Wilson out wokes Harrell
By William Wetherall
13 January 2026
President Trump issued Executive Order 14151, "Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity", on 21 January 2025, his second day in office. The order provided that
Seattle, however, remained a bastion for progressive advocacy of racial and gender balance. And in the fall of 2025, Mayoral candidates Bruce Harrell and Katie Wilson tried to out-woke each other.
Bruce Harrell
The incumbent mayor, elected in 2021, was Bruce Allen Harrell, born in Seattle in 1958 to a putatively African American father and Japanese American mother, both residents of Seattle. His mother is generally described as having been "incarcerated with her family at Minidoka internment camp in Idaho" (e.g., Wikipedia). Hence Harrell's billing as Seattle's "first Asian, first biracial, and second Black mayor" on the city's homepage at the time.
The spiel reads as follows.
As Seattle's first Asian, first biracial, and second Black mayor, Mayor Harrell has been very intentional in his work to build the most diverse administration in the history of the City of Seattle. Approximately half of his Cabinet are women (one third of the Cabinet are women of color), over 70% of people in the Mayor's Office are women, 50% of people in the office are women of color, and nearly half of his Executive Team are women of color. Mayor Harrell's goal is to create an office driven by hard work and a passion for serving the public, while developing an internal culture that promotes kindness and humor, and embraces teamwork, friendship, and personal and professional growth.
Enter Katie Wilson
Harrell was a Democrat whose views of the role of race, ethnicity, gender, and other aspects of personal identity in a public figure's qualifications for office were clearly progressive. Yet on 4 November 2025, in his bid for reelection to a second term, he was defeated by a much younger and less local Katherine Barrett Wilson. Born in New York in 1982, and a resident of Seattle since 2004, Wilson garnered 98,562 (50.75 percent) of the votes to Harrell's 80,043 (41.21 percent), in a contest that focused on fiscal, rent, transportation, and policing issues -- not identity.
Yet Wilson's victory attracted national attention because of the way she reportedly stressed the diversity of her cabinet, according to the The Wall Street Journal, which cited her as follows in an article headlined "Identity Politics, Seattle Edition: Mayor-elect Katie Wilson lays out her cabinet priorities" (Tuesday, 18 November 2025, page A14).
I will appoint a cabinet of exceptional leaders whose lived experiences reflect the diversity of Seattle's Black, Indigenous, Asian and Pacific Islander, Latinx/Hispanic, and People of Color communities as well as that of women, immigrants and refugees, 2SLGBTQIA+ communities, people with disabilities, people of all faith traditions, and residents from every socioeconomic background.
The unsigned writer characterized Wilson as the mayor elect of "The Woke Republic of Seattle" -- wondered if there were enough jobs to go around all these groups -- and bade that the Two-Spirit be with her.
Seattle's government website published the written version of Wilson's 2 January 2026 inauguration speech, and a video of her presentation. About one-third through the speech, she related the following anecdote ("laughter" insertions mine).
Late last month, I had the honor of being noticed by the president of the United States, [Laughter] who called me “a very, very liberal-slash-communist mayor.” [Laughter] It’s nice to feel seen. [Laughter] That's all I'm going to say on that.
Last revised 24 January 2026