‘This is just who she is’: Jake questions whether Mayor Wilson can learn from repeated PR failures

Three people were killed, and three others were wounded in three separate shootings across Seattle’s Belltown neighborhood over Labor Day weekend.

Jake Skorheim and Spike O’Neill, co-hosts of “The Jake and Spike Show” on KIRO Newsradio, said Mayor Katie Wilson made things worse by addressing the violence for the first time at an Embassy Suites picket line, with protesters chanting, car horns blaring, and no prior public statement from her office.

“Far too many shootings this year, and of course this weekend we’ve seen three people die,” Wilson said. “This is incredibly tragic, and my heart goes out to the victims and their families.”

Wilson joined the UNITE HERE Local 8 strike alongside King County Executive Girmay Zahilay on Labor Day. When reporters approached her about the shootings, Wilson offered brief remarks with picketers in the background.

“Boy, that backdrop of people picketing and cheering,” Jake said.

“And honking and chanting,” Spike added.

Jake says this is ‘almost day 300′ and Wilson should know better

Jake said whatever the mayor’s Labor Day plans were, the context should have changed her approach, especially after the Bite of Seattle mass shooting in July and the Friday-before-a-holiday release of hundreds of internal text messages showing confusion inside her office during that crisis.

“She should have been fully aware, because she’s a grown adult, that she’s going to be asked grown-adult questions,” Jake said. “This is also right after a Friday news dump before a holiday weekend, where the mayor’s office releases those text messages where she and her team are like, ‘Hey, what should we do? Should we get you down to Bite of Seattle? Chris Daniels is calling me. What do I do?'”

He said Wilson had every reason to expect reporters on the picket line.

“When the weekend happens, and you have a bunch of shootings and a bunch of people die, you don’t still go to the thing and not expect somebody to be there asking those questions and to not be ready for that,” Jake said.

Jake recalled that Wilson also attended a strike on her first day in office, calling for a Starbucks boycott.

“But that’s day one. This is six months, seven months, however long she’s been on the job now,” Jake said.

“It’s almost day 300,” Spike said.

Spike says a statement would have fixed everything, but Jake says the problem runs deeper

Spike agreed Wilson was caught flat-footed but said the issue started before she arrived at the rally. Her office had not released any public statement about the shootings beforehand.

“The reason that the media had to ask her about the weekend’s shootings, multiple shootings, multiple fatalities was her office had issued no statements regarding those shootings,” Spike said.

He added that a written statement would have changed the entire dynamic.

“If they had issued a statement, maybe a reporter wouldn’t ask her that question in that very inappropriate setting of a picket line and a rally to support labor,” Spike said.

Spike said he wasn’t faulting Wilson for attending the event, but argued the response is part of a larger pattern of avoidable missteps.

“I understand if this was the new mayor, but almost more than a half year, three quarters of a year in, and a team that has already seen multiple replacements,” Spike said. “There’s a professional, respectful way to do that job, and an accountable way to do that job, and they just aren’t doing it.”

Jake pushed the argument further, saying the pattern isn’t about bad advisers; it’s about who Wilson is.

“She’s a socialist. Until she was mayor, she was to defund the police,” Jake said. “She doesn’t see things the same way that a lot of people see things. That’s why we’re all confounded with what her office seems to not prioritize.”

He pointed to repeated staff turnover as evidence that better hires won’t solve the problem.

“They’re all quitting,” Jake said. “They go like, ‘This is an impossible person to work with.’ I don’t believe these are mistakes that she’s making. I think this is just who she is.”

Watch the full discussion in the video above.

Listen to “The Jake and Spike Show” weekdays from noon to 3 p.m. on KIRO Newsradio 97.3