Transit can drive a candidate all the way to City Hall.
An unapologetic advocate to reduce car dependency and give residents more transportation options is leading the primary vote in the race to be Seattle's next mayor — and sending the latest signal that transportation reform might just be a winning campaign issue in local elections across America.
Seattle Transit Riders Union co-founder Katie Wilson (no relation to the author of this article) made headlines last week when early returns showed her winning a four-point lead in the Emerald City mayoral race over incumbent Bruce Harrell — a margin which the Seattle Times said is "likely to worsen for Harrell as more ballots are counted ... and, in fact, made him the underdog heading into the general election" in November, when the two are poised to face off next.
Katie Wilson's lead has grown since election night, when she was up by ~1,300 votes or 1.4%. Other Seattle progressives also did well against centrist opponents. www.theurbanist.org/2025/08/05/k...
— The Urbanist (@theurbanist.org) 2025-08-08T22:55:46.629Z
And some think that Wilson's progressive transportation bona fides had a lot to do with those surprise results. Wilson's exhaustive mobility platform clocks in at nearly 1,000 words, and details exactly how she'll "make it possible for many more residents to move around our city without driving"; her campaign bio, meanwhile, prominently emphasizes a nearly 15-year career as a public transit advocate with a long list of wins, which she positions as her way of "fighting for working families" like her own.
"We absolutely think that our emphasis on transit-related issues was a big part of the success in the primary," Alex Gallo-Brown, campaign manager for Wilson for Seattle, said in a statement to Streetsblog. "Many people in Seattle are hungry for a city that doesn't require car dependency in order to live a good life."
National transportation reform advocates, though, argue that stories like Wilson's are just one example of how voters across the country are embracing candidates who pledge bold action to make transportation safer, more affordable, and less reliant on automobiles — and rejecting those who don't.
"There's always going to be people who claim that any change to any street somehow that constitutes a 'war on cars,'" said Mike McGinn, executive director of America Walks and a former mayor of Seattle himself. "And I think that that's frozen a lot of politicians. ... But there's a growing public that's just like, 'No: this is a fundamental building block of a good city. There should be lots of housing, there should be more ways to get around — and the streets should be great places to walk."
'Ask for everything you want'
McGinn argues that while many progressive city leaders pay "lip service" to vague ideas of transportation safety and commute affordability, he's noticed that a rising cohort of mayoral hopefuls are putting forward far more concrete visions for a multimodal transportation future — and not being shy about how corrosive mass car usage has been to their communities.
Detroit mayoral candidate Mary Sheffield, for instance, is focused exclusively on improving the city's bus system in her transportation platform — and took a commanding lead in the city's primary race last week. Former Metro Transit Authority Chair and Walk Bike Nashville President Freddie O'Connell, meanwhile, won the mayoralty of largely car-dependent Nashville by a 2-1 margin in 2023.
Michelle Wu famously won office in Boston's City Hall in 2021 largely off the strength of her promise to "Free the T" and build more active mobility infrastructure — though, to be fair, The Boston Globe has since accused her of "backpedaling on public transit," and Streetsblog MASS says she's "repeated several of [the] favorite talking points" of bike lane skeptics after the city removed protection on key bike lanes. Still, even her relative support for street safety initiatives has so far won her a commanding lead over opponent Josh Kraft, who has pledged to immediately pause all bike lane projects if elected.
And, perhaps most famously, in New York City, state Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani not only won the Democratic primary for mayor, but has inspired a minor universe of think pieces with his populist economic promise of "fast, free buses," rapid densification near transit hubs, the elimination of parking requirements, and other policies that rank high on many urbanist wish lists.
Perhaps not incidentally, Mamdani participated in a 2023 panel for a national coalition of transit rider unions — of which Wilson's union is a member — urging advocates to "ask for everything you want" and "politicize what is typically a backroom discussion" like transit budget negotiations by bringing them squarely into the limelight.
Getting loud about the need for big transportation change, some advocates say, represents a massive strategic shift for transit-friendly politicians, who too often scale down the scope of their vision for fear that they'll lose the votes of the driving majority. In reality, though, many U.S. motorists aren't driving by choice, and they want strong investments that give them alternatives — and prove it when it comes time to head to the ballot box.
"Mamdani’s observation that the public is eager to invest more to make our buses faster, more affordable and more available, and not just prevent further draconian cuts to our already inadequate public transit systems," wrote Pittsburghers for Public Transit about the panel. "It’s hard to motivate riders to fight to maintain a status quo that does not meet all our needs."
A new model
It's no surprise that some local opinion writers have dubbed Katie Wilson "the Zohran Mamdani of Seattle," but she represents her own archetype of the urbanist-as-political candidate: the "bus-riding mama who gets shit done," as Tom Fucoloro of Seattle Bike Blog memorably wrote.
On the "gets shit done" side of the coin, advocates have praised Wilson as an unsung hero of many key transit initiatives, co-founding coalitions that helped add bus and bike lanes to major projects and winning low-income fare programs that have been a lifeline to working families. That impressive track record, her supporters say, is a sign that Wilson has not just the aspirations of a great transit mayor, but skills to actually make it real.
"Often, people don’t even know that some of these hugely successful initiatives were due in large part to her organizing because she has rarely been the face of those efforts," Fucoloro continued. "Instead, she has been out there gluing together the coalition that gets the wins."
Advocates like Anna Zivarts of Disability Rights Washington, meanwhile, have also praised Wilson's long record of grassroots public service, including her efforts to architect the "JumpStart Seattle" payroll tax on large corporations that helped the city avoid deep cuts to affordable housing and other services that support low-income residents. During the pandemic, Wilson also pushed hard for more when it came time to renew a transit funding sales tax, despite plummeting ridership due to COVID-19, Zivarts said.
"The narrative from the policy wonks was that we could go with a lower tax rate because ‘no one was riding transit anyway,’" Zivarts told Streetsblog. "I didn’t know enough to push back at first, instead trusting the wonks who said a higher rate for transit wouldn’t pass so we shouldn’t try for it. But Katie knew better, and fought for a higher rate that could fund more critical service — which ultimately won in a landslide of public support.
"Katie is so impressive because she both understands the need to mobilize community members (transit riders and renters specifically) to push for fair and progressive funding, but also understands the policy tools available better than pretty much anyone else," Zivarts added.
It is Wilson's lived experience, though, that perhaps sets her apart the most. As a car-free commuter long before she ran for office and a renter of a one-bedroom home she shares with her husband and toddler, supporters point out that she is the rare politician who doesn't need the Week Without Driving challenge, which Zivarts founded, to understand the daily realities of residents who can't or don't use a personal vehicle.
Mayor Harrell, to his credit, has won endorsements from Transportation for Washington and Washington Bikes, who praised him for overseeing the installation of several key bike network projects and getting 23 more miles of protected lanes in the pipeline. Supporters point out that he also launched (and recently extended) a pilot project that barred cars from the iconic Pike Place Market, and argue that he's largely made good on his memorable promise to "lead with transit" in a 2023 campaign debate.
That inspiring comment, though, was immediately undercut when Harrell rushed to clarify that "I don't lead with bikes" — a phrase which quickly became infamous amongst Seattle bike advocates. He also said that suspected that Seattle's transportation emissions would improve because “cars will get smaller and electrified, so we also don’t ignore the fact that people will continue to drive cars"; in reality, the average U.S. car got 17 percent wider and 12 percent longer between 2013 and the year that comment was made, and less than 1.4 percent of cars on the road in 2024 were electric.
The Harrell administration drew further controversy when it was revealed in June that his office had drastically scaled back the city's signature "open streets" event, Bicycle Weekends, which closed Lake Washington Boulevard to car traffic to allow for outdoor recreation and access to the nearby waterfront. Several locals we spoke to for this story compared that iconic road to San Francisco's Great Highway, which was transformed into a park after years of being used a cut-through for drivers; some point out that Harrell himself lives just a few blocks away, in a home he bought for a reported $1.4 million in 2011.
Time will tell whether those stories will influence the outcome the ballot box in Seattle this November — and whether voters prefer policies that unabashedly lead with bikes, transit, and mobility justice nationwide.
"[We need to] stop reacting to the people yelling 'no,' and start figuring out how to get to 'yes," added McGinn of America Walks. "Because what we're seeing, I think, is that people want to see a change in their places."
