A council of allies in place, Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell feels pressure to deliver

For Mayor Bruce Harrell, the end of 2023 could not have gone better.

For months leading up to last year’s election, the proudly schmoozy mayor offered himself as a sounding board to anyone interested in running for City Council — not a recruiter, exactly, but an adviser to help hone a slate of candidates who would be friendly to his agenda. By the general election in November, he’d endorsed five of them, a headfirst dive into his political midterm where his predecessors had only dipped a few toes.

All five won. More than that, one of his biggest political thorns, Teresa Mosqueda, resigned her position to move to the Metropolitan King County Council, and was replaced by Tanya Woo, who has voiced support for his approach to policing and homeless encampments. Incumbent Councilmember Dan Strauss used the mayor’s “One Seattle” line in his own swearing-in.

As the dust of the political earthquake settles, Harrell finds himself in perhaps the most powerful position of any mayor in recent memory. Overnight, a sometimes-stubborn council downstairs was replaced with a supermajority of allies.

More than a council he helped elect, Harrell has the years in City Hall — 12 as a council member and two so far as mayor. By contrast, the new City Council has just 10 combined years of elected experience between nine members.

“Because a lot of the council members now are newbies, that creates even more of an opportunity for the mayor to set the direction and tone for the city on policy,” said Sandeep Kaushik, a local political consultant and lobbyist. While the new members may have a sense of their values, “they’re looking for some leadership and guidance, most likely from the mayor,” he said.

But with fewer opponents come fewer deflections if problems persist. Harrell threw himself behind the effort to elect a council that’s promised to grow the Police Department, make progress on homelessness, revive downtown, tackle fentanyl and write a new transportation ballot measure. The voters bought what they sold and now Harrell and his new friends on the council have two years to show progress before the mayor runs again, as is widely assumed he will.  

“Will he deliver now on the things that are promised?” said Councilmember Tammy Morales, the clearest — and perhaps only — opposition politician remaining in City Hall. “Because the council is no longer an excuse for not achieving things.”

Does that put more pressure on his administration to deliver? Asked in an interview, Harrell paused.

“I think so,” he answered.

But, comparing the moment to the energy he’d feel before playing in a University of Washington football game, Harrell said he welcomed those expectations.

“I have the greatest opportunity any mayors in the past have had,” Harrell said. “I embrace that. I have a council that I helped get elected. I don’t know if any other mayors played a role in that.”

What Harrell does with that newfound power will dribble out in the coming months. Much of his focus is likely to be on public safety, the issue most of the new council ran on.

An immediate question is how to add new officers to the Seattle Police Department. The previous council bore much of the blame for the declining staff; though its members never cut anything like 50% of the department’s budget, enough showed some level of support for the idea that they were blamed for low morale and frequent departures.

The veracity of that correlation will now be tested with a council and mayor fully on board with growing the Police Department. Harrell’s office has already spent around $2 million in recruiting efforts, mainly on marketing. But the total number of officers continues to decrease: The department was on track to hire 73 officers last year, but lose 100, a net decline of 27.

Will that change with a new council?

“I’m gonna say this to you and I’ll say it to the council,” Harrell said, “if recruiting officers and retaining officers were easy, it would be done by now, by not only me as the mayor of Seattle, but by the mayor of other major cities. And people keep asking, ‘Why is it taking so long? And what are the impediments?’ It’s hard work.”

Where there may be a notable shift is in the city’s relationship with the county, specifically the King County Regional Homelessness Authority and Public Health – Seattle and King County. Harrell called for revisiting the city’s relationship with both entities.  

“You’re going to see with this council, and with our help, you’re going to see us looking closer at what that relationship should be and what the outcome should be,” he said.

He pointed to the issue of fentanyl — a public health issue he said should be more the purview of the county.

“I want to make it clear that I am responding to a health question,” he said. “That question is more appropriate to either the King County executive, or the King County Council members that are looking more granularly at the Board of Health. That’s a critical distinction, because I’m in charge of the police.”

On homelessness, he questioned the King County Regional Homelessness Authority’s structure, calling the number of people involved in its governance “dysfunctional.” The changes may have already begun: A month into the second half of his term, the authority is on track to install L. Darrell Powell — with whom Harrell played football at Garfield High School — as its interim CEO.

Since he first ran for mayor, and City Council before that, Harrell’s philosophy of politics has been personal connection. He centers his Seattle upbringing, frequently name-checking this person’s dad or that person’s grandmother. He’s known newly elected Councilmember Joy Hollingsworth’s parents and grandparents for years, he said, and he’s “proud” of what she’s accomplished.

He’s not shy about saying so, recalling personally recruiting people to join the Police Department.

“Quite candidly, people like how I lead,” he said. “I attract talent.”

For the vestiges of the progressive left in City Hall, the fear is an overly friendly relationship between the executive branch and the legislative branch. New members have sworn off combativeness in City Hall as they try to contrast themselves with some of the public disputes by the councils before them. But Morales cautioned her new colleagues against tilting into subservience.

“I will remind my colleagues, current and future, that the executive is not our boss, he is a peer,” Morales said in a recent council meeting. “We all work with the executive, but none of us work for the executive.”

In the public eye, Harrell appears to still be popular, Kaushik said, maybe not with the most leftist portions of the city, but among a fairly broad spectrum of voters.

For some, the best hope of the Harrell administration is that he’s able to hold together a coalition of business, police, care providers and neighborhood advocates that has fractured at times in recent years.

Lisa Daugaard, co-executive director of the outreach and advocacy organization Purpose Dignity Action, urged Harrell not to stray into the land of “shiny objects or small new initiatives.” Particularly with regard to public safety, she said, “build on what we have, and elevate those now doing the work in helping identify how to strengthen it.”

Harrell’s response is at once conscious of what others may be saying about him and openly self-confident.

“I read about the expectations, that people will say, ‘Now, Harrell, you have this council, and you worked hard to have this council, you have no excuses,’ ” he said. “And my response is what I said earlier: I’ve never made any excuses to begin with.”