattle and surrounding cities and forced major tech companies to pay more in taxes to support progressive policies.

TRU has also played a large role in passing protections for gig workers (Seattle’s PayUp ordinance), among other workers’ rights bills.

More recently, Wilson helped to spearhead the successful ballot initiative to establish the nation’s largest social housing program, as well as the February vote to seed it with $5 million. Harrell campaigned against funding the program, and the coalition’s triumph over a full-court opposition convinced Wilson to jump into the race.

Much like Assemblyman (and now mayor-elect) Zohran Mamdani, Wilson ran a campaign premised on affordability and determined to activate younger and more working-class voters. A mother of a toddler, Wilson told me that she now spends $2000 a month on four days of daycare per week, and is at the mercy of housing prices as a renter in one of the nation’s most expensive cities.

The egregious inflation of everyday life played a fundamental role in creating a demand for change and helped neutralize what had been a conservative backlash to progressive policies that took unfair blame for societal breakdown during the pandemic.

“It’s not just low-income people who are struggling. In Seattle, you could be making six figures and you’re still just like, man, I’m spending all my money on the basics,” Wilson told me this summer. “So I do think that that has really risen to the top in many voters’ minds as something that people need to pay attention to. That just that wasn’t there so much a couple of years ago.”

Wilson’s platform focused heavily on helping middle class Seattleites with housing costs. Along with “energetically” working with the city’s new social housing developer, Wilson promised to pursue a $1 billion bond for affordable housing, hold bad landlords accountable, and build emergency units and shelter for homeless residents.

While unabashedly progressive, Wilson did take lessons from the conservative backlash that struck Seattle and many other cities in the years immediately following the worst of the pandemic. Whereas she once preached defunding the police, her platform for mayor put a focus on public safety and homelessness, proposing solutions instead of activist slogans. The failure of conservative encampment sweeps and the rise of mass incarceration set the stage for a new kind of pro-safety leftist populism. With a leftist city council now on her side, the stage is set for a progressive revival on both coasts.

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