Katie Wilson can barely afford to live in Seattle. That's why she wants to be mayor

There is nothing flashy about Katie Wilson.

Wilson, 43, the populist candidate for Seattle mayor, wears basic button-ups from Goodwill and her hair pulled back in a low bun. She comes off as reserved, happiest when she is discussing policy.

“I'm very focused on results,” Wilson said, sitting cross-legged on a sunny afternoon a few weeks before the November general election. “I'm a very pragmatic person, and I believe in working together even if you don't agree on everything.”

Wilson stands in stark contrast to incumbent Mayor Bruce Harrell, 67, a charming showman in a crisp suit who has his personal story on speed dial.

Wilson presents herself as a sensible coalition-builder who runs a small nonprofit – the Transit Riders Union — and has lived a mostly working-class life. A renter and a mother, she runs on issues close to her heart. She speaks the language of struggling people.

But not included in the narrative Wilson tells on the campaign trail is how she affords this expensive city. The answer is simple, and arguably very Seattle: Her parents, professors in New York State, give her money.

“They send me a check periodically to help with the child care expenses,” she said, adding that daycare for her toddler costs around $2,200 a month. She did not say precisely how much her parents contribute, noting that she does not keep track. When pressed, she said money arrives every couple of months.

“Before I decided to run for office, my husband and I were just kind of juggling our kid back and forth,” Wilson said. “We didn't have her in daycare because it's so expensive. But then when I decided to run, we're like, we really need childcare.”

Wilson has mentioned the exorbitant cost of child care in Seattle throughout the campaign —noting what it costs to send her 2-year-old to daycare — but without noting how she paid for it.

Wilson acknowledged the “immense privilege” she had growing up in a secure, academic household. She became aware of that privilege while attending public schools, where she had friends who were not as lucky.

“That definitely affected me,” she said. “The feeling that this wasn’t fair, this wasn’t right.”

That realization informs her politics today, with a campaign that has resonated with tens of thousands of Seattle voters.

Wilson, a relative unknown when she filed her campaign paperwork, surprised political observers – and even herself – in August, when she trounced Harrell in the primary by almost 10 points. Despite her inexperience in elected office, she could defeat the well-known incumbent in the general election on Nov. 4 and run a city with 41 departments and a budget close to $9 billion.

Cathy Allen, a longtime Democratic political consultant in Seattle, said Wilson has a real chance.

“This campaign, which was supposed to be such a yawner, has ended up being one of the closest races in the country,” Allen told KUOW.

Wilson grew up in Binghamton, New York, the daughter of two evolutionary biologists. She moved to Seattle in her 20s with her now-husband, Scott Myers. They took the Greyhound to several cities in the early aughts, choosing Seattle to make their home.

Wilson doesn’t have a college degree, so she worked a number of odd jobs. She attended Oxford University in England, dropping out six weeks before graduation, debt-free thanks to her parents. But when she arrived in Seattle in 2004, she said she cut herself off from her parents’ money as she took some distance from the ivory tower world she came from.

“I worked a bunch of working-class jobs,” she said of her brief stints in a lab, a bakery, a law office, and in construction.

“Psychologically, it really did something to me,” she said.

In 2011, Wilson founded the Transit Riders Union, a nonprofit 501c4 focused on improving public transportation in Seattle and King County, where she’s been a paid, full-time employee since 2019. Tax records show she earned almost $73,000 from the nonprofit in 2022, when she worked 55 hours per week. She wears two hats, also serving as the group’s board president, an unpaid position.

The Transit Riders Union changed tax preparers the next year and did not spell out her employee salary as “campaign coordinator” in tax filings for 2023 or 2024. However, the IRS does not actually require that nonprofits disclose employee salaries under $100,000. Wilson reported earning somewhere between $60,000-$99,999.99 in her financial statement to the city when she declared her candidacy.

It's clear that her most recent reported income would make living in Seattle challenging for a family of three. According to MIT's Living Wage Calculator, a two-adult, single-income household with one child would need to earn just over $97,000 to support themselves. Wilson said her husband dreamed of starting a home bakery but put that idea on hold so she could focus on the campaign. For now, he does not have a paying job.

The checks from Wilson’s parents cover most of the cost of childcare for their 2-year-old daughter, Josie. Wilson and her husband pay roughly another $2,200 in rent each month for their one-bedroom apartment on Capitol Hill.

Wilson is not ashamed about the help they get.

“It just speaks to how expensive and unaffordable it is, right?” she said. “If you're lucky enough to have parents who can pitch in a little bit, that's not something to be embarrassed about.”

Wilson has been called Seattle’s Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist running for mayor of New York City. Like Mamdani, Wilson is the kind of politician who says they want to fix things for regular, working people through policies like renter protections against unnecessary fees and exorbitant rent increases. And like him, she represents a shift.

Allen, the political consultant, said New Yorkers view Mamdani as “the guy coming in for change,” which appeals, even if they know little about him. The same can be said for Wilson. People are unsatisfied, Allen said, and many will give her a chance.

“This is all about a sentiment in the air,” Allen said.

Wilson sees this, too, but notes the differences between her and Mamdani. He came from the Democratic Socialists of America; Wilson has always been her own woman, politically speaking.

“I'm a Democrat, I'm a socialist, fine with being called a democratic socialist,” she said, seemingly bored with the question. “It’s really just more of a belief system or an orientation for me.”

Foundational to that is the belief that the government should take on big challenges, she said. She believes everyone should have a roof over their head, an opportunity to do meaningful work, and access to child care, health care, and elder care.

Wilson has laid out her big ideas for voters, several of which come with hefty price tags. She’s floated a billion-dollar bond to fund social housing. Her plan to build 4,000 emergency homeless shelter units would cost another $500 million or more, according to Harrell.

If Seattle voters approve her vision, Wilson would be the third woman – and first mother with a toddler on her hip – to serve as mayor of Seattle. That appeals to voters like Kelsey Mesher, who has worked with Wilson on transit policy campaigns. Like Wilson, she also has a toddler.

“I remember talking to her about her taking some leave to go be with her new baby,” Mesher recalled. “And I could see in her eyes, she was like, ‘Yes, I’m excited for my baby, and, like, I cannot wait to come back and keep at it.’”

Alison Eisinger, who’s known Wilson for more than a decade, said she’s a real person.

“I've helped her schlep her child asleep in a baby carriage up a set of stairs in a building without an elevator,” Eisinger said. “She is taking meetings while she's chasing her toddler.”

Wilson’s come this far with help — from family, from supporters. If she makes it all the way to the mayor’s office, she wants to create policies she thinks will help the most people.

“We have one life on Earth. What can we do that has the greatest impact?” she said. “That's why I'm running, because it seems to me the best way to advance the same goals that I've been working on throughout my career. How can we make this city a better place for people?”

Editor's note, 10/27/2025: This story was updated to further illuminate Katie Wilson’s parents’ financial support, including more context and an additional quote from KUOW's original interview with Wilson earlier this month.

Editor's note, 10/28/2025: The original story incorrectly stated that there were discrepancies between Wilson's disclosure form and the tax filings of her nonprofit. The IRS requires disclosure of any compensation to elected officers of the board. Wilson does not receive compensation in this capacity. The IRS also requires disclosure of compensation for a “key employee” if it exceeds $150,000, or for the highest compensated employees if they receive more than $100,000. Wilson’s reported compensation is below these thresholds. KUOW regrets the error and apologizes for the mistakes in our reporting.