(The Center Square) – Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell and challenger Katie Wilson, a progressive organizer, clashed Friday night in a televised debate hosted by KING 5 and The Seattle Times. The two mayoral candidates previously met on the debate stage on Sept. 23 and Thursday.
The debate focused several contentious major issues, including public safety and homelessness. Harrell, seeking a second term, touted his experience and track record of managing the Emerald City’s many challenges. Wilson, co-founder and general secretary of the Transit Riders Union Wilson, bested Harrell in the August primary election. She emphasized a need for new leadership.
Harrell defended his record on crime reduction in the city.
“Homicides are down over 40%. Shots fired are down,” he said. “Serious crimes are down. Property crimes are down. We are trending in the right direction.”
The mayor extolled the city’s success in recruiting more police officers after a period of crisis in police hiring over the last several years, marked by officer departures and sluggish hiring.
“And right now, under our leadership, we’re getting 10 applications a day, we’re getting 4,000 a year,” Harrell said. “This is the go-to place for good police officers, and we created it from scratch.”
Wilson was less sanguine on the state of law enforcement in Seattle.
“I think we have a lot of work yet to do,” she said. “So, if you look at Seattle’s crime trends compared to national trends over the mayor’s term, we’ve had excess violent crime.
“We’re also spending more than two times per officer than Boston. That’s not a difference in pay; that’s our overall police budget. So, there’s a question of whether we’re spending our money wisely.”
Wilson then blasted Harrell for his handling of former Police Chief Adrian Diaz, who was removed as chief earlier this year for violating city policies on dishonesty, professionalism, conflicts of interest, and improper personal relationships.
“Diaz was hired over other qualified internal applicants,” she said. “And the mayor stood by him far too long while morale tanked and we lost good, career, high-integrity officers.”
Both candidates had their say on homelessness in the city.
The mayor began by claiming that Wilson has no real plan for addressing homelessness.
In his recent budget proposal, Harrell announced that Seattle is willing to pay other King County cities to host homeless shelters, noting that many people experiencing homelessness became homeless outside of Seattle.
“Homelessness in the state has gone up. Homelessness in the county has gone up,” the mayor said. “This is a crisis situation, and year after year, we keep budgeting for it. The answer has to be a regional solution. The fact is, the people in Seattle, 70% … of the people that are unhoused do not become unhoused in the city of Seattle.”
He reiterated, “The solutions are found in a regional approach, one that I continue to support.”
Wilson fired back, tying homelessness to public safety.
“And so, when someone is arrested, if we’re going to divert them into a path where they’re getting housing and the shelter with services – because we know that just arresting someone, booking them into jail, and putting them back onto the street doesn’t work,” she said. “We actually need to be funding those programs where people are getting that long-term case management and the help that we need. And that just has not been a priority of this administration.”
Wilson has proposed a plan to address the city’s homelessness crisis by adding 4,000 units of emergency housing and shelter. Her plan aims to reverse shelter losses and bring more unhoused people indoors.
The specific cost of the plan has not been publicly detailed by her campaign, but critics have estimated a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars.
She defended that plan at the debate and explained in general terms how she would fund her plan
“This is going to be a combination of using existing funding differently and seeking new funding locally, and seeking new funding from the state level,” Wilson said. “So, it’s going to be a mixture of funding sources.”
Harrell rebutted: “There’s no price. There’s no price. The only way that can be achieved, and we would love to do that by the way … the only way is to take money away from affordable housing.”
He again mentioned his regional approach to dealing with homelessness in Seattle and King County.
“The solution to homelessness is a true regional approach that we haven’t yet achieved,” Harrell said.
Seattle voters will have the final say on who the city’s next mayor will be when they go to the polls on Nov. 4.
