Bruce Harrell

Harrell was born in 1958 in Seattle, to an African American father who worked for Seattle City Light and a Japanese-American mother who worked for the Seattle Public Library. As a child during World War II, Harrell's mother was incarcerated with her family at Minidoka internment camp in Idaho. Growing up, Harrell and his family lived in the Central District in Seattle in a minority neighborhood. He attended Garfield High School and played football there as a linebacker, being named to the all-Metro team. He captained the football team during his senior season, during which the team played in the 1975 Metro League championship. He was also named the most valuable player of his high school baseball and wrestling teams, and received nine varsity letters. Keith Harrell, fellow Garfield alumnus and Seattle college sports star, was his cousin. ==College football career and post-secondary education==

After high school, Harrell attended the University of Washington on a football scholarship, rejecting an offer to attend Harvard University. He played for the Washington Huskies football team from 1976 to 1979 and was named to the 1979 All-Pacific-10 Conference football team. He received the National Football Foundation Scholar-Athlete Award, made the national Academic All-American First Team in football, and was named the Husky defensive player of the year. In 2013, he was inducted into the NW Football Hall of Fame. Harrell graduated in 1980 with a Bachelor of Arts in political science. He continued his education at the university and earned a Juris Doctor from the UW Law School in 1984. In 1994, he earned a master's degree in organizational design and improvement from City University of Seattle. Harrell received the University of Washington Distinguished Alumni Award in 2007 and its Timeless Award in 2012. ==Early career==

After attending law school, Harrell joined US West, now Lumen Technologies, in 1987. Harrell was chief legal advisor to the Rainier Valley Community Development Fund, chief legal advisor to the First A.M.E. Church and First A.M.E. Housing Corporation, chief counsel to US West, and the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, Zeta Pi Lambda chapter. On the evening of September 27, 1996, Harrell allegedly pointed a gun at a man, his mother, and his pregnant wife, in a Council Bluffs casino in response to a parking dispute, which resulted in his arrest. At the time, Harrell told reporters he had only "displayed" his gun and had been carrying the weapon for protection due to death threats he had received following his housing board nomination. He did not have permit for gun in Iowa at the time of his arrest. Charges against Harrell were dismissed six months later in what County Prosecutor Rick Crowl described as an “unofficial deferred prosecution.” Crowl cited Harrell's claim of having felt threatened by "a Hispanic group" during the exchange as among his reasons for dropping the charges. According to Crowl, Harrell was required to apologize to the arresting officers. A letter written by Crowl in 2024 described Harrell's display of the weapon as “non-threatening” and the incident as “minor.” ==Seattle City Council (2008–2020)==

From 2008 to 2020, Harrell served as a member of the Seattle City Council, first in the city-wide Position 3 seat (2008–2016) and then in the south-end District 2 seat (2016–2020). Elections 2007 election In 2007, councilmember Peter Steinbrueck chose not to run for re-election, which drew five challengers for the open seat, which included Harrell, former city councilmember John Manning, and former mayoral candidate Al Runte. Prior to the primary election, Harrell and Venus Velázquez, a private public-affairs consultant, were the only candidates in the race to raise more than $100,000 and were considered front-runners. Harrell focused his campaign on public safety, pushing for increased funding for the police and fire departments, with education being another top priority. Although she was later found not guilty in a jury trial, she stated her prosecution was politically motivated since the city attorney, Tom Carr, endorsed Harrell. Harrell ran on his work on the council overseeing Seattle City Light, pushing the utility to sell surplus property, build a $100 million savings account, and raise rates. Harrell faced two challengers, food advocate and community organizer Tammy Morales and Occupy Wall Street and Housing advocate Josh Farris. In the August primary, Harrell came in first, with 61.72% of the vote, and advanced to the general election with Morales, who earned 24.66%. In the November general election, Harrell narrowly defeated Morales, 50.79% to 48.96%, a margin of 344 votes. Harrell participated in launching the Beacon Hill Broadband Pilot project, which expanded the city's fiber-optic cable network into underserved South End neighborhoods. Its passage had been led by Harrell and leaders from the Sojourner Place Transitional Housing organization. The council unanimously adopted the final version of the ordinance in June 2013. In December 2014, he announced a pilot program to equip 12 officers with body cameras in the East Precinct, with a department wide program by 2016. In 2017, Mayor Ed Murray has signed an executive order to require officers and sergeants to wear body cameras while on duty, which Harrell supported. In 2014, Harrell was the only dissenting vote when the City Council's land use committee voted to rezone the area around the Mount Baker Light Rail Station to permit dense housing construction. Harrell unsuccessfully introduced amendments that would have delayed the upzoning indefinitely for further study and reduced the amount of housing that could be constructed near the public transit station. On January 4, 2016, he was sworn in to the District 2 office and elected council president by fellow councilmembers. Later that year, Harrell supported a measure to attempt to bring back the Seattle SuperSonics, but the measure was defeated in a 5–4 vote. In 2018, Harrell supported a scaled-back version of the proposed Head Tax, a per-employee tax on large businesses to raise money for housing and homeless services, to $250 per employee. He stated his significant accomplishments included: police body cameras, legislation barring employers from automatically excluding job candidates with criminal records, and pushing internet companies to provide low-income students with high-speed access. Acting mayor of Seattle On September 12, 2017, Mayor Ed Murray resigned due to multiple allegations of child abuse, rape, and sexual molestation. Harrell served as acting mayor for a five-day period, after which the city council elected Tim Burgess to fill the position until the November election. Harrell declined to continue as acting mayor until November, which would have required him to lose his city council seat. During his short tenure as mayor, Harrell directed the city government to respond to Amazon's request for proposals from cities where it could potentially locate a second headquarters. He also ordered the city to increase public-space trash removal. ==Mayor of Seattle==

Elections 2013 election In January 2013, Harrell announced his candidacy for Seattle mayor against incumbent Michael McGinn. Harrell called McGinn's leadership style as ineffective, and criticized the mayor over his handling of the federal probe into the Seattle Police Department over use of force and biased policing. In the August primary, Harrell came in fourth with 15.22% of the vote. 2021 election After Mayor Jenny Durkan announced in 2021 that she would not seek reelection, Harrell announced his candidacy. In his announcement, he said "Look at what Seattle has become," referring to the ongoing homelessness crisis, business closures, property destruction, and racial violence. In the August primary, Harrell came in first, with 34% of the vote, and advanced to the general election with González, who earned 32.11%. González ran as a progressive, focusing on increasing corporate taxes and ending forced sweeps of homeless people, and was endorsed by Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren along with a majority of the city council. On October 8, Harrell attended a dinner event at China Harbor restaurant. This event generated criticism, including Gonzalez, after photographs emerged of Harrell and other attendees without face masks, despite restrictions for events of its size at the time requiring attendees to be masked while not eating, drinking or sitting at their table. Harrell released a statement in response which accused González of trying to distract voters from issues like homelessness and public safety. but pulled the ad due backlash with alleged racialized undertones of her advertisement. In the November 2021 election, Harrell defeated González, 58% to 41%, and was sworn in as the 57th mayor of Seattle on January 1, 2022. This announcement included numerous high-profile endorsements, including from Governor-elect Bob Ferguson and then-King County Executive Dow Constantine. If reelected, Harrell would become the first Seattle mayor to win a second term since Greg Nickels in 2005. Harrell drew seven challengers for the August primary election, including activist Katie Wilson, actor Ry Armstrong, and 2009 Seattle mayoral election runner-up Joe Mallahan. In the August primary, Harrell came in second, with 41.2% of the vote, and advanced to the general election with Wilson, who earned 50.8%. During his re-election campaign, Harrell talked about public safety, transportation, and housing affordability, while criticizing Wilson's previous support for the "Defund the Police" movement. Wilson, running as a progressive, focused her campaign on homelessness and affordability, while criticizing Harrell as the "status quo" for doing little to address homelessness and the rising cost of living. Tenure in the Oval Office of the White House Appointments and staff Deputy Mayor Kendee Yamaguchi resigned in July 2022. Harrell informed his cabinet that Greg Wong, the Director of the Department of Neighborhoods, would be promoted to deputy mayor. Harrell appointed Gino Bettis, the former assistant state's attorney for Cook County, Illinois, as director of the Office of Police Accountability on August 1, 2022. Harrell appointed Adrian Diaz, the interim chief of the Seattle Police Department, to become permanent in September 2022. In May 2024, Harrell announced Diaz' demotion from police chief to a new role in "special projects" and appointed former King County Sheriff Sue Rahr as interim chief. The demotion occurred amid lawsuits and allegations involving sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and creating a misogynistic culture in the police department, but Harrell praised Diaz in the press conference. In December 2024, Harrell fired Diaz after an internal investigation found that Diaz had hired and directly supervised a romantic partner and attempted to cover it up. In May 2025, Diaz filed a lawsuit against the city over wrongful termination and discrimination, after he came out as gay. Harrell named his niece and former campaign manager Monisha Harrell as senior deputy mayor in 2021, becoming the first black, openly gay deputy mayor in Seattle history. In 2025, Monisha Harrell stated her departure was due to a toxic workplace against her and other women in the office. Six other anonymous women with ties to the Mayor's office were interviewed by KUOW, supporting Monisha Harrell's characterizations of the work environment. In the first quarter of 2025, SPD saw a 500% increase in applications compared to the same period in 2024. In July 2025, the city announced that 100 new officers were hired in the first half of the year. In the first month of his term, Harrell launched "Operation New Day," starting by expanding police presence in the Little Saigon neighborhood, which had experienced increased crime and public drug use since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. In his February State of the City speech, Harrell vowed to clean-up crime in Little Saigon and touted that early success of the program in the neighborhood, stating "...police officers in the first 21 days of January made 23 felony arrests, 14 misdemeanor arrests." By March 2022, the drug market and illegal goods market were cleared due to daily police patrols, and the program was expanded to other "hotspots" in the city, including Downtown, due to it "successfully" working in Little Saigon. By fall 2023, arrests for public drug use and dealing, along with daily patrols, tapered off, leading to a renewed surge in crime in Little Saigon. In November 2024, in response to a mass stabbing event in Little Saigon, Harrell announced increased police patrols, plans to install CCTV cameras, and signed an executive order aimed at discouraging "illegal vending." In May 2025, Harrell and Seattle Police put online the Real Time Crime Center (RTCC), which monitor video and data streams to assist in addressing public safety. The RTCC would use information collected from a pilot program of CCTV cameras in high crime neighborhoods, including the Chinatown Internation District, Downtown, and Aurora Avenue. Housing In August 2022, as Harrell was implementing and pushing his "One Seattle plan to fight homelessness, excerpts from a meeting with the Seattle Police Department were leaked to the radio station 770 KTTH. In the leaks, he said that "no one has a right to sleep on the streets" and that the "authority" was "working against" his efforts to address homelessness, criticized the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, and vowed to work against "inexperienced" City Council members. After the leak, he acknowledged his previous comments, and did not disavow them, but used what the Seattle Times'' characterized as more diplomatic language. Harrell asserted that he had a right to "criticize what he sees" but that he would speak with individuals who might be offended by his leaked remarks. Lisa Daugaard, the director of the Public Defender Association and overseer of the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (a program to provide care for those who break the law due to extreme poverty), said that the program's relationship with Harrell was still "in good shape". Harell's administration removed over 8,000 tents in 2023 and 2024, breaking records for number of houseless sweeps performed while shelter capacity was reduced over the same period, exacerbating community concern around housing access and public safety. In 2023, Harrell sought to limit the applicability of a new Washington state law that permitted the construction of fourplexes and sixplexes in zones previously zoned exclusively for single-family housing. The state law was intended to increase housing construction amid a housing shortage. In explaining Harrell's attempt to limit density and new housing construction, his spokesperson cited concerns over gentrification and displacement. In 2024, the Harrell administration released a comprehensive 20-year housing plan that proposed to slow housing construction in Seattle. In February 2025, Seattle held a special election to determine funding for a social housing project that voters had approved in an earlier election. Harrell, alongside business leaders, endorsed Proposition 1B, a proposal to use existing tax revenue to fund this housing, while progressive leaders endorsed Proposition 1A, a proposal to create a new business tax dedicated to funding social housing. Proposition 1A was victorious, a particularly significant loss for Harrell since it came after he had launched his reelection campaign. Budget In September 2024, Harrell released an $8 billion bi-annual budget proposal for 2025–2026. The proposal included a 14% increased to public safety programs, 9% increase to arts and culture, and .8% increase to affordable housing projects. To address a $250 million budget deficit, Harrell proposed using additional Jumpstart Payroll Expense Tax fund, while cutting 159 city jobs. In June 2025, Harrell and councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck announced a reworking of the city's Business and Operations tax to raise revenues by taxing large corporations while eliminating the tax on small businesses. In August 2025, the city council unanimously passed the proposal which voters will vote to approve in the November general election. Transportation In July 2022, Harrell's administration reversed a decision made by former mayor Jenny Durkan to allow the Department of Transportation to issue parking violation tickets instead of the Seattle Police Department. The move resulted in the cancellation of 200,000 parking tickets issued by the Department of Transportation, with Seattle vowing to refund nearly $5 million to those who had paid the fines. In May 2024, Harrell proposed a $1.45 billion transportation levy, the largest in the city's history, focusing on sidewalk construction and repairs, enhanced pedestrian and bicyclist connectivity to light rail stations, transit access and reliability, bridge maintenance and planning, and the maintenance and modernization of Seattle's streets. In the November general election, voters approved the levy, which was increased to $1.55 billion by the city council. Climate change In September 2022, Harrell signed Green New Deal legislation in Seattle, allocating $6.5 million for climate projects in the city, including funding towards efforts to get city-owned buildings off fossil fuels by 2035. In April 2025, Harrell signed an Earth Day executive order focusing on updating Seattle's climate action plan and accelerating emissions reductions, the first update to the climate action plan was released in 2013. Immigration In December 2024 Harrell commented on President-elect Donald Trump's planned mass deportation of illegal immigrants, stating the importance of "protecting certain communities", but also indicated that he would support mass deportation efforts of "criminals", citing "certain activities coming out of the White House that we want to embrace." == Personal life ==

Harrell and his wife Joanne married in 1992; they have three children and live in Seward Park. Harrell has a fourth child, and a third biological child, from a previous relationship. He estranged himself from this son throughout much of his childhood. In 2022, Harrell was honored by Gold House (which honors those of Asian Pacific descent). The organization honored him and fellow mayors Aftab Pureval and Michelle Wu as having made the "most impact" in the field of advocacy and policy. == Electoral history ==

2007 election 2011 election 2013 mayoral election 2015 election 2021 mayoral election {{Election box begin no party no change 2025 mayoral election {{Election box begin no party no change ==College football statistics==