Meet the 2021 Seattle mayoral candidates: Former Councilmember Bruce Harrell

The race to suc­ceed out­go­ing Seat­tle May­or Jen­ny Durkan is get­ting more crowd­ed by the day, with a grow­ing field of contenders.

On Tues­day, March 16th, Bruce Har­rell declared his can­di­da­cy in an open let­ter to the city. The for­mer Seat­tle City Coun­cilmem­ber is the only can­di­date among the grow­ing field to have already held the job… briefly, anyway.

Har­rell was born in 1958 in Seat­tle to a bira­cial, work­ing-class fam­i­ly (his Black father worked for City Light; his Japan­ese Amer­i­can moth­er worked as a librar­i­an). A tal­ent­ed foot­ball play­er, he attend­ed the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton on a foot­ball schol­ar­ship and earned a law degree in 1984.

After two decades in pri­vate law, Har­rell ran for and won a seat on the City Coun­cil in 2007. He kept the job for the next twelve years, becom­ing Coun­cil Pres­i­dent in 2016. Dur­ing his time in the coun­cil, Har­rell par­tic­i­pat­ed in the adop­tion of some impor­tant ordi­nances, includ­ing the nation’s first $15 min­i­mum wage, and a law that “banned the box,” mak­ing it ille­gal to ask about an applicant’s crim­i­nal record in the hir­ing process. He was also one of the first elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives to call for the Seat­tle Police Depart­ment to wear body cameras.

In 2013, Har­rell ran for may­or unsuc­cess­ful­ly, com­ing fourth in the Top Two.

But in 2017, he sud­den­ly became may­or when he was thrust into the job by the res­ig­na­tion of then May­or Ed Mur­ray. (Mur­ray faced mul­ti­ple accu­sa­tions of sex­u­al abuse and child molesta­tion from the 1970s and 80s). Har­rell, as Coun­cil Pres­i­dent, was next-in-line for the job, and became act­ing may­or on Sep­tem­ber 13th – less than two months before the may­oral election.

The city’s plan of gov­ern­ment gave Har­rell the option of remain­ing as act­ing may­or or return­ing to the coun­cil. Remain­ing as inter­im may­or would have meant step­ping down from the coun­cil. Har­rell chose to stay on the coun­cil to fin­ish out his term, and left the job after five days. In 2019, he opt­ed not to run for re-elec­­tion to his seat, and instead returned to his pri­vate legal practice.

Now Har­rell is back, and hop­ing the sec­ond time is the charm.

The city’s busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty has been clam­or­ing for a can­di­date like Har­rell to enter the may­oral race to assume Durkan’s man­tle. Jon Scholes, the Pres­i­dent and CEO of the Down­town Seat­tle Asso­ci­a­tion, described him as a fig­ure of “inter­est and intrigue” among busi­ness lead­ers in mid-February.

Unlike most of his most promi­nent rivals, Har­rell is not a dyed-in-the-wool pro­gres­sive. Along­side sup­port for caus­es like the min­i­mum wage, he has tak­en some con­cern­ing stances through­out his career. Mem­o­rably, Har­rell vot­ed against — and then fierce­ly crit­i­cized — the city’s democ­ra­cy vouch­er program.

In 2015, he chose Indige­nous People’s Day of all days to praise Christo­pher Colum­bus in a res­o­lu­tion propos­ing an Ital­ian Her­itage Month.

Most dis­turb­ing of all, Har­rell staunch­ly defend­ed Ed Mur­ray in 2017, claim­ing that “[Seat­tleites] did not ask us to judge any­one for some­thing that hap­pened thir­ty-three years ago or maybe didn’t hap­pen.” Inter­est­ing­ly, one of Harrell’s chief rivals in 2021 is Lore­na Gon­za­lez, who adopt­ed a stance con­trary to that of Har­rell’s in 2017 as the first coun­cil mem­ber to call for Murray’s resignation.

In this elec­tion, Har­rell is pitch­ing him­self as a pro-busi­­ness can­di­date. This strat­e­gy can plain­ly be seen in his open let­ter. Har­rell says that is his vision is for Seat­tle to be known as “the city that val­ues and pro­motes jobs, jobs, and jobs.”

On home­less­ness, his empha­sis is on vol­un­tary civic engage­ment rather than invest­ment by the city, and wants to match fund­ing for our most vul­ner­a­ble res­i­dents to mon­ey for cleanup efforts, clear­ly pri­or­i­tiz­ing wealthy res­i­dents who con­sid­er home­less­ness an eye­sore rather than a human­i­tar­i­an crisis.

Har­rell has spo­ken crit­i­cal­ly of efforts to reform the Seat­tle Police Depart­ment as “arbi­trary and divi­sive”. Har­rell favors boost­ing police spend­ing and bring­ing in big tech com­pa­nies in to expand sur­veil­lance tech­nolo­gies — posi­tions that are sharply at odds with the views of most pro­gres­sive activists.

In the 2019 coun­cil elec­tions, the Down­town Seat­tle Asso­ci­a­tion poured an unprece­dent­ed $2 mil­lion (half of which was sup­plied by Ama­zon) into cam­paigns to sup­port can­di­dates pre­ferred by the busi­ness community.

How­ev­er, vot­ers respond­ed to Ama­zon’s pow­er play by cement­ing the Council’s pro­gres­sive major­i­ty. Due to hav­ing cho­sen not to run again, Har­rell avoid­ed being caught in the mid­dle of that dynam­ic two years ago.

Now that Har­rell is a can­di­date again, vot­ers will be scru­ti­niz­ing his posi­tions on issues like mon­ey in pol­i­tics and police accountability.

The Top Two elec­tion will be held on August 3rd; the top two can­di­dates will pro­ceed to the gen­er­al elec­tion runoff on Novem­ber 2nd.