Harrell "confident we will continue to execute at the same pace and quality."

Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell’s Chief of Staff, Jeremy Racca, abruptly quit this week. This comes shortly after Harrell’s devastating primary loss to Katie Wilson, whose vote share has reached roughly 51%. Racca stated that he is leaving for health reasons, not because of the loss. Granted, he is headed to a New York law firm, which is a puzzling place for for improving one’s health, given their famously grinding schedules.

Heads turned when, in Harrell’s attempt to praise Racca, the Mayor accidentally admitted that he plans to continue his do-nothing approach to governing in a second Seattle term:

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For those who are paying attention to the pace and quality of Harrell’s work, his attempt at inspiration feels more like a threat.

The Mayor, who is known around city hall as an absentee boss who doesn’t “get into the details,” has moved at a snail’s pace for years. Without strong Mayoral attention, it is extremely hard to do big, important things. And sadly, when Harrell does jump in, he often slows things down and accomplishes even less.

Some examples, just off the top of my head:

Last year, he tried to delay Sound Transit construction by an extra year, raising costs by $500 million, just to move a station to a place where everyone agreed that fewer people would ride the train. (This was because Amazon and the Chamber told him to. One more reason why no one believes their cries of “fiscal responsibility” and “focusing on outcomes” are in good faith).

In fact, after fifteen years in office, and three as Mayor, Harrell didn’t do a damn thing to speed up delivery of big projects like Sound Transit until a few weeks ago, after polling showed he might lose his race for Mayor. Now he wants people to think he is a champion of permitting reform.

This is, of course, part of a pattern. Harrell is the archetype of a do-nothing Democrat who has had a long and undistinguished career in office catering to those who gum up the works and undermine public confidence in government.

Harrell kept up an excruciatingly slow pace when it comes to standing up a civilian response to nonviolent emergency calls. He also skipped over police accountability when negotiating with the police union, giving away all his leverage–meaning that meaningful police accountability is many years in the future. 

He promised to build thousands of shelter spots fast. He didn’t, and we’ve lost shelter since he started.

State law required Seattle to deliver its 20-year growth plan by last December, and it is still not even close to done. Harrell did get involved in that process, overruling his own staff and planning experts to make the plan smaller, weaker, more self-serving for his own neighborhood, and overall much less impactful and more likely to increase housing costs and displacement. 

Then, of course, there is his history of delaying accountability for his scandal-ridden police chief, as well as our former Mayor–for sexually abusing minors (and indicating that his judgment on this matter was “spot on.”) He also was slow to fire one of his other lead staffers, who allegedly raped a community member.

Ditto for his delay in criticizing Trump. 

It is easy to think of other examples of Harrell delaying (climate action, fixing structural budgetary shortages, sitting on money for affordable housing) or trying to prevent us from doing much of any good thing (social housing, safe streets, anyone?)

Harrell’s promise in his second term, is that he’s going to keep the pace steady. Given that his leadership moves about the speed of the “Late 8” (another festering issue he has ignored for years!), we shouldn’t expect much from a second term.