Bruce Harrell says his loss didn’t cause reflection, or at least won’t show it
Jan. 28, 2026 at 6:00 am | Updated Jan. 28, 2026 at 6:00 am
By
David Kroman
Seattle Times staff reporter
In the weeks since he left office, former Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell hasn’t done a lot of retrospection. Reflection was woven into his single term as mayor, he says, leaving no need to worry on his time in office now that he’s left.
“Many people can look back retrospectively and think about, ‘I really, really did this well, I did this ineffectively, I could have taken a right turn instead of a left turn,’ ” he said, sitting in slippers and an untucked shirt in the living room of his South Seattle home. “I suppose that’s one method by which a leader can look back at an organization. That is not my style.”
To the extent Seattle has institutional political figures, Harrell is one. His 16 years in City Hall is more than the experience of the current mayor, city attorney and Seattle City Council combined — minus interim Councilmember Debora Juarez’s years.
His tenure as a council member began the year before Barack Obama was elected president, when Amazon’s workforce still fit inside the Pacific Tower on Beacon Hill and the median rent for a studio was $600. By the time he lost reelection as mayor, his time spanned the housing collapse, killing of Osama bin Laden, legalization of marijuana and same-sex marriage and the election, defeat and reelection of Donald Trump.
And now it’s over.
Harrell sought to use his years as a strength during his campaign for a second term as mayor. With so much uncertainty about the direction of Seattle postpandemic against a hostile federal government, the city should want someone who knows his way around the halls of power, he argued.
In fact, for just enough voters, his experience turned out to be a liability and he lost the closest race in a hundred years. Why homelessness has not improved faster, why rent is more than $2,000 for a one-bedroom apartment or why the waitlist for day care extends to before some parents have even conceived were all questions that ultimately fell to him, fair or not, as a person who oversaw the rise of Seattle’s frustrating realities from a position of power.
But Harrell is comfortable in his administration’s response and his legacy, while also glib about the broader state of politics and their ability to deliver solutions.
On one hand, he is bluntly confident about his mayoralty. Resistant to grappling with possible shortcomings, Harrell said his office pulled every lever it could on homelessness, public safety and affordability.
“The fact is, I was an effective leader and was an effective mayor,” he said.
Where there are failures, particularly on issues of affordability, Harrell argued they are broad, the result of a political environment either unwilling or unable to move together. On homelessness, in particular, which was declared an emergency while he was on the council and continued to rise through his time as mayor, “those problems cannot be solved by a mayor or a City Council or city attorney.”
“No one’s delivering,” he said. “Whether it’s centrist, conservatives or progressive, the system is not delivering.”
Asked if that was an indictment of all politics, he answered, “I suppose.”
Simultaneously, Harrell is frustrated he was not given more credit for dropping crime rates.
“When all of those numbers go in the wrong direction, all of the politicians are blamed, particularly the mayor, but when they trend in the right direction, it just happened organically,” he said. “And that’s not true.”
When Harrell first left office at the end of 2019, he saw it as his retirement from public office. But with former Mayor Jenny Durkan opting against a reelection campaign and the city still reeling from the pandemic and protests of 2020, he felt his style would be “conducive to right the ship, so to speak.”
“It’s obvious I don’t need a job,” he said, motioning to his more than 6,000-square-foot South Seattle, water-view home. “I’ve worked very hard and I’ve been a successful attorney. I had effectively retired from the city in 2019 so it was truly a calling to serve more than anything else.”
In Harrell’s eyes, the power of being mayor came from what tone and image he set for the city. How he presented himself to both his staff and the public was central to his style of management, a view of the position of mayor rooted in formal leadership training and study, akin to a CEO or head coach. For Harrell, it was important that the public and the people around him never see him sweat.
“I’ve always been the kind of leader that will walk in the office and I try to make things look easy,” he said. “I don’t want people to get stressed out.”
Harrell’s backslapping personality sometimes led to questions about whether he had the policy chops to back up his public face. Harrell said he heard those criticisms, but rejected them.
“Often critics can advance a theory that someone is all show and no substance,” he said, “and make no mistake about that, there are even racial overtones associated with that.”
“You become the face of the city,” he said, “and then based on that vision and that image of the city, then you develop policies and commence actions to drive that imagery to make it a reality.”
As for why he lost, Harrell answers: “I didn’t get enough votes.”
He insists he’s not bitter about its result, calling his strength his positive attitude. But if he felt otherwise, he’d likely not want anyone to see him sweat.
