‘Unsatisfactory or below standard’: Former council president grades Katie Wilson’s first 6 months as mayor

Fresh off hosting six 2026 FIFA World Cup games with great success — and the subsequent decision to turn off surveillance cameras in the city’s Stadium District afterward — KIRO host John Curley asked former Seattle City Council President Sara Nelson about Katie Wilson’s performance as Seattle mayor six months in.

“How is the mayor doing, in your opinion?” Curley asked Nelson.

“I had high hopes,” Nelson, who served on the Seattle City Council for four years and acted as council president for two years, answered.

“Last time you were in here, I think I asked you to grade her,” Curley said. “Since I don’t have your grades available to me right now, what are you going to give her now?”

“Unsatisfactory or below standard, I would say. In terms of a letter grade, gosh, I’m not going to go there, because we know what happened to Nichols when he tried to do that,” Nelson responded. “Here’s the thing, people had a lot of hope that a lot of the really hardcore, more activist rhetoric on the campaign trail was simply to get elected and, in the beginning, she made moves in that direction to really dialogue with all sides. Then things started to happen.

“The ‘bye’ really did confirm a lot of people’s worst fears about the city that she is anti-business, or she doesn’t understand what these policies are doing in real life and what the consequences are,” Nelson continued. “It’s either ignorance or they don’t care, and that was a signal that maybe she doesn’t care that much. Then, of course, there were the cameras and a series of things. I want her to succeed because we have to have her succeed if the city is going to go forward.”

After pressure from other local leaders to turn the cameras on and keep them on, Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson agreed to activate them only during the World Cup, citing the event’s high global profile. Over the past three weeks, there were no major incidents near Seattle Stadium, renamed from Lumen Field for the World Cup, or elsewhere in the city or King County.

As of Tuesday morning, the cameras were shut down.

“I think the honeymoon is over, and there’s room for improvement,” Nelson added.

Nelson reflects on what went wrong in the 2025 election

Dionne Foster defeated Nelson for Seattle City Council Position 9 in the 2025 election, with Foster earning 63% of the vote compared to Nelson’s 37%.

“You lose an election, and then you sit and watch. Some part of you goes, ‘I told you. I told you so. I told you that this is what’s going to happen,'” Curley said. “What do you expect?”

“There is a lot of that in my mind,” Nelson said. “Here’s the thing. I have spent a lot of time thinking about how this outcome happened. Because Bruce [Harrell], Ann [Davison], and I spent a lot of our four years trying to reverse the damage done by years of failed policy, only to be defeated by candidates who promised on purpose, in public, a return to those same policies.”

“Trump got you unelected,” Curley said.

“Well, I would say that progressives weaponized what was happening in DC against local policy,” Nelson responded.

Watch the full discussion in the video above.

Contributing: Frank Lenzi, KIRO Newsradio

Listen to John Curley weekday afternoons from 3 – 7 p.m. on KIRO Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.

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