Bruce Harrell, Lorena González ahead in Seattle mayoral race and likely to move on

For­mer Seat­tle City Coun­cilmem­ber Bruce Har­rell and cur­rent Seat­tle City Coun­cil Pres­i­dent Lore­na González appear to have enough ear­ly sup­port to secure the top two spots for May­or of Seat­tle in the com­ing gen­er­al elec­tion, ini­tial returns released tonight by King Coun­ty Elec­tions suggest.

Har­rell present­ly leads the fif­teen can­di­date field with 38.23% of the vote. González is in sec­ond place with 28.55% of the vote.

No oth­er may­oral can­di­date is any­where close to them.

Colleen Echohawk, who was not far behind Lore­na González in our poll last month, is in third in these ear­ly returns. But while the poll put her sup­port at around 10%, she’s in the sin­gle dig­its with just 8.32%.

For­mer State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jessyn Far­rell, mean­while, is in fourth place with 7.49%. Far­rell also fin­ished in fourth place four years ago in the last Top Two elec­tion for may­or, though in that elec­tion, she received 12.57% of the vote.

Archi­tect Andrew Grant Hous­ton, who was tied with Far­rell for fourth place in our poll, is in sev­enth place in ear­ly returns with an ane­mic 2.59%, trail­ing Casey Sixkiller (3.57%) and Arthur Lan­glie (5.83%). Lance Ran­dall and James Don­ald­son are the only oth­er can­di­dates with more than 1% of the vote.

While there are many bal­lots left to be count­ed, our team feels con­fi­dent in pro­ject­ing that Har­rell and González will be the win­ners in this elim­i­na­tion round when the results are cer­ti­fied in two weeks.

Our sur­vey found about 32% of like­ly 2021 Top Two vot­ers were unde­cid­ed or not sure in the may­oral race. It looks like those unde­cid­ed vot­ers so far have grav­i­tat­ed to the fron­trun­ners Har­rell and González rather than to any of the oth­er can­di­dates. Har­rell is doing about eigh­teen points bet­ter than in our poll last month, while Gon­za­lez is doing about six­teen and half points better.

Har­rell was able to main­tain his advan­tage over González­to earn first place in ear­ly returns, while González was able to con­vinc­ing­ly pull away from Echohawk and the oth­er may­oral can­di­dates dur­ing the last few weeks of July.

Both Har­rell and González have been elect­ed city­wide before to at-large coun­cil seats. Har­rell was first elect­ed to the coun­cil before there were any dis­tricts. He retained his coun­cil seat after it was con­vert­ed to a dis­trict-based posi­tion fol­low­ing the approval of Seat­tle City Char­ter Amend­ment X.

In 2019, Har­rell chose to leave the Coun­cil rather than seek reelec­tion to anoth­er term. Then, ear­ly this year, Har­rell declared his can­di­da­cy for May­or, which is an open seat due to the retire­ment of incum­bent Jen­ny Durkan.

González was over­whelm­ing­ly elect­ed to serve on the Coun­cil four years ago, eas­i­ly dis­patch­ing sev­er­al oppo­nents in the August Top Two elim­i­na­tion round and then defeat­ing Pat Muraka­mi again in the gen­er­al election.

González received 64.47% of the vote — more sup­port than all of her oppo­nents com­bined near­ly twice over. She is one of two of the city’s at-large coun­cilmem­bers along with Tere­sa Mosque­da, the vic­tor in the oth­er coun­cil race four years ago, who is ahead in her reelec­tion bid tonight.

The com­ing Har­rell-González matchup promis­es to be very inter­est­ing. Both have expe­ri­ence serv­ing the peo­ple of Seat­tle and work­ing in city hall, but they are empha­siz­ing dif­fer­ent themes and pol­i­cy direc­tions in their campaigns.

For exam­ple, the two can­di­dates have staked out oppo­site posi­tions on Char­ter Amend­ment 29, Com­pas­sion Seat­tle’s pro­pos­al to amend the city’s plan of gov­ern­ment to intro­duce new direc­tives con­cern­ing the city’s oblig­a­tions on address­ing home­less­ness, which is opposed by House Our Neighbors.

Har­rell backs CA 29, while González is opposed.

In the Top Two elec­tion, Har­rell received the endorse­ment of The Seat­tle Times, while González earned the endorse­ment of The Stranger.

With thir­teen rival can­di­dates soon to be out of the pic­ture, and their sup­port­ers up for grabs, Har­rell and González will undoubt­ed­ly begin work­ing the phones to stock­pile new endorse­ments for the gen­er­al election.

137,541 Seat­tle vot­ers have returned bal­lots so far, which is 27.87% of the elec­torate. Not all of those bal­lots have been tab­u­lat­ed and not all of the bal­lots cast by the dead­line are in elec­tions’ offi­cials hands yet, so the turnout rate will climb a lit­tle bit from where it is now. Still, this was a pret­ty low turnout elec­tion. If these races had been on last year’s Top Two bal­lot, the num­ber of vot­ers par­tic­i­pat­ing would be more than dou­ble what we’re cur­rent­ly seeing.