A socialist Seattle mayoral candidate Katie Wilson, whose Zohran Mamdani-esque platform calls for more homeless shelters and a new local capital gains tax to raise “progressive revenue” from Seattle’s wealthy, defeated incumbent Bruce Harrell to become Emerald City’s next mayor.

Her surprise victory over Mr. Harrell marks, like New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s improbable win before it, a resounding rebuke of establishment Democrats. 

With at most 1,320 mail-in ballots left to be counted on Wednesday, Ms. Wilson’s margin over Mr. Harrel made it mathematically impossible for the incumbent to remain in office.

“This campaign was driven by a deep belief that we need to expand the table to include everyone in the decisions that impact their lives,” Wilson said in a statement. “That is what we will be working to do every day as we set up this new administration.”

It wasn’t immediately clear if the race will go to a recount, the Seattle Times reported. 

Despite trailing Mr. Harrell by about seven percentage points on Election Day, Ms. Wilson assumed the lead thanks to mail-in ballots, which historically result in “leftward swings” in Seattle elections, Axios reported. 

Ms. Wilson has never held elected office. In 2011, she co-founded the Transit Riders Union, a nonprofit advocacy group that “grew into a force for economic populism” by leading the charge on the city’s JumpStart tax on high-earning corporations like Amazon. Mr. Harrell, 67, was a city councilman in Seattle from 2008 until he was elected mayor in 2020.

Like Mr. Mamdani, Ms. Wilson also identifies as a socialist — but she did not run under the Democratic Socialists of America party — and made transportation, public services, and affordability, or lack thereof, central to her campaign.

She made headlines by admitting to receiving money from her parents, both professors who work in New York State, to help with child care costs for her 2-year-old daughter. 

“It just speaks to how expensive and unaffordable it is, right?” Ms. Wilson said in an interview with KUOW-FM, Seattle’s NPR station.  “If you’re lucky enough to have parents who can pitch in a little bit, that’s not something to be embarrassed about.”

Also like her New York counterpart, Ms. Wilson had to walk back previous calls to “defund the police” while also promising investments in public safety alternatives like the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program. She proposed building 4,000 emergency homeless shelter units, which would cost the city at least $500 million. She also proposed a $1 billion bond for “union-built” social housing. To fund her social programs, she wants to implement a local capital gains tax to supplement Washington state’s existing capital gains tax. 

Despite being one of the world’s richest cities, Seattle lost 1,100 millionaires in the past year, with many fleeing the state’s new wealth taxes to help address a state budget shortfall of nearly $16 billion.