Ursula endorses Bruce Harrell for Seattle mayor, suggests adding Lance Randall to administration

The primary is now just a couple of weeks away, on Aug. 3. All of the leading candidates in the race for Seattle’s next mayor have now been on KIRO Radio’s Gee and Ursula Show, with the exception of Lorena Gonzalez. As of Monday morning, Gonzales has not accepted their offer to come onto the show.

“We’ve been asking for a couple of weeks and we’ve been given a bit of the runaround, and then we got no response,” host Ursula Reutin explained. “We have had everyone else who is basically considered a contender.”

Ursula gave her personal endorsement for Seattle mayor on Monday’s show, and explained why.

“As far as who I believe I’m going to be voting for, I am going to vote for former city council member Bruce Harrell, who was also council president and, briefly, the [interim] mayor,” she said.

Mayoral candidate Bruce Harrell: ‘Disappointed in a city that I love’

“To be honest, he was not the most impressive in terms of people who came onto our show and who we interviewed. I was most impressed with Lance Randall, and I’m going to explain why, and I’m going to explain why I’m going for Bruce Harrell, because I think that he is what we need right now. Because we have a city council that has gone way too far left, in my opinion, has really lost touch with what the people of Seattle want. Our city is not in better shape.”

Ursula pointed out that Mayor Jenny Durkan was considered to be a moderate Democrat, but she believes the Seattle City Council is “really off the mark.”

“So in the case of Bruce Harrell, yeah, some people may say, ‘well, we’ve been there, done that. What’s he going to bring? He doesn’t have any new ideas.’ I actually think if you look at his record, there are a bunch of things that he did in fact do as a councilmember, and if you’re talking about wanting to not be anti-police but also demand reforms, I think that he has a good record when it comes to that,” Ursula said.

In Gee and Ursula’s interview with Harrell, he talked about the need for oversight improvements in the next Seattle police union contract. It was Harrell who helped negotiate the 2018 contract that put cameras on police. But he’s also not jumping on the “defund police bandwagon.”

“One of the things that we lack on the current council right now is any sort of business sense. He is a business leader, he has a business sense, he’s very successful in his own right,” Ursula also noted about Harrell. “This is a man that really doesn’t need to go get a job right now.”

Harrell’s net worth, according to an estimate he provided and filed with the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission, is estimated at $15 million. Before he got into politics, he was an attorney and worked in telecommunications. His wife is a Microsoft executive.

Ursula liked Randall’s plan for addressing the homelessness, focusing first on those living in encampments and broken down RV’s. He’s not in favor of defunding police and he understands the need to work with leaders in the business community instead of being hostile toward them.

“I think he should have [had more traction] because I think he had some great ideas,” she said.

Find Gee and Ursula’s interview with Lance Randall here.

“[Randall] had some fresh ideas and I think that it would be smart if Bruce Harrell, who actually has a chance of winning, and who could be someone who would be a counter to our current city council, because we’re only changing two seats, right? I think that it would be smart if Bruce Harrell were to bring on someone like Lance Randall and have him be part of his administration, be someone who could help him formulate some of these ideas,” Ursula said.

Listen to the Gee and Ursula Show weekday mornings from 9 a.m. – 12 p.m. on KIRO Radio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.