Harger: King County Assessor John Arthur Wilson is accused of stalking his ex. He wears an ankle monitor to work. He still won’t resign
May 7, 2026, 6:14 AM | Updated: 12:17 pm
If you’re a mom or a dad, let me ask you something.
Your daughter’s been in a relationship for a few years. The guy seemed great at first. Successful. Well-connected. A leader in the community. They got engaged. Built a life together.
But it fell apart, the way these things sometimes do. By the spring of last year, your daughter was done. Really done. She moved out. She made it clear. It’s over.
But he doesn’t stop.
The allegations against King County Assessor John Arthur Wilson
According to court filings and police reports, he sends hundreds of texts. She blocks his number. He finds other ways. He allegedly creates fake social media accounts to reach her. Sends old photos, mementos, and what court records describe as letters declaring his “undying love.” He allegedly tracks her location. Shows up at public events where she’ll be. Late at night, according to police reports, he sits in his car outside her house.
Your daughter finally does what you’ve been begging her to do. She sends him a text. “LEAVE ME ALONE!!!!!!!”
His reply, according to messages entered into the court record. One word.
“NEVER.”
So she gets a restraining order. Then another one. And he allegedly violates them. One night, she calls 911 because he’s outside her home again, and while she’s on the phone with the dispatcher, he’s right there. Police arrest him. He tells the officers he was just in the neighborhood looking at real estate.
Then your daughter starts seeing someone new. According to court filings, the ex contacts the new man’s employer with fabricated sexual assault accusations. His own words, captured in messages: “He deserves my wrath. [Expletive] him.” He openly hopes it gets the guy fired.
You’re not a psychologist. You’re a parent. But you know what you’re looking at. Something is wrong with this man. He cannot accept that another human being has the right to walk away from him.
You want every institution in the system to take it seriously. The courts. The police. His employer.
Now here’s who I’m describing.
This man is your King County Assessor.
Wilson’s Seattle stalking case: Ankle monitor, arrest, and hot tub selfies
Everything I just described comes from court filings, police reports, and sworn testimony in King County, deeply reported by PubliCola. The man is John Arthur Wilson, the elected King County Assessor, the official responsible for property tax valuations affecting 2.3 million residents. The woman is his former fiancée, Lee Keller, a Seattle public affairs consultant who has spent more than two years trying to get him to leave her alone.
As of today, Wilson walks into his government office each morning wearing a court-ordered GPS ankle monitor. A Seattle judge lost confidence that he would obey the law and stay away from the woman he is accused of stalking.
A sitting elected official. An ankle monitor. A stalking case.
You have to wonder what it is like to work in that building. Women who process his paperwork, attend his meetings, pass him in the hallway. Some of them have been through versions of this. They know what the pattern looks like. They’ve seen the texts, the showing up, the “never.” They come to work every day in an office where a man wearing a GPS ankle monitor is still in charge, still justifying himself, still refusing to go.
Wilson was arrested in July 2025 outside Keller’s home. He was charged in March 2026 with two gross misdemeanors for violating a no-contact order. He pleaded not guilty. The court ordered him to wear a GPS device with a 1,000-foot exclusion zone around Keller’s home and workplace.
Then his attorney argued he couldn’t wear the ankle monitor due to a medical condition, lymphedema in his legs, requiring daily soaking. The judge reluctantly removed it. And within hours, Wilson posted grinning selfies from a hot tub on Instagram and Facebook with captions like “What a great day to just soak in the tub and let your cares float away.”
The judge’s word for that: “Cavalier.”
She reimposed the monitor. Wilson’s attorney called the public accountability “a call for his head on a stake.”
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King County Council demanded Wilson resign. Twice. Unanimously. He refused
The King County Council, all nine members, have unanimously demanded Wilson’s resignation. Twice. Once last June. Again, last month.
“These allegations and court orders have caused irrevocable harm to the public’s trust and faith in you as a public servant and elected official,” their letter stated. “You have fully lost our confidence in your judgment and ability to perform the duties of your role.”
The Seattle Women’s Commission and The Seattle Times editorial board have also called for his resignation.
He has refused to leave.
Wilson denies stalking and domestic violence allegations. A court will decide
Wilson has pleaded not guilty to both charges. He has denied stalking or harassing Keller, telling KIRO Newsradio he has “never posed a stalking threat” to her. His attorney, John Polito, has argued that Wilson is being treated unfairly because of his public profile, saying, “If his name were John Smith, this would not be happening.” Wilson has characterized the council’s demands for resignation as politically motivated and called the push “well-orchestrated collusion.” A trial date is ahead, and a court will make the final determination on the charges.
The pattern: Grandiosity, rejection, retaliation, refusal
What I see is a pattern that every domestic violence advocate, every family court judge, and every worried parent recognizes: the pattern of someone who has lost control of another person and cannot bear it.
The grandiosity. This is a man who, while under investigation for stalking, launched a campaign for King County Executive, an office with vastly more power than the one he already held. He suspended that campaign only after being arrested outside Keller’s home. He later announced he would not seek reelection. When the court gave him a small concession on the ankle monitor, he celebrated publicly, mocking the very process meant to protect his accuser.
The inability to accept rejection. “NEVER.” Hundreds of messages. Fake accounts. Showing up, over and over, after being told in every possible way, by her, by the courts, by the police, to stop. Another person’s “no” is not a boundary to this man. It is an injury that demands a response.
The retaliation. When Keller moved on with her life, Wilson allegedly tried to destroy the new man in it, fabricating accusations designed to end a career. When the media reported on his behavior, he attacked the reporters. When the court imposed conditions, he taunted the process on social media. Every challenge to his control was met not with reflection, but with punishment.
The refusal to resign. This may be the most telling detail of all. Two unanimous council demands. Criminal charges. An ankle monitor. The collapse of his executive campaign. His own decision not to seek reelection. Every possible signal has been sent. And still he holds on, because surrendering the office would mean accepting what everyone else already sees.
Why King County Assessor John Arthur Wilson should resign today
If this were your daughter’s ex-boyfriend, if you watched a man do these things to someone you love, you wouldn’t care about his job title. You wouldn’t care about his policy accomplishments. You would want one thing: for every institution with the power to act to take it seriously and hold him accountable.
The courts are doing their part. Slowly, imperfectly, but they are. The ankle monitor is on. The charges are filed. A trial date is ahead.
But Wilson still holds public office. He still walks into a county building every day and exercises government authority over the lives of millions of people, while a GPS device on his ankle tracks his movements to make sure he doesn’t get within a thousand feet of a woman who is afraid of him.
The King County Council cannot remove him. Under the county charter, only Wilson himself can resign, or voters can pursue a recall. The council has done everything in its power, twice, unanimously, in writing, to tell him it’s time to go.
He won’t listen. That, too, is part of the pattern.
John, you need to resign. Today. Not because a council demanded it. Not because a court ordered a monitor on your ankle. Because the people of King County deserve a public servant whose judgment isn’t consumed by obsession, whose behavior doesn’t require GPS tracking, and whose relationship with authority isn’t defined by contempt.
The women in our lives, the daughters and sisters and partners who have lived some version of this nightmare, deserve to hear us say it out loud: This is not OK.
Charlie Harger is the host of “Seattle’s Morning News” on KIRO Newsradio. You can read more of his stories and commentaries here. Follow Charlie on X and email him here.
