My late arriving vote put her over the top!

CONGRATS Katie!
now Don't Fuck
it Up!

I am thrilled, as this will breathe new life into the comments section, which has been getting stale and providing less and less amusement. So glad I've got homegrown, artisanal popcorn on hand. Good luck Katie!

Yes, good luck Kathy.

BRING BACK THE 26!!!

I sincerely hope the Harrell administration hasn't habituated the good citizens of Seattle to enjoyment of their parks, sidewalks, and other shared public spaces, because the city will again abandon those places to tents, crime, needles, filth, and other associated garbage. (Of course, citizens will continue to pay Seattle high taxes for the 'upkeep' of those downtrodden spaces, even though they'll never use them again.)

"We still have some knuckleheads hanging around, but we’ll see if they play nice. And even if they don’t, for the first time in years, we have a chance of getting something done around here."

Soon, Seattle's population will consist entirely of homeless encampment dwellers, and their prey: progressives, fellow citizens whom the progressives loudly denigrate as "knuckleheads," and good, honest persons desperately trying to survive long enough to escape. (The rest of us, who were once part of that last group, have either already departed, or will soon.) As other commenters have noted in previous threads, the city faces a huge budget shortfall, the only thing AI can do right now is deprive early-and-mid-career software devs' of their incomes, and the new Mayor has not only never actually held a real job, but may also have spent all of the many years since she failed out of college living on her parents' allowance.

In short, I'm joining @3 in rejoicing, and for exactly the reasons that comment gave. Both Seattle and the Stranger will now start packing one whole heck of a lot of "Schaden" into "funny." Commenters at the Stranger unite, you have nothing to lose but your popcorn!

From the publication that brought you the Monorail, now the bigger Sequel: Mayor Katie Wilson.

Let's hit rock bottom fast and move on.

“I am excited to partner with Mayor-Elect Wilson on delivering results to tackle transit, housing, childcare and ensuring that our city remains equitable and welcoming to all people.”

Not to worry, defunding the police will free up more than enough money in the budget to “tackle” transit, and housing, and childcare. It will be “equitable,” too, in that criminals and non-criminals alike will all be spared the threat of jail! 😆

@4 you aren’t funny, you are playing into Bruce’s misogyny and it’s not a good look.

Tenny, like always, you generally suck.

Bruce has done absolutely jack shit to tackle the homelessness problem. He has leaned into propping up SPD and sweeps, which time after time proves is not a solution.

Katie instead has worked in this arena and understands actual outreach, which if extended properly and strategically can help a ton in this area and includes an actual progressive approach to solving the problem.

We will never be rid of homelessness, we are a big city. However we can greatly reduce it with proper approach and being sympathetic to the fact that not every houseless on the street has the same problem and can’t be solved by offering 1-2 options for shelter

Commie Kathy is talking about prohibiting private business from closing and singing the praises of government grocery stores just like her comrade Commie Zohran.

@11: If there aren't sweeps, the dead bodies don't get discovered. Yes, it's happened.

Good piece, but I don't think it's fair to call Pramila Jayapal a "Harrell endorser." Jayapal endorsed Harrell in December 2024, three months before Wilson entered the race. In October, Jayapal endorsed both Wilson and Harrell (https://x.com/PramilaJayapal/status/1974225567722446937). You can say she was slow to do it, and maybe that it's weird to endorse two candidates in the same election, but I don't think it's fair to say she only endorsed one of them. Just my (soon to be discontinued) two cents.

@13 the dead bodies get discovered when there aren’t sweeps, too, and especially after the sweeps cause more deaths consistently

@11: “Katie instead has worked in this arena”

Well…she’s “worked” in this arena anyway! 😛

@11: "...houseless on the street has the same problem and can’t be solved by offering 1-2 options for shelter"

The Big Lie about homelessness, which Wilson accepted all the way back in the early days of the Homelessness Crisis, says it results from Eeeebill Amazon driving hard-working locals out into the streets, via rising rents from tech jobs. In reality, which the data showed from the beginning (https://www.seattle.gov/documents/Departments/HumanServices/CDBG/CityOfSeattle2016-HomelessNeedsAssessment.pdf), Seattle's homeless population consisted mostly of persons arriving in Seattle, already unemployed and homeless from their addictions and other mental health problems.

It's a public-health crisis, not a housing crisis, and a decade of pretending it's a housing crisis has exacerbated it, allowing thousands of homeless addicts to die as a result. No city can solve this nationwide crisis on it's own; absent a national health-care system, the only thing Seattle can do is offer limited help to those who will accept it, and prevent everyone else from using Seattle's public spaces as private dying grounds.

"...like always, you generally suck."

Personal attacks and blame-displacement are all you've got now, and you might as well start using them, early and often.

@14, an endorsement of both candidates sounds pretty worthless to me. Like, zero added value, just a plea for some political favors from whoever wins.

@tensora
At least give Wilson credit for managing to make Seattle the hellscape you experience while Harrel was in office.
Kind of like how Sawant managed, in your eyes, to be both inept and able to destroy democracy in the USA.
Could it be you have an issue with a certain gender of politicians?

@19: Progressives are horrible people.

You nailed it in that third paragraph, tensorna dear. Homelessness is largely a national public health problem, and the affluent liberal cities (and especially those in temperate climates) are bearing the brunt of it. You can take an addicted or mentally ill person and put them in a studio apartment, and all you have is an addicted or mentally ill person in a studio apartment. We need resources that will offer them the help they need to live a dignified life, whatever that means to that person, and keeps them off the streets.

And, just like the right, with their "war on drugs" and border nonsense, we on the left largely ignore the even bigger problem than either homelessness or fentanyl (or whatever the drug du jour is): Why is addiction such a plague on our society? What is wrong with this country that so many people fall into the trap of addiction and extreme poverty/homelessness, and why is our solution to let them live on the streets? The Republicans will chalk it up to lack of Jesus or no-fault divorce, or single mothers, but that's just them being cheap (In addition to being horrible people, Republicans are also cheapskates). The root cause is economic disparity and a lack of economic opportunity that previous generations had. That breeds despair, and addiction is fed by despair.

As for the working poor - the people who may not be living on the street, but in shelters or cars, or in friend's homes, we need to treat them as a separate group of people and find a regional solution to find them quality housing, and give them a chance to start to build intergenerational wealth for their families.

But here we are, talking the same old talking points, and using an inordinate amount of public resources (money, parks, and streets, etc). I'm afraid we're just in for more of the same.

Good thing they ‘found’ enough votes for her to win.
Nudge nudge, wink wink. Say no more

@9 the police don't come NOW... so... what's the difference going to be? We won't be paying them each $150k a year. That's literally it.

@21 In the slog yesterday you basically spent the entire day defending child molestation so...

Congratulations Katie Wilson! Be Strong!

@22: " I'm afraid we're just in for more of the same."

Yes, brought to you by progressives!

lol tensorna mad. I miss the bruce themed song parodies of the recent rose colored past.

It seemed like Seattle was slowly getting a grip a few years after I left in 2020 and now a lot of people are afraid we're just going to backslide with Wilson in charge and Nelson and Davidson out. I hope we are all wrong. I totally agree with the former commenters that making the problem housing is greatly denying the problems with drug addiction, lawlessness and mental illness. If people do not accept shelter and help and continue in and out of that revolving jail door, then we're getting to that point where we have to ask: what's it going to take? How about skills/recovery centers where GASP you are held against your will while you heal and build your new foundation and contribute something positive to society while you're getting better? And yes, the feds need to kick in big time. We really need to get our heads out of the sand. So many have died in these encampments and left to rot in housing first. Wake up!

Coolidge dear, get your own tagline. You people are always stealing ideas.

Getting people off drugs is really hard and even more so for people living on the streets. So is treating mental illness. We lack the resources and the ability to involuntarily detain people, either for treatment or long-term institutionalization. We also have a housing shortage that puts even more burden on those resources. There isn’t going to be a single fix for a complex problem like this unfortunately.

@30: Ok, what disparaging synonym should I use to replace "horrible" when referring to progressives?

@31: "Getting people off drugs is really hard "

It is hard. But basic common sense is in order. Maybe the city should stop providing sterile syringes so the fear of disease is more effective? Routine seeping of encampments destroys meth labs (also rescues kids from abuse, and finds dead bodies).

Fear of disease is not a deterrent for people experiencing addiction. Instead you would have more people suffering from deadly and debilitating bloodborne viruses and skin infections, in addition to being addicted to drugs. I’m not aware of the meth lab issue but i am not opposed to sweeps for health/safety reasons as long as they are done respectfully.

@32 Don't you have a child that needs to be sat on your lap and kissed and cuddled or whatever it was you said you like to do yesterday?

Coolidge dear, I can't do you work for you. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.

31 "We lack the resources and the ability to involuntarily detain people, either for treatment or long-term institutionalization. We also have a housing shortage that puts even more burden on those resources."

Well then, I say let's get crackin' locally and nationally to create those facilities that will rehab folks who practice very bad behaviors that many folks in lala land want to make excuses for? What about good old boring pragmatism in place of identity politic fueled dead ends? What the hell is a 14-year-old doing out in the wee hours of the morning with a gun in this town? Oh oh it must be caused by institutional racism of course, or some other ism.

Welcome to four years of Rupert Murdock calling it like it is, Kathy:

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/incumbent-seattle-mayor-concedes-mamdani-style-socialist-who-tapped-her-parents-money-while-running

@36: Don't be snippy when people ask your opinion, it's ungracious.
@34: Not so much when in the throes of needing a fix, but overall getting away from implicit city sanctioning of injecting poison is a good thing.
@35: Don't be snippy when people ask your opinion, it's ungracious.

@35: Indeed I do! A feline one.

38 more cases of hiv, hepatitis, and sepsis are far more detrimental than giving people clean needles for something they’re going to do anyway

37 what

@22: While I'm not discounting your speculation about income inequality, the Sackler family's turning Purdue Pharma into an enormous opiate dealership certainly helped inflict a tsunami of addictions upon our society. However the Homelessness Crisis happened, it was neither local in origin nor Seattle's fault, yet the Stranger has long pushed (ha!) the position that Seattle's citizens deserve neither parks nor peace until they Solve Homelessness -- but only in the most expensively Progressive manner possible. Until recently, the Stranger simply ignored the national public-health roots of the crisis, and demanded Seattle's taxpayers contribute huge sums of money for housing persons who'd never contributed anything but crime to Seattle.

I further agree with your ideas about Seattle doing what it can for the public-heath homeless, and the working-poor homeless (and near-homeless). Again, any such solutions must buck the pie-in-the-sky nonsense the Stranger continues to push, wherein vast amounts of affordable housing will simply appear, once we Make The Rich Pay Their Fair Share. In reality, both sets of solutions will be carefully rationed, both because the resources will be finite, and lest the success of either simply draw more such persons to Seattle.

Meanwhile, as you wrote, we can expect more of the same-old same-old from the incoming Wilson Administration. As D13 pointed out during the campaign, Wilson has stated she believes the progressive approach actually works. So, we can expect whatever money Seattle does spend will get wasted on the same pastiche of failed homeless-service providers which study after study has long told the city to reform.

@20: Thanks for validating the advice I gave @17, about personal attacks:

"Could it be you have an issue with a certain gender of politicians?"

Yes, when all you have are cheap personal smears -- and when you know you're going to need a huge number of them, to deflect truly enormous amounts of earned blame from your politicians and ideology -- you must manufacture each of your very cheap smears very cheaply. Hence your efficiency here. Had I criticized Harrell instead of Wilson, you could simply have replaced "gender" with "color," and kept right on schedule with the smear. (Why, it's almost like you have extensive experience in smearing anyone who dares question your beliefs...)

@40: "for something they’re going to do anyway"

No, at some point morality takes precedence.

@41: "Solve Homelessness"

Good luck with that. It's been with us since the Klondike Gold rush. And it hasn't moved one block since then. Take a look at a heat map of our homeless problems. And then the location of the historic Skid Road (Yesler Way). And you think that one administration change will magically solve that?

Republicans know nothing about morality, Coolidge dear. They gesture at the bible and assume that's enough, but it's not. Not by a long shot. The bible is almost as horrible as Republicans are.

@44: You're a bigot against the faithful, that's pretty horrible. Screw you.

Coolidge dear, calm yourself. You're overwrought. "The faithful" can do what they want, and a careful re-reading will reveal that I am referring to Republicans as horrible. Republicans don't hold the market on "the faithful", no matter what they think.