WA Filing Week 2021: Taking a closer look at Seattle’s four citywide contests

On Fri­day May 21st„ the final day of Fil­ing Week, coun­ty elec­tions offi­cials in Wash­ing­ton’s thir­ty-nine coun­ties offi­cial­ly closed the door to can­di­dates hop­ing to throw their hat in the ring for local elect­ed posi­tions around the state.

The city of Seat­tle has four elect­ed posi­tions up for elec­tion in 2021. Let’s take a quick look through the fil­ings and some of the lead­ing con­tenders in each race.

May­or

Prob­a­bly the most sig­nif­i­cant posi­tion up for grabs in the 2021 elec­tion cycle is the may­oral­ty of Seat­tle. In Decem­ber, incum­bent Jen­ny Durkan announced that she would not run for a sec­ond-term, open­ing the flood­gates and increas­ing the like­li­hood of a crowd­ed field, sim­i­lar to the dynam­ic we saw four years ago.

By the end of Fil­ing Week, there were fif­teen con­tenders for Mayor.

While many of this num­ber are unlike­ly to get any­where – six have not even filed any cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions with the city’s elec­tions com­mis­sion – the race has attract­ed some stand-out can­di­dates. They include:

• Colleen Echohawk, a home­less­ness advo­cate who has had a seat at many of the top tables of local pol­i­tics – includ­ing the Region­al Home­less­ness Author­i­ty, the Seat­tle Police Com­mis­sion, the Down­town Seat­tle Asso­ci­a­tion, and others;
• Jessyn Far­rell, a for­mer state rep­re­sen­ta­tive from North Seat­tle and inclu­sive trans­porta­tion advo­ca­cy vet­er­an with expe­ri­ence in state pol­i­tics, coun­ty gov­er­nance, and pol­i­cy development;
• Lore­na González, the City Council’s first Lati­na mem­ber and sit­ting Coun­cil Pres­i­dent, who led the Council’s sweep­ing response to con­cerns about police bru­tal­i­ty dur­ing last year’s protest movement;
• Bruce Har­rell, a for­mer City Coun­cil Pres­i­dent, who briefly held the office of May­or in 2017 after the res­ig­na­tion scan­­dal-plagued Ed Murray;
• Andrew Grant Hous­ton, a qual­i­fied archi­tect who has worked as Coun­cilmem­ber Tere­sa Mosqueda’s inter­im pol­i­cy man­ag­er. Despite Houston’s lack of expe­ri­ence in elect­ed office, his strong fundrais­ing and com­mu­ni­ty sup­ports means he could well be a force to be reck­oned with.

City Coun­cil Posi­tion #9

Lore­na González, the cur­rent incum­bent in City Coun­cil Posi­tion 9, is run­ning for may­or this year, which leaves an open seat. The open seat has attract­ed sev­en con­tenders, of whom three are like­ly to be the biggest hitters:

• Nikki­ta Oliv­er, a com­mu­ni­ty orga­niz­er and activist who came third place in the 2017 may­oral elec­tion (com­ing with­in 1% of run­n­er-up Cary Moon).
• Sara Nel­son, the founder of Fre­mont Brew­ery and pro-busi­­ness advo­cate who pre­vi­ous­ly ran for city coun­cil in 2017.
• Bri­an­na Thomas, Coun­cilmem­ber González’s Chief of Staff who has over a decade of expe­ri­ence in state and city pol­i­tics. She ran for a dif­fer­ent city coun­cil seat in the 2015 local elec­tion cycle.

City Coun­cil Posi­tion #8

Unlike her col­league in Posi­tion 9, incum­bent Tere­sa Mosque­da is run­ning for reelec­tion – but that did­n’t dis­cour­age a whole bunch of oth­er peo­ple from fil­ing. Odd­ly enough, more peo­ple seem inter­est­ed in unseat­ing Mosque­da than are inter­est­ed in fill­ing Lore­na González’s emp­ty seat! How­ev­er, none of the chal­lengers has raised even a tenth of Mosqueda’s cam­paign funds, and most have not even set up cam­paign web­sites. Expect Mosque­da to cruise to victory.

City Attor­ney

Pete Holmes is Seattle’s longest-serv­ing elect­ed offi­cial cur­rent­ly in office, hav­ing won his first cam­paign for city attor­ney back in 2009.

He is run­ning on a promise of con­ti­nu­ity, a promise which might guar­an­tee him suc­cess all on its own; in a city cur­rent­ly look­ing for both a new may­or and a chief of police, with grave ques­tions hov­er­ing over the very future of pub­lic safe­ty, vot­ers will like­ly flock to the sta­bil­i­ty and cer­tain­ty of a fourth term for Holmes.

Dur­ing his tenure, Holmes has been a pio­neer­ing pro­gres­sive, using his office to influ­ence and imple­ment reforms to crim­i­nal justice.

Holmes’ posi­tion is strength­ened by the sud­den with­draw­al of his most promi­nent chal­lenger, Steve Fort­ney, from the race, leav­ing two rel­a­tive unknowns – self-described “abo­li­tion­ist” Nicole Thomas Kennedy and peren­ni­al Repub­li­can can­di­date Ann Davi­son – to run against Holmes.

Thomas Kennedy will almost cer­tain­ly be the stronger of the two chal­lengers, but she’s get­ting a late start and faces an uphill climb.

For a broad­er sum­ma­ry of fil­ing week across the state – includ­ing notable fil­ings in Seat­tle Port Com­mis­sion, King Coun­ty, Red­mond, and Belle­vue elec­tions – check out this Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate post from last Fri­day.