-And we are heading in the right trajectory,
and we have the energy to keep moving forward.
-Mayor Bruce Harrell says he's delivered
on his campaign promises on homelessness and public safety.
His opponent, transit advocate Katie Wilson, says, "No way."
-And I don't think that we've seen the results that we need.
Well, good to meet you.
-Wilson won nearly 51% of the vote in the August primary,
keying in on the mayor's support of a failed proposal,
she says would have killed social housing.
-You know, our current Mayor Harrell
was the face of the campaign to undermine that project.
-I've always supported social housing, and...
-The mayor says his efforts to be responsible
with city tax dollars have been misrepresented,
and he's pushing back against an opponent
who's never run for public office.
-Greetings from the mayor.
She's really not even qualified to do the job.
She hasn't had the experiences to do the job.
-Well, I've been at the table
when legislation was being hashed out,
when legislation was being implemented...
-Wilson says her 14 years
as a leader on transit and progressive taxes
have given her the experience Seattle needs.
The candidates debate.
-The necessity of fighting Trump
and protecting our immigrant and refugee communities
and other vulnerable communities
is exactly why I have grave concerns
about the CCTV surveillance legislation,
which our mayor supports.
-I remind everyone I was the one that authored
the Privacy Surveillance ordinance.
I was the one that authored the Bias-Free Policing.
So how rich is it for this person
to talk about protecting my community?
-It's a grassroots political outsider
up against an established city leader
for Seattle Mayor.
Wilson versus Harrell, next on "City Inside Out."
♪♪
Welcome to the 23rd season of "City Inside Out."
I'm your host, Brian Callanan.
Incumbent Seattle mayor Bruce Harrell is fighting
for his political life this November.
First-time candidate Katie Wilson,
a transit advocate and progressive organizer,
won a clear majority in the August primary.
She's focused on making Seattle more affordable,
but she'll face a big-dollar challenge up against Harrell,
whose political roots in the city stretch back decades.
Now it's up to voters.
Will they support Bruce Harrell's years of experience
or the new perspectives of Katie Wilson
in the race for mayor this fall?
-Times change, and I think we're in a moment now
where we need a new vision for where this city is headed.
-Katie Wilson has never run for office before,
but she's bringing a groundswell of voter support
to the Seattle mayor's race.
-I'm running for re-election because there's still --
there is a lot of work to do.
-She's up against a well-funded incumbent
in Bruce Harrell, a city council member and mayor
for nearly two decades.
-Greetings from the mayor!
-I hear your name is Tony Wilson.
-Yes, and I hear your name is Katie Wilson.
-That's right, that's right.
-Wilson, the general secretary
of the Transit Riders Union advocacy group,
is endorsed by "The Stranger"
and earned nearly 51% of the vote in the August primary.
-That's a really strong mandate.
-The affordability-focused candidate entered the race
after Harrell backed a plan to pay for social housing
using existing tax dollars
instead of a new payroll tax on high earners.
Wilson says the mayor's plan, which did not pass,
would have doomed the voter-approved housing model
from the start. -Our current Mayor Harrell
was the face of the campaign to undermine that project.
And if we don't have strong partnership
between the mayor's office and the social-housing developer,
that project could easily fail.
-I've always supported social housing.
-Harrell, who has since negotiated
a $2 million loan for social housing,
says he was simply being fiscally prudent.
-So we've always supported social housing.
The question is, how do we fund it?
I have to be concerned about the growth of this city.
And if we tax businesses to an extent,
they will move out of the city.
-Harrell says he's reduced crime
and homeless encampments during his term
and made major investments in affordable housing.
He earned 41% of the primary vote,
is endorsed by "The Seattle Times,"
and says his opponent isn't fit to be mayor.
-She's really not even qualified to do the job.
She hasn't had the experiences to do the job.
-Wilson, a transit advocate who helped pass Seattle's
JumpStart payroll tax on big businesses,
stands by her credentials.
-I am an outsider in the sense
that I have not been an elected official,
but I'm an outsider who comes with
an insider's knowledge and experience.
-Will Seattle's next mayor be a grassroots challenger
or a political veteran?
-I think people are really ready for leadership
that comes with a vision of what Seattle can be.
-The choice is very clear on which way to go
to get the city in the right direction.
We do not want to go backwards.
We want to go forward.
-And we are here with both of the candidates
who are vying to be your next Seattle mayor,
including Mayor Bruce Harrell.
Good to see you. -Nice seeing you, too.
-Also, we have with us Katie Wilson.
Katie, good to have you, too. -Great to be here.
-Well, let's jump into it here.
We had a coin flip before the show.
Katie, you're gonna be speaking first
with an opening statement about why you're running,
some of your credentials.
If you could keep it to a minute, please.
-Sure thing. So my name is Katie Wilson,
and I'm running for Seattle mayor
because I love this city and I want us to do better.
I've watched Seattle transform over the years
into a place that is just so, so hard to afford.
Housing, child care, food, groceries --
everything is too expensive.
I've spent the last 14 years as a coalition builder,
winning transformative victories
that benefit people across our region
every single day -- higher minimum wages,
stronger renter protections, better public transit,
and progressive revenue to fund the vital public services
that we all depend on.
I'm running for mayor because we need a city government
that is responsive and effective,
and right now we are failing.
We need real progress on homelessness
and on public safety.
As I've been talking to voters across the city,
we are building the vision of what Seattle can be --
a place where you don't need a six-figure income
to feel at home,
a city with great, welcoming public spaces,
vibrant neighborhoods, and thriving business districts
where people want to socialize and spend their time,
a city where we celebrate our diversity
and we stand up for our most vulnerable neighbors.
Achieving these goals will require vision,
leadership, and collaboration.
That is why I'm running for mayor,
and I would be honored to earn the support of the public.
-Okay. Thank you very much for that.
Mayor Harrell, if you wouldn't mind,
an opening statement about
why you're running for re-election.
A minute, if you could. -Sure.
And actually, if I may call you Katie,
I agree with her description of the problem.
The fact of the matter is --
and I'll try to argue with facts --
that crime is down across all major categories.
The fact of the matter is, is in 2023,
we had over 2,200 people accept shelter referrals
and a similar number in 2024.
So despite the challenges we have,
Seattle is setting the pace for what a city should do
to put people in shelter.
The fact of the matter is, is that under our administration,
we spent over $1 billion in affordable housing,
realizing the challenges that we have,
and we passed a $1 billion levy --
$970 million levy to address those issues.
We will create 3,000 more units and, most importantly,
keep 9,000 people in their homes,
such that they don't become homeless.
I've passed over 1,300 laws protecting the people.
Not big business, not corporate interests,
not special interests.
I have a track record
and a personal story fighting for these folks.
The fact of the matter is, is while my opponent has ideas,
she hasn't done anything.
She's arguing about the things that we did
when we were on the council and taking credit for those.
The fact is, she has no experience or training
or ability to manage a budget.
And what we think the voters will see
is that running a major city like Seattle is a big job.
And, um, she's advancing some plans,
like our 4,000 emergency housing or shelter units,
that just can't be done on how she's describing it.
So you'll see the weakness in her platform --
just complaints with no solutions.
And that's why we're running for re-election,
because we have the solutions,
and we put the city on a trajectory
to implement those solutions.
And our record speaks for itself.
-There's a lot to pull apart there.
We are gonna talk about experience,
definitely, when it comes to this discussion here.
But I did want to talk about some of the other issues
that differentiate you here.
And if I wouldn't mind - if you wouldn't mind,
let's start with social housing here.
There's the program that creates permanently affordable housing
for people making up to 120% of the area median income.
Seattle voters approved this two years ago.
Earlier this year, there was an election
to decide how to fund social housing.
Mayor Harrell supported a proposal
to use existing tax dollars.
That plan was defeated by a measure
that enacted a new payroll tax on high earners.
Katie, you told me this is why
you launched yourself into this race.
I want to talk about that
and why that's an important differentiator for you.
-Absolutely.
So, you know, social housing --
basically, Seattle voters have twice told us now overwhelmingly
that they want the city to build permanently affordable,
publicly owned, mixed-income housing, right,
most recently in February with the Prop 1A vote.
Bruce, if I might call you Bruce...
-Please. -[ Laughs ]
...was the face of the opposition
to that campaign funded by Amazon,
Microsoft, and the Chamber of Commerce.
It is very important that we get this project right.
We have a new social-housing developer.
There are complicated issues of governance and financing
that need to be put together in the right way
for this to be successful.
People around the country
are looking at this experiment in Seattle
and seeing whether it's gonna be successful or not.
We need city leadership that is gonna fight to make it work.
And Harrell, not just in his support
of the opposition campaign, but in other things
that he's done over the last couple years as mayor,
has done nothing but try to undermine that project.
And it's not gonna work unless it has
strong collaboration from the mayor's office.
-Got it. I know there's a point of contention.
Mayor Harrell, how do you respond to that,
your position on social housing?
-Again, she's completely wrong.
There's been nothing at all to undermine it.
We have supported Social Housing Corporation
from the beginning.
The only issue was, how can it be funded?
-Okay. -And, for example,
she doesn't have a plan on how to fund the 4,000 units
she's talked about.
We wanted it to be funded in the existing payroll expense tax
because we need those businesses to stay in Seattle
as we're hemorrhaging.
When you see businesses out of business downtown Seattle,
that hurts us.
That's how we fill potholes. That's how we feed the hungry.
So we supported it.
We also had worked out about an $800,000
moneys toward it, such that it could succeed,
and then, when it passed, worked out a $2 million loan
to make sure they do succeed.
So we've always been supportive.
Their campaign has spread misinformation
that we never supported them all.
The fact of the matter is,
is it is an unproven, untested model.
And we believe that it can work, and it should work,
not here in Seattle, it hasn't been done.
They've had some hiccups, but we've done --
my administration has done everything possible
to make sure they succeed.
There's been no evidence at all that we haven't supported it.
And I commit to the voters that we will certainly support it,
but we wanted it paid for differently.
That was the 1A-1B discussion.
-You want it paid for by taking money away
from other affordable-housing programs.
-As you are proposing now in your ability
to try to do shelter that we recognize again,
I've had a deficit every year that we have run the city.
I haven't had a good hand in terms of budget.
At that point, we're looking at a $240 million deficit.
So the monies we use,
particularly in the payroll expense tax,
which, by the way, you know,
I hear her taking credit for stuff like minimum wage.
She wasn't even in the discussions
when we negotiated that.
-Can I respond to that? -Yeah, sure.
-So as I was saying is that
what we did is we used some of the monies
for libraries,
for domestic-violence investigations.
I mean, there's, you know -- when you run a city,
and again, she has no experience running a budget.
When you run a city, you have to make tough decisions
for the betterment of the people.
-Okay. There's a lot to respond there.
Where do you want to start, Katie?
-Well, first, just regarding minimum wage,
I have never taken credit for Seattle's minimum wage.
What I have rightly taken credit for is leading
and coordinating campaigns in the cities of Tukwila,
unincorporated King County, and Burien
to raise the minimum wage to the highest in the country.
Regard-- let's talk about the city budget,
our $8 billion city budget.
In 2020, I led on designing and passing
the JumpStart payroll expense tax,
and that tax is why we did not have
devastating service cuts during the pandemic.
And it is what has allowed you to balance the budget
for the last four years.
In 2023, I served on the city's Revenue Stabilization Workgroup,
and we recommended a number of options for progressive revenue,
which you failed to pass, and now we are looking at
a quarter-billion-dollar budget deficit.
-So let's talk about 2020, since she brought this up.
-All right. -In 2020, she said,
and I'll quote, "We want to move towards a future
entirely without the Seattle Police Department."
-I never said that. -That's a direct quote
from PubliCola, a direct quote in November of 2020.
You also said earlier that year, in your op-ed to Cascade,
that she was supporting the defunding movement up to 50%.
And then in 2023, 2024, she wrote in her solidarity budget,
again, a 50% cut in police departments.
So if we're gonna go back in history,
let's have an accurate record of what she stood for.
-Okay. -Now, the fact of the matter is,
is that she's flip-flopping on her positions on public safety,
among other things.
Our record in housing, as demonstrated today
when we issued a $350 million announcement on housing,
is our administration has led unprecedented numbers
in investments toward housing, and we will continue to do that.
-Thank you. I want to make sure that you can respond
to another piece that the mayor said there, please.
-Sure. Well, I mean, let's just move forward
and talk about policing and public safety, right?
I've been talking with people around the city,
and the fact is that people do not feel safe.
Crime is starting to fall, which is really good.
But if you look at the data nationally and in Seattle,
what's happening is that it's going down
to kind of its pre-pandemic mean.
So there was a big spike during the pandemic.
It's starting to come down,
but it's actually come down more slowly in Seattle
than in other cities around the country.
We had a spike when other cities were falling during your tenure,
and it's not hard to understand why that happened.
You hired and stood by Adrian Diaz as police chief,
and under his reign, SPD lost many
high-integrity career officers. Morale tanked.
So we've had a dysfunctional police department.
And as I'm talking to people in neighborhoods around the city,
especially in some of our crime hotspots downtown
in Little Saigon, the police have actually --
it's weird to be the one saying this in this race,
but the police actually have a really important role to play.
That's not happening right now, right?
We have outreach teams
which are going out doing proactive outreach,
which is what needs to happen.
But the police have a role
in being a visible, constant presence
that is helping to enforce norms of behavior
and that's allowing those outreach teams to do their work.
And right now, that is not happening.
So we have a lot of work to do to improve public safety,
and I'm committed to doing that.
-Well, it's pretty rich for her to say this
when I said a direct quote that,
"we want to move towards a future entirely without SBA."
-Let's hash this out. What's going on?
-I never said that. -You did say that,
and we will produce that after this debate.
-Okay. -You also wrote an op-ed
where you totally articulated the defunding of the police.
-So -- -And in your solidarity budget,
you clearly articulated a 50% reduction
in police police's budget.
Now let's go to the Diaz. Here's one of the challenges.
She's never led anything, number one.
-That's not true. -Just look at her background.
I mean, she's run a nonprofit of, I think, one employee.
An executive has to make some tough decisions.
Sometimes this could be reprimanding an employee,
terminating an employee.
And when you run an organization of 14,000 employees,
you have to make these tough decisions.
That's why the stakes are so high when,
in this particular election,
because you are literally hiring a person.
If you look at her back-- she doesn't talk much about
her personal story, by the way.
-And we'll talk about that. -Because there's --
-I think there's a question about Diaz.
-There's no ability to lead an organization, no budget.
What's the highest budget you've ever managed?
I'm asking, what's the highest budget you've ever managed?
-I've managed the Transit Riders Union budget.
-What's the dollar amount? -About $200,000 a year.
-The highest budget you've ever run is 200,000.
How many employees did it have?
-The size of the Transit Riders Union
is not reflected in its number of paid employees.
It's reflected in the hundreds of dues-paying members
who come and who do work every day for the organization
because they believe in it,
not because they're being paid to do that work.
I have spent my career building and managing
large multi-partner coalitions composed of dozens
of organizations, many, many staff,
and paid -- and unpaid volunteers.
-I respect that. -And my work has been
managing those coalitions,
keeping them oriented toward a common goal,
and achieving major victories.
-How many employees have you managed?
-I think we... -I think we've hashed...
-That's a fair question, isn't it?
-Sure, it is. -Is that a fair question?
-I think it sounded like there were --
-How many employees have you managed?
-The Transit Riders Union has had several paid employees,
and again, is --
-But in your tax return for the TRU,
they had no paid employees, so...
-What, you mean, like,
back when we were an all-volunteer organization
and I was working more than full time to build that organization?
-I feel like we can -- -In a city of 800,000 people
with 14,000 employees, I think it's fair to know
if you've ever managed any employees,
because you brought up the issue of...
-I'm telling you that the coalition-building work that I've done...
-...Adrian Diaz, who was the chief of police,
that I had to terminate. You brought it up.
And what I'm trying to impress upon everyone that's listening
is that an executive has to have executive experience.
Even before this, I was elected to the city council
as president twice, okay?
I was a managing partner at a law firm.
-Okay. -I know how to manage people.
I don't have any complaints against me.
We try to be fairly,
but these are tough decisions, Katie.
And if you've never managed any employees,
you should at least tell the -- maybe they would accept that --
the city of Seattle, "I'm hoping to be the mayor
of a $8 billion organization,
and I've never managed any employees."
-Okay. I don't know if -- I would like for you
to talk about your experience with that --
I think we've touched on.
You've heard what the mayor has been saying to you.
How do you want to respond to that
when it comes to managing employees
or wherever you want to go with that?
-I mean, I'll say that the job of mayor is about assembling
and managing a team -- a team of people with integrity,
people of competence,
keeping them oriented toward a common vision,
and keeping them motivated.
And that is exactly the work
that I've been doing my entire career.
And I think what we have seen in the last four years under you,
Bruce, is a demonstrated failure to do that effectively.
Okay? It's not just Diaz.
You hired your high school buddy to lead the KCRHA
at a very sensitive time for that organization,
and that was a disaster, and he had to resign.
You hired an external-affairs coordinator
that resigned under allegations of sexual assault.
And, you know, if you have one bad hire,
that's one thing.
But when that becomes a pattern,
at some point you have to begin to question the judgment
of the person who is assembling that team.
-There's a direct piece there,
and then I need to move on to endorsements, please.
-Let me also say you refer to a person
as a high school buddy.
He did go to high school with me.
He's also a Harvard MBA and a CPA as well.
And it's a challenging job.
And, again, if you actually had experience of hiring people,
which clearly you do not,
you'll realize that sometimes you get it right
and sometimes you can make corrections
and you have to be nimble, and what you don't do --
you don't blame colleagues on your left and right
and say, "You know, you could have done better."
You hire people based on their experience and their resume,
but you will not always get it right.
And, again, the city needs to understand this.
You're talking about going back into a situ--
into a bad situation.
And we've seen mayors that do not know how to manage staffs.
I have an exemplary executive team
and department heads and cabinets.
Bar none, I've done national searches for the kind of talent
we have recruited,
and we recruited them successfully
because they like working for my administration.
-Okay. Thank you. I want to make sure that
we get to some of the endorsements
that are going on here.
Katie, let me talk to you.
As of mid-September,
your campaign has raised about $770,000.
I want to talk about your top three endorsements
and what you think that should mean to viewers out there.
-Yeah, so I mean, first of all, we have been sole-endorsed
by every single Democrat Party organization in this city,
and I think that is really significant,
given that I am a first-time candidate
running against an incumbent who's been in office
for 16 of the last 18 years.
I think that is a reflection on my opponent's record.
I've been endorsed also by PROTEC17,
which is the largest union of city employees.
That is thousands of city workers saying
that they do not have confidence in their current boss
and they do have confidence in my leadership.
And finally, I'm proud to be endorsed by UFCW 3000,
which is the largest private-sector union in our state.
-Grocery store workers. -Grocery workers,
our hard-working grocery workers.
-Okay, thank you for that. I appreciate that.
Mayor Harrell, I'll go this go this question to you here.
As of mid-September,
your campaign has raised more than $833,000.
I want to talk about your top three endorsements
and what voters should draw from that.
-Yeah. I'd first ask people to just go to my endorsement page
and you'll see the Who's Who in the Democrat Party
and mayors throughout the country --
not just locally, the whole region.
If I were to narrow down the first three, I'd say, of course,
the largest labor organization,
the Martin Luther King Labor Council,
who sole-endorsed my candidacy.
I'd also look at Representative Pramila Jayapal,
who, I think we all could agree,
is the most progressive Democratic leader
that we have in the state.
And then I would also mention that we have the governor,
Bob Ferguson's, sole endorsement,
which is critical as we fight Trump.
And I think all of these leaders that I just mentioned,
both in labor and in politics,
recognize that I am the one to fight against Trump,
that, again, I have an opponent
that has no experience in constitutional law,
in arguing in front of courts
to be able to protect the people that matter most,
which in this case is immigrant refugees, people of color,
under-represented groups.
And that's why she doesn't talk a lot about her personal story,
because, you know, I wasn't born of privilege.
I was born here as an underdog, as a fighter.
And that's exactly what the people
of Seattle need right now.
-I want to talk about -- please, Katie.
-Well, on that note, I just wanted to mention
that the necessity of fighting Trump
and protecting our immigrant and refugee communities
and other vulnerable communities
is exactly why I have grave concerns
about the CCTV Surveillance legislation,
which our mayor supports and has transmitted to council,
because that proposal is to greatly increase the cameras
around our city at a very sensitive time,
when we've already seen
when federal agents went into Washington, DC,
they took control of that city's real-time crime center,
and they immediately had access to all
of the surveillance technology.
And this legislation that Mayor Harrell has proposed
is opposed by immigrants' rights groups,
by civil rights -- civil liberty groups,
and by the city's own
Surveillance Advisory Working Group.
-Please. -Once again, speaking on behalf
of minorities, she completely ignores
what Council Member Joy Hollingsworth
said yesterday,
what Council Member Debora Juarez said yesterday,
and she ignored people that were around me,
people of color and people from immigrants and refugees
communities, who are asking me for tools to become safe.
Now, we will address all of the concerns
about federal overreach, the misuse of surveillance.
I remind everyone I was the one that authored
the Privacy Surveillance ordinance.
I was the one that authored the Bias-Free Policing.
So how rich is it for this person to talk about
protecting my community?
My mother was interned through an executive order.
This is very personal.
I will never allow my community to be over-surveilled
by government technology.
We put -- the safeguards are in place based on legislation
we put in safe,
and I will issue another executive order
to assure those people that have concerns
that their issues are addressed.
-I appreciate the good intentions
and the executive order,
but we have already seen
the Washington Department of Licensing
and the Washington Health Care Authority --
their personal data they have collected
has gone to the Trump administration,
despite assurances from the state government
that that would not happen.
So with respect, I do not have the confidence
that this increase in surveillance
will not allow the federal government to have access
to people's sensitive personal data and whereabouts.
-They will not.
The law does not allow them to do that.
And we ran into... -Trump is no respecter of law.
-We ran into the same arguments
when I proposed body cameras.
Body cameras were put for the protection
of communities of color.
Now, this surveillance will be used smartly
and not to the detriment of the very same people
that my opponent seems to want to speak on their behalf,
because again, we met --
listen to Council Member Joy Hollingsworth's
passionate plea to support this kind of technology.
So what we don't want to see are people speaking
for other communities,
and the communities that want to be safe
are supporting what we're trying to do.
-Fair enough. I do want to make sure I talk about
some plans for homelessness.
I've got about a minute to break this down,
but I know you're talking about adding some things
in terms of shelter beds.
Let's talk about that.
And how are you gonna pay for it, too?
-Yeah. Great question.
And, you know, what we've seen over the last four years
is that Seattle has lost shelter capacity every single year
that Mayor Harrell has been in office.
We have more people sleeping unsheltered on our street
than we did four years ago.
We have two homeless people for every shelter bed.
Like, the numbers don't lie.
And this contributes to
our public-safety problems, too, right,
because the mayor's policy of removing encampments,
sweeping people around without actually providing the shelter
and the support that people need to be successful there,
destabilizes people, right?
And especially when people are struggling
with substance-use disorder and mental illness, right?
It means that they're more likely to contribute
to our public-safety problems, and we are seeing --
I've been around the city talking with people
in various business districts, neighborhoods.
We are seeing this.
And so the fact is that also means
that we are spending our money inefficiently, ineffectively,
because instead of creating those realistic pathways
to shelter and housing with supportive services,
we have a system of dead ends, right?
We have people coming out of Harborview
being discharged onto the streets,
and we have people that the Metro Transit Police engage.
-Coming up on... -Okay, yes.
-In terms of your plan and how you'd pay for it?
-Sure. So, we absolutely need to be opening
more emergency housing and shelter.
-And what cost is your proposal, Katie?
-And I will say that I saw the press release
you put out, you know, with a very long --
-Simple question. What cost is your proposal?
-We are both going to need the existing revenue
that we are using to be used more efficiently,
and we are gonna need additional revenue.
And that is gonna be a combination
of raising more revenue here in Seattle locally,
and it's also gonna be partnering with the county
and partnering with the state.
-Rejoinder on this before closing comments, please.
-You won't ask the question.
What cost does your proposal have?
What will it cost the city?
-It's going to require more revenue.
I don't know exactly how much, okay?
-So you propose a plan,
and you don't know how much it's gonna cost.
We can establish that. And then number two,
what progressive revenue will you increase in your first year?
-Definitely a local capital gains tax
is absolutely something that I was a part --
-How much would that generate? -It depends on how high it is.
Probably around $15 million to $25 million
per increment of 0.1%.
-But your cost is around $500 million.
-That is absolutely not true and the press release
that you put out was ridiculous. -How much is it?
-It's ridiculous. -We have the data to suggest
why your plan is ridiculous, because you can't pay for it.
-The press release that you put out --
-Tell the voters how much your plan will cost.
-Wherever you want to go with this.
-She can't. -Okay.
-And this is -- this goes into her platform.
She puts the platitudes out there, but there is no plan.
And the voters need to know. -It sounds to me like Harrell's
slogan for this campaign is, "We can't do better."
-Mm. -No, we can do better.
-But we could do a lot worse, too, as evidenced by a person
that gives ideas but cannot make the difficult decision of saying
how much is it gonna cost?
I will ask you again -- how much will your plan cost?
-[ Sighs ] There are a number of pieces to this.
-See? -There are a number of pieces
to this, and I am promising 4,000 --
and I will say that the more meaningful metric is the number
of unsheltered homeless people on our streets.
And we have seen that number go up and up and up,
and we need to begin that to bring that number down.
-How much will your plan cost?
-Look, there are different elements to it.
And if you want to spend half an hour
with me going through the different elements,
okay, because there is what are we gonna do with
all the empty studio apartments
in our affordable-housing sector that is because we have
incorrectly emphasized building studio apartments
and maximizing units instead of building the housing
that people need, right?
So we can buy rent down in some of those studio apartments.
And that is one section of it, okay?
And then we also need to be expanding tiny-house villages
instead of putting impediments in their way.
That is another part to it.
So there is -- there are a lot of pieces to this,
and we can spend a long time talking about costs
and talking about strategies,
but we have very little time here.
-Thank you. And I do need to wrap up here.
A closing statement, if you wouldn't mind, Katie.
-Sure. So as you probably know,
I did very well in the primary election.
I received over 50% of the vote as a first-time candidate
with very little institutional support,
challenging a long-time incumbent.
And a lot of people who were not paying close attention
to this race suddenly began taking it very seriously.
And I think many people who don't know me
and hadn't been following my work over the years
suddenly began asking, "Who is this person
who looks like she might be our next mayor?"
So I may be an outsider, but I am --
I have an insider's knowledge and experience of City Hall.
I've been at the table when legislation is hashed out,
when programs are designed, and when policies are implemented.
I've seen how City Hall works
and how it often fails to work for us.
The job of the mayor is about leadership.
It's about assembling a team of people
who have the highest competence and integrity,
keeping them oriented and motivated
around a common vision for our city's future.
And that is exactly what I have spent my career doing.
In my many years of organizing
and the last six months on this campaign,
I've met so many brilliant people
who care so deeply about this city and its future.
Politics should not be purely transactional.
It's about building relationships,
and it's about finding common ground.
That is the spirit
that I intend to bring into the mayor's office.
-Thank you very much.
A minute, if you could, Mayor Harrell.
-Yes. Thank you.
What this race is gonna boil down to is a person that,
number one, has a proven track record,
that's not afraid to answer the tough questions.
When you ask me how much something is gonna cost,
I'm gonna research it and try to give you a good answer.
I'm not gonna dodge it.
The fact of the matter is,
is that she has no experience and it's a scary proposition.
When I said she said,
"We want to move towards a future entirely without SBD,"
and then she starts talking about the need
for public safety, it is a hypocritical statement
to start saying that when she -- and again, she proposed
in her solidarity budget
at least a 50% cut to the police department.
It's scary for me, as a person who was born in this city,
to see a person with this lack of experience
to take such a tough job.
Now, I'll be the first to say
that there's a lot of work to do.
I mean, I was dealt a very tough hand,
a budget deficit every single year,p
people living on the streets, trying to shelter people.
The fact is that 70% of the people
that are unhoused in Seattle did not become unhoused in Seattle.
But we will step up because we always do.
And when the general voters actually look at
brand A or brand B,
they'll see the difference in our platforms.
They'll see a person that gives platitudes,
that will not answer a question.
-Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you both very much for this.
And we will be right back.
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Good to have that input.
Katie Wilson, Mayor Bruce Harrell,
great to have you both,
and we will see you next time on "City Inside Out."
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