KUOW's 2025 voter guide for Western Washington ballots

Ballots in Washington state’s general election are due by Nov. 4.

Below, we’ll walk you through some of the hottest races we’re watching. Most are in the Seattle area, with a few notables elsewhere in Western Washington. We also highlight a couple ballot measures to keep an eye on.

KING COUNTY

King County Executive

King County executive is a little-known but huge job overseeing the metro bus system, county jail, sheriff, drug and mental health treatment funding, and wastewater division, among other things. The executive manages around 17,000 employees and a huge budget that’s in trouble. Declining tax revenues mean big cuts are probably imminent.

The executive seat is open for the first time in 16 years, with two prominent Democrats sparring over the role: Girmay Zahilay and Claudia Balducci. Both currently sit on the County Council, Zahilay representing Skyway and part of Seattle up to the University District, and Balducci serving the Eastside.

The two don’t differ on much. They both want to raise property taxes, build more housing, and expand mental health and drug treatment.

Balducci’s campaign has focused on her more than two decades of experience in elected office, first in Bellevue City Hall as deputy mayor, then mayor, and in her current role as a County Councilmember, pushing for transit, homeless shelters, and housing on the Eastside.

Zahilay’s campaign has emphasized his connections to Washington state’s top Democratic leaders — he’s endorsed by Gov. Bob Ferguson and both of Seattle’s congressional representatives. He also trounced all challengers in the primary, landing 14 points ahead of Balducci.

Seattle Mayor

Charismatic incumbent Bruce Harrell faces a surprisingly tight race against populist community organizer Katie Wilson. Harrell, who finished down nearly 10 points against Wilson in the primary, is at risk of becoming a one-term mayor, just like all his predecessors in the past two decades.

An establishment moderate with endorsements from the governor and state attorney general, Harrell touts his policies of increased police hiring after years of attrition, and encampment removals to reduce visible homelessness. He paints his opponent as an inexperienced radical with ideas that would break the city’s budget. Wilson has slammed Harrell for not opening more shelter beds while homelessness increased under his tenure.

Though this position is nonpartisan, Wilson has drawn comparisons to Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist running for New York City mayor. Wilson heads the nonprofit Transit Riders Union, an advocacy group she founded, and has campaigned for higher minimum wages in the region. She also was part of the effort to create and lobby for Seattle’s JumpStart Tax, revenues from which the city has used to balance its budget. She and Harrell have both shown interest in increasing Seattle’s taxes on big businesses, but Wilson says she doesn’t want to push major employers out of the city — something Harrell notes is already happening.

Part of what drove Wilson to run is the city’s affordability crisis. She and her husband, with whom she’s raising a 2-year-old, get money from Wilson’s parents to pay their roughly $2,200 child-care bills each month.

Seattle City Attorney

City Attorney Ann Davison could be in for a tough general election, after finishing the primary election 22 points down against Erika Evans, her progressive challenger.

Evans worked in the city attorney’s office before Davison’s tenure, then moved on to become an assistant U.S. attorney, helping prosecute rioters from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. She left her federal job shortly after Donald Trump returned to the White House for a second term.

Davison’s affiliation with the Republican Party has become a central issue in her run for reelection, even though the city attorney position is nonpartisan. Evans has called Davison “disgraceful” for publicly joining the Republican Party in 2020. During Trump’s second term, Davison has spoken out against some of the president’s policies and sued his administration on behalf of Seattle several times. KUOW has repeatedly asked her if she still identifies as a Republican, but she has declined to answer each time, insisting instead that party is irrelevant in the race.

Evans claims that Davison has been too punitive in her approach as city attorney and has said she won’t enforce Davison’s signature ordinances designed to keep individuals with drug and prostitution-related charges from entering certain zones of the city. Davison says her policies are working to clean up Seattle after a pandemic-era crime spike.

Seattle City Council, District 2

The special election to fill this seat has two city insiders facing off.

Eddie Lin, an assistant attorney for the city, finished the primary election with a commanding 18-point lead over Adonis Ducksworth, Mayor Harrell’s transportation policy manager.

District 2 stretches all the way from the Chinatown-International District through South Seattle and is struggling with issues like gun violence and street disorder. Both candidates oppose the city’s controversial plan to expand surveillance cameras to tackle these problems.

Ducksworth has out-fundraised his opponent and earned an endorsement from The Seattle Times. Lin was endorsed by The Stranger.

And if you’re thinking, “Hang on, didn’t Seattle just have an election in this district?” Well, you’re right. Tammy Morales left the seat abruptly at the end of last year, and the Council appointed Mark Solomon to fill in temporarily.

Whoever wins in November will serve only a half-term, with the option to run again in 2027.

Seattle City Council, Position 8

This race pits the most progressive voice on the council against a self-identified “Capitol Hill Republican.”

Incumbent Alexis Mercedes Rinck looks poised to hang onto her citywide seat, after a blowout primary election where she finished 65 points ahead.

Her opponent, Rachael Savage, owns a crystal and incense shop. She’s criticized the city for allowing street disorder to proliferate, and says she supports forced treatment or jail for people arrested for drugs. She also supports Trump’s efforts to cut federal funding for homeless housing programs and has called on Trump to send National Guard troops into Seattle to help establish a hospital or treatment center for people with mental health or drug addiction.

Rinck recently teamed up with Mayor Harrell to propose a revamp of Seattle’s business and occupation tax. Voters will see this measure on the ballot in November as Seattle’s Proposition No. 2. Rinck said the measure would help ease the city’s budget gap, though critics worry the proposal was rushed.

Rinck previously served as a policy analyst for the troubled King County Regional Homelessness Authority and supports a housing-first approach for people with complex needs living outdoors. However, she told KUOW that low-barrier housing buildings can attract disorder and create problems for the neighborhoods where they’re located — and she said the city could do more to address this.

Rinck won a special election last November, beating appointee Tanya Woo, whom the council installed in January 2024 when the seat opened up. This year is part of the normal election cycle for Position 8, so whoever wins will serve a full four-year term.

Seattle City Council, Position 9

Council President Sara Nelson is seeking a second term in her citywide seat. But she has her work cut out for her. The business-friendly centrist came in more than 20 points behind her progressive challenger, Dionne Foster, in the primary.

Foster is a former policy advisor for the city and headed up a nonprofit advocacy group that lobbied on behalf of the state’s capital gains tax. She says she supports such a tax for Seattle, to help plug the city’s budget gap — something Nelson says she opposes because revenue from a local capital gains tax could vary too much from year to year.

Foster wants to open up more homeless shelter capacity in the city and speed up the approval process for building new tiny home villages. Nelson sits on the board of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority and says the organization doesn’t always work efficiently with the city, and that, “We're asking some very hard questions about the viability of [the KCRHA].”

SNOHOMISH COUNTY

Everett Mayor

Everett Mayor Cassie Franklin’s bid for a third term may be a dead heat.

Challenger Scott Murphy, a former city councilmember and president of a glass and glazing company, got just 65 votes more than Franklin in the August primary. He has criticized Franklin’s leadership, particularly on homelessness, which has nearly doubled in Everett since she took office in 2018, according to yearly one-night counts.

When Franklin won reelection in 2021, she took a surprising turn for a former youth homelessness nonprofit leader, banning sitting, lying down, and even giving food or supplies to homeless people in a large part of downtown Everett. But Franklin has also greatly expanded the city’s shelter capacity and launched a behavioral response team as an alternative to calling police.

Franklin has a huge array of endorsements spanning Democrats in Congress to Republicans in nearby city halls. Murphy has endorsements from Democratic state senators and Republican county councilmembers.

Both candidates have raised and spent roughly the same amount of money — Franklin mostly from unions, the Snohomish County Democratic Party, and corporations like Microsoft and Amazon, Murphy from real estate developers, auto dealers, and business executives.

Lynnwood City Council

Two Lynnwood City Council seats are up, but one is for an especially contentious race between an incumbent who has violated ethics rules and inflated his résumé, and a challenger who spent several days in jail in 2020 for domestic violence.

Lynnwood City Councilmember Josh Binda had a “tumultuous” introduction to city hall. He spent campaign funds on Versace clothing, plane trips, and dental work. He admitted to violating ethics, using his official email and photos in city hall to promote his motivational speaking business. He also “embarrassed” local Democrats who endorsed him by sucking on a bright red lollipop during a hearing on his conduct.

Binda’s bio on the official City of Lynnwood website says he’s attending University of Washington, but a spokesperson for UW told KUOW there’s no record of anyone by his name attending any of UW’s campuses. The right-wing outlet the Lynnwood Times reported this month he is misleading voters in the Snohomish County voter guide by saying he was student body president at his high school. Binda didn’t comment on these allegations to KUOW before publication.

In August, Binda landed 87 votes behind his primary challenger, Bryce Owings. Owings is a carpenter and union treasurer who’s raised only $9,000 — a little more than Binda — from police, firefighters, and trade unions, among others.

But Owings has come under the microscope recently for a 2020 incident where his wife said he tried to strangle her during a fight when they were both intoxicated. He was found guilty of domestic violence, KING 5 reported. Owings and his wife are still together, have three kids, and say they’ve been sober for five years. He also has an older string of drug and alcohol-related arrests going back to 2005, including supplying liquor to a minor and possessing drug paraphernalia.

Owings told KING 5 sobriety has made him a better man.

PIERCE COUNTY

Tacoma Mayor

No matter who voters pick for mayor, Tacoma will have a white man in the role instead of a Black woman for the first time in 16 years. Current Mayor Victoria Woodards is term-limited from seeking reelection.

The Tacoma mayor is essentially an at-large city councilmember who gets paid a lot more, and has ceremonial duties. The city is run by a manager appointed by the council.

City Councilmember John Hines and former City Councilmember Anders Ibsen are two similar flavors of Democrat vying for mayor.

Hines, more moderate and pro-business, is a Tacoma teacher who drafted a ban on camping around homeless shelters and public property near rivers and waterways. He wants to focus on revitalizing downtown, and he’s raised about $250,000 from the state Democratic Central Committee, landlords, and unions representing police and trade workers, among others.

Ibsen is more progressive. He emphasizes his work on the council passing tenant protections in 2018 that required landlords to give 90 days’ notice before terminating a month-to-month rental agreement. He’s a realtor who has spent more than $50,000 on his own campaign, and Hines’ campaign has implied he’s also using ads for his real estate business to get around prohibitions on social media political ads.

Besides himself, donors to Ibsen’s campaign include unions representing teachers, health care workers, and teamsters.

STATE LEGISLATURE

5th Legislative District

There are an unusually high number of special legislative seats up in this odd-year election, the domino effect from a perfect storm of appointments, vacancies, retirements and, in this district, a sudden death in April of sitting Sen. Bill Ramos, who was found on a trail near his home in Issaquah.

The Democratic Party and King County Council picked former Issaquah City Councilmember and state Rep. Victoria Hunt to succeed Ramos in June. She pulled out a strong primary showing in August at 54%.

Republicans in Washington state are hoping polling unpopularity of the Democratic Party — which controls the governor’s mansion and Legislature — will help them in low-turnout races. But this one, which has leaned more Democratic as the Seattle outer suburbs have grown, will be tough for the Grand Old Party.

Chad Magendanz, a computer science teacher at Sammamish High, won a House seat handily here in 2014, but has since lost four bids for Senate or House in this district.

The 5th stretches from Issaquah and Enumclaw in the west to the Cascade mountain passes in the east.

26th Legislative District

This special election is a tight one. Republicans are hoping to flip the 26th District’s state Senate seat, which Democrats currently control.

Incumbent Sen. Deb Krishnadasan, appointed to the seat last December, was neck-and-neck during the primary election with Republican challenger Michelle Caldier, who has represented the district in the state House for 11 years.

Taxes and spending are central issues in this race. This year, Krishnadasan voted against her party’s tax package aimed at closing the state’s $16 billion budget hole. The package that eventually passed would raise taxes $9 billion over the next four years, the largest hike in state history. Krishnadasan said she didn’t want to increase taxes at a time when many in the district are struggling to make ends meet.

Caldier, meanwhile, says the state is not using its tax dollars wisely. She’s also critical of how the state spends revenue from auctions on carbon credits. And she says a win for Republicans in this district could help bring some “balance” back to the Legislature, at a time when Democrats hold a majority in both the House and Senate.

The 26th covers Gig Harbor, Bremerton, Port Orchard, and the Key Peninsula.

33rd Legislative District

A Democrat-on-Democrat fight is going down in Seattle’s southwestern suburbs. Rep. Edwin Obras, a City of Seattle employee, was appointed to this seat last December in the shuffle after the retirement of state Sen. Karen Keiser. (Keiser was replaced by Rep. Tina Orwall, and the King County Council and the Democratic party chose Obras to replace Orwall. Confused? You’re not alone.)

In his first session, Obras sponsored and passed legislation regulating ride-share companies and requiring employers to provide panic buttons for “isolated workers” like janitors or security and report harassment incidents.

His challenger, Burien Mayor Kevin Schilling, is better known and at times controversial for how he and his allies have dealt with large encampments in Burien. The suburb sued King County sheriffs — who contract to help police Burien — to get them to enforce tough citywide camping bans Schilling championed.

Obras’ mailers have criticized Schilling for his record with law enforcement (Burien police voted “no confidence” last year in Schilling and the Burien city manager), but Schilling has the support of prominent police groups and unions like the King County Police Officers’ Guild.

Obras’ campaign is funded by obscure PACs the Democrats use to get around spending limits, as well as tribes and unions representing electrical workers and teachers, among others. Schilling’s campaign is funded by landlords, business groups, and Nirvana member Krist Novoselic’s independent “Cascade Party,” among others.

Obras had a commanding 16-point lead over Schilling in the primary, but if Schilling gets a chunk of the Republican vote here, the race could tighten. Trump got 30% of the vote in this district last year, which encompasses Burien, Des Moines, and Kent.

BALLOT MEASURES

State Senate Joint Resolution No. 8201 - Invest long-term care fund money

To put it very simply: Washington lawmakers want to invest in the stock market, using a tax you probably pay, to fund a long-term health care program.

It might sound boring, but has to do with your paycheck (if you work in Washington) or your care when you age and can’t do all your everyday activities yourself (if you’re too poor to afford a facility or home care but too rich for Medicaid, which many middle-income Americans are).

Washington’s long-term care fund, established in 2019, is a first-in-the-nation answer to the question of how middle-income people will afford long-term care: Around half a percent of everyone’s paycheck goes into the fund, and those who qualify will eventually get a benefit of up to roughly $37,000, rising over the years with inflation.

That’s probably not going to be enough for many people, but the program is popular: 55% of voters decided not to allow anyone to opt out of it last year.

To grow the fund, state leaders would like you to consider letting them invest in the stock market.

The way state law is currently interpreted, the government can’t invest public money in private companies (AKA the stock market) unless it’s a public pension or retirement fund, or one of a couple types of specific trusts.

If a majority of voters select “yes” on this ballot measure, it would amend the state constitution to add the long-term care fund to that list, investing the dollars left in the reserves after benefit payments and administrative costs are taken out each quarter.

It’s supported by more than two-thirds of Democrats and Republicans in the Legislature, as well as Gov. Bob Ferguson. They argue that the Washington State Investment Board, which has been doing this with those other funds, has a great track record of 8% average annual returns over the last 25 years.

But voters may be skeptical: They rejected the same proposal in 2020 by a strong margin. Resurrecting it in an odd-year election, when far fewer Washingtonians vote, drew some dissent from across the political spectrum. Both progressive state Sen. Yasmin Trudeau and conservative Republican party chair and state House Rep. Jim Walsh voted against putting the amendment on the ballot again (although Trudeau has since thrown her support behind the measure).

Other skeptics, like state Sen. Bob Hasegawa, say we already invest these funds in municipal bonds, where the return is smaller (around 3-5%) but safer.

Seattle Proposition No. 2 - Changes to Business and Occupation Tax

Voters will get the final say on this revamp to the city’s business tax, introduced over the summer by Mayor Harrell and City Councilmember Rinck. The measure would raise almost $100 million for the city’s budget while giving most small businesses a tax break. Wealthier companies, those with annual gross receipts over $2 million, would see their B&O rate go up. The B&O rate is the tax applied to a business’ gross income in a Business and Occupation tax system. At the current rates, taxes kick in after $100,000.

Harrell and Rinck, both of whom are on the ballot this fall, say the change is designed to make the city’s tax code a little fairer and to insulate the city from federal cuts under the Trump administration. Harrell’s challenger in the mayor’s race, Katie Wilson, also supports this proposed change to the B&O tax.

Downtown Seattle Association CEO Jon Scholes, an opponent of the tax, calls the plan “boneheaded.” Eugene Wasserman, president of the North Seattle Industrial Association, cited the high vacancy rate of downtown office buildings and said a tax hike could drive even more businesses out of the city.

The measure needs a simple majority to pass.

Correction: A previous version of this article misstated the number of applications and projected revenue for the long-term care program, as well as what percentage of a Washington worker's paycheck goes into it. The article was updated with the correct information at 12:10 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 24, 2025.