KIRO NEWSRADIO OPINION

‘I wanted to see socialism’: Curley says his Katie Wilson endorsement was a test

May 5, 2026, 1:30 PM

KIRO host John Curley endorsed Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson back in August, calling her socialist ideals an “experiment.”

Now that Wilson has been in office for four months, Curley said on “The John Curley Show” on KIRO Newsradio that the city is seeing the effects of socialism in real-time.

“We’re really getting a chance to experience it. We’re driving out the job creators — they’re leaving. You have high vacancy rates. This city is now struggling to find money,” he said. “They haven’t had to start cutting yet. They still continue to promise a lot of stuff to people, and this is what you get.”

Once Katie Wilson’s socialism ‘bombs’ the city can ‘dig a nice little six-foot grave’ for it

Curley said he likes Wilson as a person, even though he disagrees with her politics. He endorsed her because he wanted to see if socialism could work, and if it didn’t, the city could lay it to rest.

“The reason I endorsed a socialist is because she is an outright, unabashed socialist, slash Marxist, as she’s described herself. And I’m like, good, get her in there. Let’s see, and if it totally bombs — without having to murder a bunch of people, as socialists and communists do — then once it bombs, we can dig a nice little six-foot grave,” he said. “We can stick socialism in there. We can cover it with dirt. We can put the gravestone on top of it and say, ‘We tried it. We didn’t kill anybody, but apparently, taking from one group of people and giving to another group of people fails as it always does.'”

Curley said that after socialism has proven it doesn’t work, people can look back on it.

“We’ll just say, ‘Well, there we go,'” he said. “And people will pay a little homage to it. ‘Remember when they tried socialism? Remember that? It didn’t work. Let’s never do that again.'”

Watch the full discussion in the video above.

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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