What kind of Democrat do Seattle voters want running their city?

The race for mayor between M. Lorena González and Bruce Harrell is a battle for the future of Seattle. It also shows an increasingly bitter divide on the left.

Seattle’s largely progressive voters, still hungover from the traumatic 2020 elections and recovering from the pandemic, must decide whether Harrell should steer the city closer to the center lane on key issues such as police and homelessness or González push it further to the left.

The job is done for voters when they try to make informed decisions. That’s in part because of the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on unilateral mailers and the tone of misleading attack ads (not to mention some of the more venomous posts on Facebook and Twitter), all of which tend to imply Lorena González and Bruce Harrell polar opposites.

While there are some key differences, the tone of the attacks would never suggest that the two have much in common too. Both Harrel and González are lifelong Democrats whose policies were shaped in part by the racism they and their families faced while growing up in Washington state.

González speaks of being “the child of migrant workers” from downtown Washington, where she “got her first paycheck at the age of eight,” and Harrell speaks of growing up in Seattle’s “red downtown.” His father was Black, “from Jim Crow South” and his Japanese-American mother was interned during World War II.

The two candidates later became lawyers. After graduating in law in 2005, González became a civil rights attorney. Harrell started out in corporate law but founded a law firm in the late 1990s practicing civil and labor law.

The two later overlapped on Seattle City Council after González was elected in 2015 and resigned until Harrell in 2019. Although they sometimes disagreed, they often advocated the same issues.

For example, as early as 2017, Harrell sponsored a “biased police law” and found in a council discussion that a black friend had recently been pulled over for a minor traffic violation.

“That incident resulted in three officers, one hand on a gun and barking dogs,” said Harrell. González commented that Harrell had been “very clear” in favor of changing the way officials interact with “protected classes” in Seattle in cases where there was no monetary damage and no clear legal remedies.

There were differences, including their style of leadership in city government. González has earned a reputation among staff for being a very active councilor who is practical about legislation. Bruce Harrell was seen as relaxed by the staff.

Like the left-wing Democratic voters in Seattle themselves, the candidates in the 2020 Democratic primary were split. Harrell supported Joe Biden. González voted for Bernie Sanders.

This difference is also reflected in who they listen to inside and outside the urban power structures. In general, González has closer ties to organized labor and the activist left. Harrell listens to workers and activists too, but business also listens. These divisions are also reflected in who is supporting their campaigns this year.

In the years that followed, the city council moved further to the left, and more protests moved from the streets and in the town hall over police searches of homeless camps in public spaces such as parks. The gap between the Democrats in Seattle and between Harrell and González widened.

Last year González helped suppress Mayor Jenny Durkan’s approach to tackling homeless camps known as “Navigation Teams,” a program that dates back to 2017, when Mayor Ed Murray was last in office. The idea was to bring social workers together with police officers to provide help and services, and eventually to clear camps.

This year González said during the election campaign that she would not sweep anyone who sleeps in tent camps.

“Forcibly moving people from one place to another in the city, as the city has currently led on the homeless address issue, is not what people want to see,” she said.

Harrell would remove some bearings.

“We don’t criminalize those who need help, we act as we should,” he said.

Their homeless plans are different (more on González’s plan here and Harrell’s here), but in general, both would spend more money on things like housing and services to help the homeless. And both candidates have said they are open to progressive tax revenues.

But when there was a proposed increase in business tax in 2018, Harrell didn’t go as far as González. This year he has strong support from real estate managers and other wealthy individuals.

Then the question arises of how policing can be reformed. After protests against police bias and violence last summer. González led the council in cutting the Seattle Police Department budget by 20%.

At the time, it disappointed parts of its activist base by failing to deliver on promises of cuts of 50% or more. But this year González has signaled as a candidate that she is still open to this goal of reducing the police budget by 50%.

However, the campaign stressed that future cuts would be tied to other investments that also protect public safety.

“I think it will be important to invest in these alternatives to law enforcement and to the extent necessary so that the police can focus on the most serious crimes in our city,” said González.

The current police force is lower than it was a few years ago. In the past year and a half, around 300 officers have left the Seattle Police Department.

For his part, Harrell said he would try to hire more police officers to improve public safety in a city where shootings and violence have skyrocketed in recent years.

Harrell also said he will work to transform the Seattle Police Department away from the same culture of tolerance for wrongdoing that led to the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

“If you [members of the SPD] I can’t say that this kind of inhuman treatment shouldn’t be happening here in Seattle, then you shouldn’t be with the police, ”he said.

In this and almost every question, the two candidates reflect the shared values ​​and different shades of blue that are now vying for control of the Democratic Party at the local and national levels.

This year’s question for Seattle voters is: What kind of Democrats do you want to rule your city over the next four years?