City Council president Lorena González overcame recent personal tragedy and scored an expected but important victory Wednesday night in her run for Seattle mayor, winning the endorsement of MLK Labor, the local AFLCIO affiliate representing more than 100 labor organizations in the county.

MLK Labor’s Wednesday night candidates forum kicked off what will be a busy debate season and will hopefully help winnow down the incredibly crowded field of 17 candidates vying to replace Mayor Jenny Durkan, who announced in December she would not seek reelection after one term in office. The top two candidates will move forward from the August primary — now, only three months away.

González participated in the forum as her family recovers following the death of her mother-in-law in a fire last week. González, who has served as a citywide council member since 2015 when she became the first Latina elected to the council, promised her administration would bring a new dedication to labor to the city mayor’s office, promising a deputy mayor specifically dedicated to labor and workforce issues.

The former civil rights attorney and legal counsel in the Ed Murray administration also spoke to voters who depend on public transit to get to work and make their lives in the city.

“Meaning more buses, more bus routes, not just into downtown but good east-to-west connections so it doesn’t take you an hour and a half to two hours to get from Ballard to Capitol Hill,” she said, also noting the importance of focusing on the future of the city’s bridges given a maintenance backlog.

The six participating candidates Wednesday night made lots of promises and boasted ambitious plans to address housing affordability, support unions, and reimagine the police department in the MLK Labor Council-hosted forum. All committed to building affordable housing with union labor.

“Building affordable housing is hard and it’s expensive and you are right, the city has not been using union workers,” said Colleen Echohawk, executive director of the Chief Seattle Club, facing a question on why her organization’s housing projects have not used union labor via apprenticeships. “It’s a problem on the city level.”

Echohawk committed to working with Seattle’s Office of Housing to bring union workers more into the fold if elected.

All of the candidates agreed the biggest issue facing the city was some variation of homelessness, affordability, and inequity.

Capitol Hill architect Andrew Grant Houston called for an investment in environmentally-centric apprenticeships and social housing funded through a new 1% income tax he is proposing.

Each candidate also said they supported the JumpStart big business tax passed by the city council in July to raise more than $200 million for housing and other programs.

Former council president Bruce Harrell, who is backed by an independent committee made up mostly of Black and AAPI business leaders, pushed back on what he called a “false narrative” that pits business interests against labor.

“What the business community does want: they want jobs. And the people want jobs and they want to make sure small businesses recover and that we have an environment by which we can all compete against e-commerce because e-commerce are taking serious dollars out of our community,” he said. Harrell called for the creation of a “Seattle Jobs Center” to provide resources to applicants.

Jessyn Farrell, a former state lawmaker who lives in Laurelhurst, said she wants to reform the city’s zoning code to allow different types of housing, create pathways to home ownership, and subsidize infrastructure spending.

“One of the fundamental questions that is facing this city is this going to be a city that working people can afford to live in? And quite simply it is not the case,” Farrell said. “Our zoning code is one symptom of a deep sickness that comes from our past of systemic racism coupled with trickle-down economics.”

None of the candidates including González said they considered themselves police abolitionists and Houston was the only one to push for a 50% cut to the Seattle Police Department in line with demands from activists. “I would like those investments to go in toward actually providing true public safety that is not a person with a gun,” Houston said.

Current Deputy Mayor Casey Sixkiller, on the other hand, was the only candidate who said his administration would allow sweeps of homeless encampments and, pushed specifically on the clearing of an encampment at Cal Anderson Park in December, he said “no one living in a park should be calling a park home. That’s not good for them, that’s not good for the community around them.”

“We need to continue to invest in the things that we know work and one of those is creating permanent places for individuals experiencing homelessness to call home,” he said, citing his own proposal for a one billion dollar levy to build 3,000 units.

Echohawk currently leads the fundraising race, having brought in over $387,000 since jumping in the race in January, according to filings with the state Public Disclosure Commission. Houston is next with nearly $321,000, then González with more than $245,000, Harrell with over $148,000, and Farrell with almost $104,000, as of Tuesday. Sixkiller has not reported any fundraising after only joining the race earlier this month.

Both Echohawk and Houston, neither of whom have held elected office, claim they have surpassed $400,000 in contributions.

All of the candidates present Wednesday evening are participating in the city’s Democracy Voucher program and all but Sixkiller have completed the qualification process.

Journalist Erica Barnett of Publicola moderated the forum which was delivered via the Zoom online meeting platform and not in-person due to remaining COVID-19 restrictions. You can watch Wednesday’s full hour-long session here.

HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE
Subscribe to CHS to help us hire writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. To stay that way, we need you.

Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for as little as $5 a month.