Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson's first State of the City address began with roughly 40 seconds of dead air, followed by an on-stage scramble that set the tone for what came next.
After the audio finally kicked in, Wilson could be heard working through the problem in real time:
"Sorry. Can you please? Technical difficulties. Okay. There. Okay. A little bit less. A little bit. Back. Back the way you came. Back. Back. Okay. Okay. That's good. Thank you. Okay. Okay!"
She then cleared her throat and launched into a speech that drew criticism from across the political spectrum for what it contained and, perhaps more notably, for what it left out entirely.
Wilson, a self-described socialist who has been widely compared to socialist Democratic New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, opened with a moment of disarming candor that might have been charming under different circumstances:
"Are you ready for this? I don't think I've ever talked for as long as I'm about to talk, so we'll see how it goes. Okay. Well, thank you so much for joining me today."
Among her marquee policy proposals: declaring that it was time to begin "treating childcare and early education as public goods … just like our parks, schools, and utilities." This is the kind of line that earns applause in faculty lounges and bewilderment from anyone who has ever run a business or balanced a household budget.
Washington State Republican Party Chair Jim Walsh didn't mince words in a text to The Center Square:
"Her premise that a person's labor is a public good, analogous to a park or park bench, is preposterous. It suggests a stunning ignorance of basic economics. And it's impractical public policy. She's setting herself up for failure."
Walsh is right to flag the underlying logic. Calling childcare a "public good" like a park isn't just a rhetorical flourish. It's a policy framework. Parks don't require persuading skilled professionals to accept government compensation rates. Parks don't face staffing shortages when the private sector offers better pay. Treating a labor-intensive service as if it were a piece of public infrastructure is how you get long waitlists and burned-out workers, which is to say, it's how you get the VA model applied to toddlers.
The bigger story may be the silence.
According to The Daily Caller, Andrea Suarez, founder and executive director of We Heart Seattle, told The Center Square the speech "omitted critical issues." She called it "bewildering" that Wilson failed to address Seattle's drug crisis.
"She didn't address the service-resistant crisis population who will not accept shelter or tiny homes. She didn't bring up the death toll of our loved ones from fentanyl overdose. She didn't bring up solutions for the crime associated with drug addiction."
According to Suarez, Wilson primarily focused on gun violence. Suarez put the priorities in perspective:
"The death toll from drugs and havoc from drugs is exponentially worse than either [shootings and motor vehicle accidents] and yet crickets."
This is a pattern that repeats itself in progressive-run cities. The issues that dominate the lives of actual residents, open drug use, street-level crime, and a homeless population that refuses services, get skipped in favor of issues that poll well with activist donors. Gun violence is a real concern. But when your city is losing residents to fentanyl at a rate that dwarfs shootings, choosing to spotlight one while ignoring the other isn't prioritization. It's avoidance.
Conservative Seattle radio host Ari Hoffman shared a clip of Wilson's technical difficulties in a Wednesday post on X, branding the entire affair "AMATEUR HOUR."
"Socialist Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson came out completely unprepared for her first big address."
He added a line that stings precisely because of how plainly it lands:
"This is what happens when you elect someone who never had a real job."
Not every politician needs private-sector experience to govern effectively. But when your debut address can't clear the basic operational bar of working audio, and the policy content that follows reads like a graduate seminar wish list rather than a governing agenda, the critique writes itself.
Downtown Seattle Association President and CEO Jon Scholes offered the closest thing to a positive review, telling The Center Square that he appreciated Wilson's "statements on collaboration and partnership" and noting that homelessness and public safety were "the first two issues she addressed in her remarks."
"There was a lot in the speech that I know will resonate with our members."
Fair enough. But business leaders in struggling cities have a long history of finding something nice to say about new mayors. It's diplomacy, not endorsement. The test won't be whether Wilson mentioned homelessness and public safety. It will be whether she does anything meaningful about either.
Seattle voters chose a self-described socialist in a city already deep into the consequences of progressive governance. The fentanyl crisis didn't arrive yesterday. The homeless encampments didn't materialize overnight. The businesses that left downtown didn't flee on a whim. These are the accumulated results of years of policy choices that prioritized ideology over outcomes.
Wilson now inherits all of it. And her opening act suggests she intends to add new utopian line items to the ledger rather than reckon with the debts already owed.
Forty seconds of dead air turned out to be the most honest part of the evening. At least the silence didn't promise anything it couldn't deliver.
