Twenty-five dollars at a time

Two campaigns, two currencies

Seattle mails every resident four $25 Democracy Vouchers in a city election year. In 2025, for the first time, the program funded the winning side of a mayor’s race against the full weight of conventional money.

Katie Wilson’s committee raised $1,024,960. Of that, $795,925 — 77.7% — arrived as vouchers, redeemed by 12,622 residents. Named, itemized donors gave her just $210,000, and only 110 of them reached the $650 contribution cap.

Bruce Harrell’s committee raised $1,189,662 — 41% vouchers, 59% named donors, with four times as many maxed-out contributors. Both campaigns spent essentially every dollar.

The two donor pools did not touch. Not one named donor in the state disclosure records gave to both campaigns. Wilson’s named money was 87% Seattle; Harrell drew six times as much from outside the city, and the fund that spent against Wilson drew heavily on Bellevue, Medina and Mercer Island.

The million dollars that arrived in October

The bigger money in this race never touched either campaign. Independent-expenditure committees — which may raise without limits but cannot coordinate with candidates — raised $2.27 million between them, more than either candidate’s committee.

Bruce Harrell for Seattle’s Future raised $1,831,271 from 302 contributors and spent $1,232,835 against Wilson — a sum larger than Wilson’s entire campaign — plus $233,988 promoting Harrell. Ninety-three percent of the anti-Wilson spending landed in October, after Wilson had won the August primary by nine and a half points.

Katie Wilson for an Affordable Seattle raised $442,731 from 230 contributors and spent $272,828 for Wilson and $117,195 against Harrell. Add the smaller committees and the outside-money imbalance was roughly 3.9 to 1 against Wilson. She won anyway.

Labor split down the middle

Organized labor did not move as a bloc. The service and white-collar unions — Protec17, UFCW, UAW, SEIU 1199NW, OPEIU Local 8, AFT Washington — funded Wilson’s side. The Teamsters Legislative League, SEIU 775, the Washington Education Association, the Machinists, the Laborers and three Teamsters locals backed Harrell, most at the $650 direct cap.

The timing tells the same story as the amounts: Wilson’s labor money arrived in the fall, through the independent committee. Her spring launch had no institutional money at all.

The network that was already there

Wilson had never held office, and her organization — the Transit Riders Union, a small 501(c)(4) with revenue near $200,000 a year — never registered a lobbyist and holds no state contracts. On paper, she had no donor network.

The disclosure records say otherwise. Her first sixty days of fundraising — March 5 to May 4 — brought 770 donors giving $84,746: 94% Seattle residents, 767 of them individuals, no PACs, no unions, almost no one at the cap. We traced every one of those early donors through five years of Washington contribution records. 52 had given to the House Our Neighbors social-housing campaigns. 65 had funded Saunatina Sanchez’s 2024 council run. 26 were Seattle DSA contributors. The launch money came from the movement she had organized alongside for a decade — one that the Transit Riders Union’s own small contributions, to Seattle’s progressive council slates from 2013 onward and to the 2022 Raise the Wage Tukwila campaign, map precisely.

That network is measurable in the electorate too, and it predates her candidacy.

What this is not

We name organizations, and individuals only where they gave at institutional scale to an independent-expenditure committee or reached the legal contribution cap. Small-donor and voucher-participant identities, though public in the raw records, are reported here only in aggregate.