2025 City Council & Mayoral Candidate Endorsements
Our Process
Allied Arts has a long history of holding candidate forums and interviews to help inform the public about which candidates align with Allied Arts’ mission of fostering a Seattle with great public spaces and a vibrant arts community for all.
We held an hour-long interview with each candidate for the general election* to help us determine how they would support Allied Arts’ Mission and our Grow Gracefully Vision, which is centered on the belief that growth should make Seattle more livable for everyone and make Seattle a city we love even more than we do today. In addition, on October 13 we held a city council candidate forum in partnership with Allied Arts Foundation.
In the interviews we asked each candidate how they would support the five pillars of Grow Gracefully. We asked several questions for each pillar; key questions are included below.
A - Affordability for all.
How would you promote affordable spaces that meet the unique housing and workspace needs of artists?
B – Business. Support small, local businesses which help define our communities.
How would you help preserve and promote small, locally owned businesses?
C – Character. Preserve “Character Structures & Districts” (Buildings and districts meaningful due to their history, architecture, use or scale)
As the Comprehensive Plan encourages much-needed density in focused areas throughout the city, how will you help preserve a few key buildings which help define each neighborhood?
D - Design. Promote great design and improve design quality of new buildings.
For Design Review, do you prefer to “mend it” or “end it’?
E - Excellent infrastructure, Provide excellent infrastructure to match growth and enhance the city (transportation, open space, light rail). In short, great design for public works.
Given that Sound Transit 3 will build a second light rail tunnel downtown, do you support that tunnel having a station at the King Street regional rail hub which uses Union Station as a gateway and serves the Chinatown/Internation District?
We thank each of the candidates for participating in our interviews and all candidates for participating in the democratic process by running for public office.
Our Endorsements
Council District 2: Eddie Lin
Congratulations, D2, you have two great candidates in this race!
Adonis Ducksworth and Eddie Lin would each make a solid D2 councilmember. It’s clear they are both running for the right reasons – to serve the people of District 2. We understand that candidates are motivated to run for various reasons, and we appreciate that they key motivations for Adonis and Eddie to run are issues such as housing affordability rather than Allied Arts’ Grow Gracefully vision. However, they do appreciate and support our vision.
An important difference which sets the two apart was their position on the 5th pillar of Grow Gracefully (Excellent Infrastructure). As noted above, Sound Transit is about to make a 100+ year decision for the region when it decides if the new light rail tunnel will have a station that serves the regional rail hub. We are looking for a candidate who sees the long-term civic importance of working to ensure we make the right decision here, and Eddie showed more leadership on this vital issue.
Council Position 8 (Citywide): Alexis Mercedes Rinck
Of all the candidates we interviewed, we were most impressed by Alex Mercedes Rinck. She is smart, strategic, effective, passionate, engaging, and inspiring while also being open and humble. She understands the importance of meaningful spaces which define our communities and has personally worked to preserve them. She has been proactive in her position on City Council and has a long list of accomplishments, which is especially impressive when you remember that she has been in office for less than one year.
In addition, Alexis agreed to meet with Allied Arts representatives after the election to further discuss our issues and specific policy recommendations. A key goal of Allied Arts is to impact city policy, and Alexis’ commitment to meet with us about our policy goals shows a sincere interest in the Grow Gracefully vision.
Given all this, it would be challenging for any candidate to earn our endorsement over Councilmember Mercedes Rinck. The other Pos. 8 candidate, Rachel Savage, does appreciate the value of meaningful public spaces, and we believe she is running to do what she believes would improve the City. However, Savage’s focus is too narrow and does not compare to the effectiveness, engagement, and accomplishments of Councilmember Mercedes Rinck.
Council Position 9 (Citywide) Sara Nelson
Position 9 has two competent candidates who would bring different assets to the position.
Dionne Foster is smart, competent and open to our ideas. Her varied background at WA Progress Alliance, the Seattle Foundation, City of Seattle, and King County would serve Seattle well on City Council. In addition, we appreciate that she demonstrated her understanding of how arts and historic preservation provide meaning and community to Seattle residents.
Sara Nelson has a long history of serving on city council, first as staff, then as a councilmember, and now as council president. We greatly appreciate that Sara has the rare experience among Seattle City Councilmembers that she is a small business owner. Sara knows local businesses and her track record of supporting small businesses stands out when we assess candidates against the pillars of Growing Gracefully.
In addition, Sara initiated an invitation for Allied Arts to meet with her again to further discuss our vision of Grow Gracefully and our policy recommendations. This demonstrates Sara’s engagement and belief in Allied Arts’ vision for Seattle.
Mayor
This was our most difficult endorsement decision this year. These candidates would each bring very different strengths and weaknesses to the office of mayor.
Mayor Harrell understands the importance of a vibrant arts community to the success of our downtown and neighborhoods. He also can list a number of accomplishments that speak to our Grow Gracefully vision. Katie Wilson has an impressive track record of success uplifting the lives of all residents, which is the fundamental vision of Grace Gracefully.
It is noteworthy that Katie has not held public office and does not have the management experience one would expect of a mayor. However, Katie is smart, very knowledgeable of public policy, and has the humility to evolve her policies as new information becomes available.
As noted under our comments for District 2, Seattle has the opportunity to make the legacy decision to connect the new light rail line to the King Street regional rail hub and the CID while turning Union Station into an amazing transit station. Unfortunately, not only does Bruce Harrel disagree with the importance of this connection, but he and (at the time) fellow Sound Transit Board member Dow Constantine introduced a new concept for the new light rail tunnel which would bypass the regional rail hub at King Street and forever forgo the transit system Seattle deserves. Mayor Harrell later doubled down on this decision and hired a consultant to lobby Sound Transit board members to support this concept.
We appreciate Mayor Harrell’s explanation of why he took this position. However, Allied Arts disagrees with this decision, and because he took a major step further by putting many resources into killing a concept vital to Grow Gracefully and Allied Arts’ vision for Seattle, our board is not able to endorse Bruce Harrell for mayor in this race.
We endorse Katie Wilson and we trust that if elected, she will assemble a team with the experience in city government to successfully implement her vision of a Seatle where everyone belongs and thrives.
Background on our Endorsement Process
For our 2025 endorsement program, our board established the following guidelines:
- Endorse one candidate per race unless there are exceptionally compelling reasons to endorse both.
- Endorse a candidate in every race. Avoid endorsing neither candidate, because that defeats the purpose of a candidate endorsement process.
*Note: Each candidate was able to schedule a time for an interview within our two-week interview window, with the exception of Rachel Savage. However, Rachel participated in our Oct. 13 candidate forum.