Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell and progressive challenger Katie Wilson have debated many times over the course of the general election, and one of the most recent was at Seattle University and co-sponsored by KOMO. Seeking to make up ground after finishing a distant second in the primary, Harrell continued to hit Wilson for inexperience, while she hit the mayor for his broken promises and blunders managing the city’s homelessness response, housing, and the Seattle Police Department.
Wilson noted she disagreed with the promotion of controversial office Michael Tietjen to captain of East Precinct in Capitol Hill (Seattle’s traditional gayborhood), which had leaked early last week, with the Harrell Administration had backtracked and canceled by Thursday. Tietjen has called driven his unmarked SUV into a crowd of protesters in 2020 and called them “cockroaches” and has a number of conduct complaints, including harassing a trans woman with a group of officers, who asked her if she “had a dick under” her skirt.
“We just got the news this week that Mike Tietjen has been promoted to captain leader of the East Precinct,” Wilson said. “This is someone who has multiple troubling incidents on his record, including incidents that evince a lack of respect for the LGBTQ+ community, someone who perhaps should not even be a sworn officer, let alone a captain, let alone in charge of the East Precinct. So I think that we need a little bit more oversight of the decisions that our police chief is making.”
The debate also didn’t happen after Wilson withdrew from the event until such time as KOMO owner Sinclair Broadcast Group reinstated the Jimmy Kimmel show, which it had been censoring at the Trump Administration’s behest. Sinclair ultimately relented, putting Kimmel back on the air and Wilson agreed to participate in the debate. The Urbanist’s elections committee (of which I’m a member) endorsed Wilson.
I'm sitting in the auditorium at Seattle University, watching the KOMO-sponsored debate with moderators Joni Balter and Chris Daniels. Loving that the audience seems to be largely students!
— Erica C. Barnett (@ericacbarnett.bsky.social) October 8, 2025 at 7:01 PM
PubliCola reporter Erica Barnett has a great recap thread on Bluesky if you prefer to consume the debate that way. Moderators were professor and commentator Joni Balter, KOMO reporter Chris Daniels, and Seattle U student Diego Borromeo. A long-time centrist columnist and pundit, Balter appeared particularly keen on grilling Wilson, with a series of questions seeking to box her in as an extremist socialist. She asked both candidates it they supported a rent freeze, and both pointed out Seattle lacked the legal authority to do so and backed state’s recent statewide rent stabilization policy.
Harrell, meanwhile, tried to hit Wilson for alleged irony and hypocrisy for raising the issue of the rising cost of a slice of pizza in a viral social media post while she supports raising the minimum wage. Both candidates espoused Seattle’s existing minimum wage policy which is just over $20 right now with an annual inflationary adjustment.
For his part, Daniels took a shot as pinning Wilson down on whom she would seek to hire as deputy mayors, apparently based on a rumor he heard that Joe Mallahan, Lorena Gonzalez, and Tammy Morales were on her shortlist. Wilson refused to answer the bizarre and oddly specific question. It’s hard to imagine Mallahan, a conservative, wealthy former telecom executive, having a spot in her administration.
Ballots will be mailed out October 16 for the three-week voting period that ends November 4. The Urbanist’s general election endorsements also drop this week.
Doug Trumm is publisher of The Urbanist. An Urbanist writer since 2015, he dreams of pedestrian streets, bus lanes, and a mass-timber building spree to end our housing crisis. He graduated from the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Washington in 2019. He lives in Seattle's Fremont neighborhood and loves to explore the city by foot and by bike.
