Bruce Harrell looks set to be Seattle’s next mayor with huge lead over Lorena González

It’s elec­tion night in Seat­tle and King Coun­ty’s first bal­lot drop of the elec­tion has been pub­lished. In the mar­quee race of the year, for May­or of Seat­tle, for­mer City Coun­cilmem­ber Bruce Har­rell has a huge, mas­sive lead over cur­rent City Coun­cil Pres­i­dent Lore­na González, with 64.63 % of the vote to González’s 35.02%.

While González may nar­row that gap as the count­ing con­tin­ues, it seems evi­dent that Har­rell will be the next may­or of the Emer­ald City.

City-lev­el elec­tions in Wash­ing­ton are offi­cial­ly “non­par­ti­san”, mean­ing that Seat­tleites – who are over­whelm­ing­ly pro­gres­sive – get to choose between two Democ­rats as the city’s next chief executive.

Bruce Har­rell and Lore­na González are both active Democ­rats and even have rel­a­tive­ly sim­i­lar résumés (both grew up in work­ing class com­mu­ni­ties of col­or and had careers as lawyers before join­ing the city coun­cil, each ris­ing to become coun­cil pres­i­dent). That being said, these two can­di­dates do have sig­nif­i­cant pol­i­cy dif­fer­ences – a reflec­tion of the big-tent nature of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Party.

On home­less­ness (the most press­ing issue fac­ing the city as iden­ti­fied by vot­ers), Har­rell has respond­ed to pub­lic safe­ty con­cerns by promis­ing to take a tougher line on unhoused indi­vid­u­als who do not accept hous­ing offers.

He also plans to appeal to Seattle’s phil­an­thropic com­mu­ni­ty, encour­ag­ing Seat­tleites to donate to non­prof­its work­ing to end homelessness.

By con­trast, González favors bold­er pub­lic invest­ments in afford­able hous­ing ser­vices to give unhoused indi­vid­u­als a choice from options that work for them.

On polic­ing, Har­rell has promised to per­son­al­ly address the tox­ic orga­ni­za­tion­al cul­ture at the Seat­tle Police Depart­ment, inter­view­ing offi­cers and ask­ing them to sign an anti-racist pledge. He is against cut­ting the police budget.

As Coun­cil Pres­i­dent, González pre­vi­ous­ly sup­port­ed a call to cut SPD’s bud­get by as much as 50% dur­ing last year’s racial jus­tice protests. Although she has since backed away from that idea, she still favors alter­na­tive pub­lic safe­ty investments.

Each can­di­date has raised a large sum of mon­ey and has well-fund­ed allies work­ing on their behalf (as well as against the oth­er candidate).

Har­rell has more busi­ness sup­port; González has more labor support.

In the final weeks of the cam­paign, the can­di­dates’ pol­i­cy dif­fer­ences have large­ly been over­shad­owed by a back and forth over cam­paign tac­tics and messaging.

In late Octo­ber, the González cam­paign released an ad that argued Har­rell was untrust­wor­thy and unde­serv­ing of Seat­tle’s high­est office, cit­ing his con­duct dur­ing the final months of for­mer May­or Ed Mur­ray’s tenure.

Harrell’s cam­paign, backed by many lead­ers from the Black and Asian com­mu­ni­ties, quick­ly con­demned the ad, char­ac­ter­iz­ing it as false and divisive.

This is the first may­oral elec­tion in Seat­tle his­to­ry in which both of the final­ists for the posi­tion are peo­ple of col­or, which ought to be cause for cel­e­bra­tion. How­ev­er, the rhetoric used on the cam­paign trail has not shown Seat­tle at its best.

The Seat­tle Times backed Har­rell, while The Stranger backed González. Each pub­li­ca­tion ran an endorse­ment edi­to­r­i­al offer­ing rous­ing praise for its pre­ferred can­di­date and strong crit­i­cism of the oth­er candidate.

NPI’s Octo­ber polling indi­cat­ed that Har­rell had a sub­stan­tial, six­teen point lead over González, with eigh­teen per­cent of respon­dents unde­cid­ed. 48% of respon­dents said they were vot­ing for Har­rell, while 32% said they were vot­ing for González. The poll was in the field from Octo­ber 12th-15th and was con­duct­ed by Change Research for NPI; it has a mod­eled mar­gin of error of 4.1%.

Although this elec­tion has been fierce­ly con­test­ed, Seat­tleites are assured of get­ting a may­or who is famil­iar with City Hall no mat­ter who ulti­mate­ly pre­vails. Both Har­rell and González are expe­ri­enced and qualified.

In addi­tion to elect­ing a new may­or, Seat­tleites are also choos­ing a new city attor­ney and decid­ing who should rep­re­sent them in the city’s at-large coun­cil seats and on the Board of Direc­tors of Seat­tle Pub­lic Schools. If you’re inter­est­ed in our cov­er­age of those oth­er races, check out our WA-Cities archive.