It's Time to Appoint a New Councilmember!
Yes, we're doing this again.
By Erica C. Barnett
The Seattle City Council will appoint a new colleague to City Council District 2—the seat vacated by Tammy Morales, who resigned last year—later this month (full process, including guidelines for applicants, and timeline here). The council went through this same process this time last year, when they appointed Tanya Woo to a vacant citywide seat after she lost to Morales in 2023.
As of Tuesday, about nine people had applied for the open seat, but many more are expected to submit applications before the deadline—this Thursday, January 9, at 5pm. At least half a dozen of these applicants (none of them, if you're wondering, named Tanya Woo) have been making the political rounds.
Although the council appointment process is much more of a backroom affair than it was back when Josh and I were live-Slogging the public meetings that preceded Sally Clark's appointment in 2006**, it will be at least somewhat more competitive than last year, when the council went through the motions of a public process before appointing Woo, the only member of 2023's backlash election bloc who didn't win in November. The council’s conservative-by-Seattle-standards majority will want to pick someone who can win an election, although they don’t have the greatest track record on that front—their last pick, Woo, lost to progressive Alexis Mercedes Rinck in a blowout last year.
As always, there are frontrunners. The two names we're hearing most are Nimco Bulale—a Somali immigrant, racial equity consultant and former OneAmerica staffer who ran for the open 37th District state House seat last year—and Adonis Ducksworth, a longtime SDOT communicatiosn who's among many departmental staffers "on loan" to Mayor Bruce Harrell's office as his senior transportation advisor. Both Bulale and Ducksworth have been meeting with representatives from business and labor in the runup to the brief public process before the council chooses Woo's successor.
Others who have reportedly applied for the open seat include Thaddaeus Gregory, a land use attorney and son of former Seattle Municipal Court Judge Willie Gregory; Randy Engstrom, the former head of the city's Office of Arts and Culture; and Takayo Ederer, a resident of Mount Baker.
The council will vote on the appointment on January 27. Whoever the new councilmember is, they will join the least experienced city council in modern history: The council's longest-serving member, Dan Strauss, started in 2020, and the next longest-tenured, Sara Nelson, has been there since 2022. The remaining six members are all new as of last year.
* Don’t hassle me about “conservative”—these folks are conservative by Seattle standards, not MAGA’s, and everybody knows that.
** Those posts are, sadly, lost to time.
I couldn't help laughing at the posts about this along the lines of "The council has the chance to do the funniest thing ever" by appoint Woo yet again, after yet another election loss. I'm relieved to hear they won't troll us all by doing so, based on the applicant list.