Katie Wilson tries to find balance in move from organizer to mayor

It’s often only at 2 a.m., when her toddler wakes up, that Mayor Katie Wilson has time to think deeply about Seattle.

“I’m someone who really likes to think, I like to write, I like to read,” she said. “I don’t have much time for that anymore.”

Being mayor is at least three jobs: writing and proposing legislation, managing a massive bureaucracy and serving as, essentially, the ceremonial head of state.

The first-time officeholder and her staff are still figuring out how to do it all in the same day, so she’s left with little time to do the sort of reflection she once did in her previous life.

So only in the middle of the night, in the same one-bedroom Capitol Hill apartment she lived in before her election, does she find the headspace to ruminate, to mull over a job that in her first months has at times put her instincts and ideas in tension with the practical and political realities of managing a major American city.

And it’s because of that that Wilson’s rise to power is unlike any mayor in recent memory.

A year ago, she was leading rallies on the first floor of City Hall for progressive taxes, more transit and stronger landlord-tenant regulations, a policy wonk who was respected for her thoughtfulness even by those who disagreed. Now, she is in a top-floor office with a view west toward Puget Sound and of the industrial lands in Sodo, grappling with the transition from the narrower goals of left-wing activism to the much larger task of managing an entire city.

The criticism is loud and unsparing now from those who disagree, and she is learning when to push, when to pause, what to say and how to say it.

In the middle of her first year, Wilson has a list of accomplishments she feels worth celebrating. Her office has passed laws to speed up homeless shelter construction; introduced ballot measures to fund libraries and more transit service; pushed for the inclusion of Graham Street light rail station, near Hillman City, in Sound Transit’s work plan; and OK’d a new bus lane on Denny Way.

But there’s also been that constant calibration of her words, her deliberative process, her schedule and even her staff.

Already, several high-level staff have resigned or been demoted, including her chief of staff. Her relationship with the City Council is chilly, and she’s been nitpicked and harangued for some of her comments about the rich and corporate in Seattle.

Her defining policy priority, standing up 4,000 new shelter beds in her first term, is behind schedule — falling short of the 500 she wanted by the World Cup.

“I think it is fair to say she’s finding her mayoral footing, both in terms of how she speaks about things, how she stays connected to her base and how she listens to other voices,” said Alison Eisinger, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness.

Some of the adjustments are typical of new mayors, but Wilson’s unique path to the office and her place within a national story about young socialists taking office have invited more scrutiny.

Wilson said she’s just trying to make the right decisions for the city, but says the balancing of her time, priorities and projections is still a work in progress.

“That ability to switch from issue to issue and do that without slipping up or getting tired, that’s a whole thing,” she said, “and I feel like I’m adjusting to that life.”

Balancing jobs

Wilson at first saw her election as a rejection of the ribbon cuttings and glad-handing at civic group dinners.

“Like all that stuff that’s just ceremonial, you know? I’ve got work to do,” she said.

Wilson now readily accepts those invitations, she said, seeing value in her presence before the public.

But the lesson of the weight of her words and how they would land was sometimes hard-won in the early days of her administration.

She has made comments that have been absorbed by some as confirmation of Seattle’s antibusiness sentiments and inevitable doom under the grip of a socialist leader. In the first months of her tenure, she pushed for a boycott of Starbucks amid a unionization effort, called the city “filthy rich” and caused ripples with a slight wave of her hand bidding “bye” to the millionaires threatening to leave the state.

But it’s not the whole story. She’s sought out meetings with top executives at Microsoft and Amazon and attended Chamber of Commerce events at the Washington Athletic Center.

Many of the business interests who feared her tenure have, of course, taken note of her comments. But while they have some complaints about Wilson, compared with the more ideological left-wing voices of the early 2020s, she has been proactive in her outreach to them, they say. Wilson said it’s been a priority for her to “build bridges” to business, and Starbucks itself pledged $1 million to help with her shelter expansion push.

“I agree with a lot of the sentiment in the business community that a few of the things she’s said that have caught fire are damaging to Seattle’s brand,” said Jon Scholes, president and CEO of the Downtown Seattle Association. “But I don’t think all is lost in our ability to work with this mayor on our goals and objectives.”

Erin Goodman, president of the Sodo Business Improvement Area, said there’s “no question” she’s made “rookie mistakes.” But she believes Wilson to be well-intentioned.

“The only people who benefit from tearing her down are in the various sides of media who get more clicks and likes,” she said.

For her part, Wilson is still trying to find the right mix of channeling “the populist anger at some very wealthy people” and her own feeling that she needs buy-in from business to execute on her agenda.

“We have historic levels of wealth and income inequality, and all of the bad things that flow from that, and people are rightly upset about that, and I think a lot of people want to see that channeled, expressed by their elected leaders,” she said.

Simultaneously, she needs the help of everyone who cares about the future of the city, including business, she said.

“Those are both true, and they are in tension, and so I think we’re trying to figure out that path,” she said.

Pushing priorities

For years, Gordon Padelford, executive director at Seattle Streets Alliance, heard that it wasn’t possible to build a bus lane on Denny Way.

“The Harrell administration said bus lanes on Denny were impossible,” he said, “and now we have bus lanes on Denny.”

A supporter of Wilson’s, he appreciates the speed with which she went about approving the new lane and devoting more weekends on Lake Washington Boulevard to bicyclists and pedestrians, in addition to pushing for Graham Street station’s inclusion in Sound Transit’s work plan.

“The mayor is trying to dramatically make it easier to get around the city on short order, and she’s not willing to accept the status quo,” he said.

Walter Hatch, a political scientist who voted for Harrell in 2021, supported Wilson because he wanted a new approach to homelessness.

Though Wilson is behind schedule on her promise to build 1,000 shelter beds this year, the pace doesn’t bother Hatch.

“Sometimes you have to set the bar high to raise expectations and build momentum,” he said.

Where he has been less than satisfied is around her approach to encampments.

“I’ve witnessed several of the sweeps,” he said. “They’ve been done with little notice, very few offers of housing.”

That, too, is a balance Wilson said she’s trying to strike — between what’s possible right now without adequate shelter and what’s politically tenable. The result, though, is the city’s approach to homelessness has not been dramatically different under Wilson than under Harrell.

Some who helped her win election are more bluntly frustrated by the appearance that Wilson is collaborating with the people who opposed her election.

“What it looks like from this side is she’s capitulating to business interests, and she’s not challenging the status quo,” said Xochitl Maykovich, an organizer on Wilson’s campaign.

Maykovich has been angry at Wilson’s unwillingness to permanently halt the expansion of new police surveillance cameras and opposed a deal she was negotiating to roll back developer fees — though that proposal has now been halted.

“Her approach is very similar to what other elected officials do, which is to listen to all these interest groups and please all of them, kind of,” she said. “It just wasn’t what I expected at all.”

Building tensions

Last month, three days before she was set to announce major changes to Seattle and King County’s approach to homelessness, Wilson met with a group of service providers.

They were concerned.

The mayor and executive were planning to say they were taking back homeless service contracts from the King County Regional Homelessness Authority. But providers feared such a move could jeopardize federal dollars, and they urged caution from the relatively new mayor.

Wilson heeded their calls and canceled the announcement.

She and King County Executive Girmay Zahilay ultimately moved forward with the decision the following week, and some of those same provider concerns remain.

But the timing highlighted a tension Wilson acknowledged she’s still working through as mayor — around whom to engage, when and for how long.  

“On the one hand, I feel this urgency of delivering, of doing things that people can see, that people can feel, and not getting bogged down,” she said. “On the other hand, I also believe very strongly in participation in government and in relationship building and bringing people into the decision-making that’s then going to affect their lives. I believe both of those things very strongly, and they are in tension, right?”

Wilson discovered the limits of pushing too hard with her first round of significant bills, intended to make it easier to build emergency shelter. The City Council reacted strongly to the perception her office was trying to steamroll them. Wilson reorganized her office in the aftermath, but the relationship is raw.

“How many times have we said this in the last six months, that we have to remind people that we have a coequal branch of government here in the city of Seattle?” Councilmember Bob Kettle said in an interview following Wilson’s decision to move homeless contracts away from the King County Regional Homelessness Authority.

On surveillance cameras, Wilson tried to take a deliberative approach — commissioning a study from New York University on their safety, installing them near the stadiums but at first declining to turn them on, then turning them on during the FIFA Men’s World Cup games after receiving reports of “credible threats” from law enforcement. But it left her caught between those who felt she’d betrayed them for leaving them on and those who believed they should be deployed as soon as possible.

Eisinger, the homelessness advocate, said she’d like to see the mayor take bigger leaps on an affordable housing agenda — basically, how Seattle is going to get a lot more of it. She urged Wilson, whom she’s known for a long time, to stay focused on why people put her there in the first place.

“I think that Mayor Wilson understands that she actually needs to listen to many voices,” Eisinger said. “I think her job is also to keep her vision of what she was elected to do front and center.”

Wilson tries to stay true to herself, a task easier said than done when it means disappointing the people who got you elected.

“I am really trying my very best to base my decisions and actions on what is going to be good for people,” she said. “I would say the hardest thing about this job is disappointing people who campaign for you.”

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