On Friday afternoon, Councilmember Lisa Herbold announced that she is not seeking another term, saying that she hopes to increase the odds that a progressive holds the seat.
“I feel like it’s time to do my part to create an open seat election in District 1,” Herbold wrote on her Council newsletter. “I believe that an open seat can better drive turnout and deliver District 1 to another progressive.”
Herbold has more than 20 years of experience at City Council: two terms as a Councilmember and a long stint as legislative aide to former Councilmember Nick Licata. Herbold raised the specter of getting pinched in a primary and going the route of former City Attorney Pete Holmes, who after a similarly long career was challenged from both the left and right and ended up not making through the primary.
“When a segment of the Seattle left says that they intend to ‘primary’ sitting Council members who are not proposing a 50% cut to SPD’s budget, I am reminded that we cannot repeat the 2021 race for the City Attorney when a very strong and proven progressive didn’t advance to the general, forcing a choice between a carceral system abolitionist and a Republican,” Herbold wrote. “In a similar 2023 scenario, progressives could lose District 1, and a seat on the Council.”
One member of The Stranger Election Control Board criticized the analogy with Holmes, arguing Holmes barely campaigned in 2021 and wasn’t consistently progressive. For example, former Mayor Mike McGinn has said Holmes sought to undermine police reform through his role in the consent decree. He also failed to hold former Mayor Jenny Durkan accountable to public records and transparency laws she blatantly flouted under his watch.
Even so, Herbold hasn’t been the only sitting councilmember with this “getting Holmes’d” worry. And she likely won’t be the only one to retire rather than face a grueling campaign with the slings and arrows potentially coming from both directions. Council President Debora Juarez, who represents District 5, told the Puget Sound Business Journal in June that she does not plan to seek a third term — although such a statement isn’t binding. Other councilmembers haven’t announced their plans so far.
All seven district-based Seattle city councilmembers are up for election in 2023. Herbold represents District 1, which encompasses West Seattle, Delridge, and South Park. The district also gained Georgetown and SoDo via redistricting this year, which The Urbanist projected would make the district lean slightly more progressive based on past results. Herbold had a double-digit win with 56% of the vote in 2019, earning her second term.
However, Bruce Harrell carried the district handily in 2021 with 62% of the vote, which has led some to speculate that D1 and perhaps the city at large had shifted in a more conservative direction. On the other hand, the 2021 election does appear to have been an outlier based on the unique dynamics of the race and a progressive trend re-emerging in the 2022 election. Regardless, D1 is likely to be hotly contested.
According to leaked excerpts of speeches to local police precincts, Mayor Harrell had pledged to recruit a business-friendly, police-friendly candidate to run against and oust Herbold and other progressives impeding his police and sweeps agenda. Harrell walked back the statements once they became public and offered a cordial and congratulatory statement Friday shortly after news broke.
“Across all our work together over nearly 15 years, from legislative aide to city councilmember, [Herbold] has always led with a dedication to the details and love for West Seattle and our entire city,” Harrell said in a tweet.
Public safety chair up for grabs
Herbold chairs public safety committee, which has put her in the middle of a maelstrom around police accountability and appropriate police funding levels. Following widespread protests against police brutality in the summer of 2020, Herbold joined a majority of her colleagues in pledging to transfer funding from the Seattle Police Department to alternative community safety programs. Activists demanding that Council defund SPD by 50% took this as signing on to their 50% pledge, but Herbold soon distanced herself from the 50% figure, and earned many of their ire. In fact, some police abolitionists were celebrating Herbold’s retirement in social media posts on Friday evening.
Still, the 2020 budget that Herbold supported did decrease SPD’s budget by 18%, albeit largely through vacant positions doing their work for them and budget tricks like transferring parking enforcement out of the department. The latter move turned out to be temporary as Council transferred it back to SPD in budget deliberations this fall. While she favored a cautious and incremental approach and did not identify as an abolitionist, Herbold ultimately did support efforts to rein in SPD and reduce its scope of work and budget. Her departure leaves open the possibility a more conservative councilmember who is far more deferential to SPD could take over as public safety chair.
Of course, progressives cleaning up in 2023 elections would greatly reduce this possibility.
Herbold’s Unique Brand of Politics
Across issues, Herbold built a reputation as a workhorse legislator and a detail-oriented wonk, but she also has been ideologically heterodox and vacillated between the progressive and moderate wings depending on the issue at hand. She backed the JumpStart payroll tax in 2020, which helped provide a veto-proof majority. JumpStart proved essential to covering pandemic-related holes in the City budget over coming years in addition to boosting investment in affordable housing in a time of need.
