Ry Armstrong Wants Bruce Harrell’s Job

Ry Armstrong is running for mayor, and they're calling for fast, bold action. But can they make it happen? by Vivian McCall

The birthday party/launch party for Ry Armstrong’s mayoral campaign last week promised to be “the most fun political event” I had ever attended. 

It isn't at every one of these things that a drag queen mistakes flimsy stage panels at Here-After for a solid wall, leans back on them mid-strip tease and nearly knocks them helter-skelter. They wobbled and she froze, standing stick straight with her hands clasped to her face. This got a laugh, so with a grin she resumed, slipping gold sequined fabric over her ankles like it'd gone off without a hitch. It wasn’t a packed room, but attendees filled at least three quarters of the seats. Standing at a podium in an emerald green jumpsuit, Armstrong asked the crowd to look at the people beside them.

“This is our city, and together, we will craft a future that reflects the true meaning of unity, a Seattle where everyone belongs and no one is left behind, even the most vulnerable. Will you join me in this endeavor?” 

At this the crowd snapped and whooped, and gave a full round of applause when Armstrong repeated the line a second time with all the sing-songy cadence of a principal at a pep rally. The next speaker, Emily Pinckney, a member of the city’s Green New Deal Oversight Board, joked Armstrong was the only person they knew who’d give a speech at their birthday party.

Armstrong speaks with the practiced cadence of a politician, or at least with the flair of an actor who minored in poli-sci and knows how to sound like one. They’re comfortable before a crowd because they grew up in front of them. As a child, Armstrong sang with the Seattle Symphony and studied theatre at Central Washington University, where they were student body president during their last year. Openly gay in a conservative town, they say they were threatened and harassed. 

Having had enough of Ellensburg, they chased, or perhaps ran away toward, their acting dreams to New York City. They performed off-Broadway, toured nationally with Teacher from the Black Lagoon, and landed minor screen roles, including a bit-part in Uncut Gems as “Norwegian Boy.” During quarantine, they filmed The Gilded Age, HBO’s single season American swing at Bridgerton. After filming in COVID quarantine, Armstrong moved home to care for their ailing grandfather.

At a cafe in Capitol Hill the morning before the launch party, Armstrong held up their hand and curled the fingers into a trembling claw, a mimic of their grandfather’s hands at the end of his life, the consequence of two rare genetic conditions and the repetitive motion of fileting fish at Booth Fisheries in Ballard for 35 years. Armstrong mimed the slicing motion with a grimace, before bringing the conversation to unions. Armstrong’s grandfather was a union man. So were their mother and father, a nurse at University of Washington medical center and a Boeing electrician. Armstrong is an MLK Labor Delegate for SAG-AFTRA and an elected member of the National Actor’s Equity Association, part of the AFL-CIO, a federation of labor unions, representing 50,000 actors from Texas to Hawaii.

This is Armstrong’s second go at elected office. In 2023, they burned out in the primary race for Kshama Sawant’s City Council seat in District 3. Outspent by big business, progressives were slaughtered that cycle. One progressive answer to that problem was the PAC Progressive People Power, or P3, which Armstrong briefly chaired. (P3 has not backed Armstrong’s run, or said anything about their candidacy one way or the other).

Uneven a playing field as it may be, their campaign didn’t pan out at all. Only 1.86% percent of the electorate (a total of 488 people) voted for Armstrong in that race. They’re not just an underdog to moderate incumbent Bruce Harrell in this race, they’re an underdog’s underdog to Katie Wilson, general secretary of the Transit Riders Union and a fixture of city hall, who announced her campaign last Wednesday. 

There’s also MAGA-loving Rachel Savage, the Republican who hawks crystals and incense at Vajra in Capitol Hill, who is campaigning to block permanent supportive housing and arrest homeless addicts as means of recovery, a dubious solution. Joe Molloy, a homeless man who says he lost his housing last year due to an unsupported disability, is running his grassroots campaign from Tent City 3, a roving encampment. I asked Armstrong why, if they were creamed in a City Council race, running for Mayor should go any better. 

Alexis Mercedes Rinck’s victory over City Council appointee Tanya Woo in November seemed to them a good test case for consolidated progressive support knocking out candidates backed by outside spending. But they heard Dionne Foster was challenging City Council President Sara Nelson. Wanting to stay out of her way, Armstrong eyed the Mayor’s race. As far as they could tell, Harrell was too vulnerable for nobody to challenge him; and at the time, nobody seemed to be standing up. So they thought, “Why the hell not?”

Besides, after Donald Trump’s re-election, they felt compelled to stand for something. Armstrong, who is on the city’s LGBTQ commission, recently started gender-affirming care at Kaiser. They wanted to send a message that queers in Seattle wouldn’t be cowed. 

But “please vote for me, I’m gay,” Armstrong’s campaign is not. They’re running on a concise, four-pillar platform: Build more housing, invest in safety, empower workers, and provide affordable childcare for all—lofty goals that they say they would achieve with progressive revenue taxes, such as the 5% payroll tax on companies making over $1 million a year that will pay for social housing, a successful campaign Armstrong waged alongside with House Our Neighbors. 

First though, they’ll need about 250 signatures and 250 donations by May 9 to qualify for the Democracy Voucher program, which gives each Seattle resident four $25 coupons to spend on political campaigns. This is a taller order than the 150 signatures and donations they needed to qualify for the council race, so they’ve been working the phones. They’ve called 500 people in the last two weeks. One lady thought Armstrong was an AI and demanded they prove they were who they said they were. Armstrong wasn’t sure if she believed them. Modern campaign problems.

Armstrong says they’re an “out of the box” thinker. When they ran for Council, a museum on a boat in New York inspired a novel solution to homelessness. Why not convert a retired battleship into 2,000 units of housing, and dock it at the Port of Seattle? Where this ship would come from, how it would be converted, the cost and what agencies would be involved, Armstrong did not exactly know, but they aren’t afraid to throw out wacky ideas just to see what sticks.

They’re confident in their grasp on housing, labor and sustainability—Armstrong co-directs the non-profit Sustainable Seattle—but say their true skill is listening and connecting with others. The Mayor should be a humble executive, they say, asking simple questions of the smart people they surround themselves with to move the city toward action.

“I understand people are afraid of change,” Armstrong says. “I think it’s time for Seattle to become a city. I think we need to upzone. Even the Mayor’s comp plan is not enough to meet the needs of what our climate resilience is going to look like over the next 20 years, let alone the refugee crisis [of those] coming to a welcoming sanctuary city.” 

On homelessness, Armstrong thinks a crisis ought to  be met with a crisis response. To house at least some of the 16,000 people estimated to be living on Seattle’s streets, Armstrong says the city could construct 1,000 units of shelter on city or county land at the same quick pace temporary field hospitals were built during COVID. Armstrong wouldn’t build more congregate shelters—which frequently come with severe limitations and safety concerns—but individual units like microstudios or tiny homes that homeless people are more likely to accept.

Packed congregate shelters offer little privacy. Taking residence in one often means ditching belongings (including outdoor gear), pets, and companions, for a temporary bed. That’s a bad deal for anyone who expects to end up on the street again. It’s not a mystery why someone would instead choose a tent and some agency.

Harrell didn’t deliver on the 2,000 new units of temporary shelter and housing he promised in his first year. Armstrong wants to house 1,000 people in 100 days. 

With enough money, Seattle could build fast. Tiny homes can be manufactured in weeks and existing property can be leased and converted. Plenty will line up to fill those beds, and more will wait to take their place once those in the first group leapfrog to something more permanent. But that process isn’t automatic. 

To keep people from dead-ending in shelter, or worse, ending up dead, trained staff would need to manage any building, tiny home village, or tent city, and work from detailed safety protocols and a model to stabilize people before they’re shepherded to permanent supportive housing or subsidized apartments. That’s assuming we have enough places for them to go, which we do not. We’d have to build more housing for them to go into.

Armstrong said the city would lean on community-based services like the Downtown Services Emergency Center, SHARE / WHEEL and the Low-Income Housing Institute (or LIHI) for experience, staffing, “and culturally competent support from day one.” They’d pay for it by increasing payroll taxes through JumpStart, the city’s Business & Occupancy tax, and a vacancy tax. (Though a vacancy tax may fly afoul of the state constitution’s uniformity clause. In Washington, all properties must be taxed equally).

And by public safety, Armstrong does mean cops, but not cops doing “seven jobs at once.”

They’re for a CARE (Community Assisted Response and Engagement) Department that actually functions as a viable police alternative, rather than the attenuated form it’s taken under the city’s MOU with the Seattle Police Officer’s Guild (SPOG). That agreement caps the CARE team at 24 members and requires officers to accompany them on calls—or at least sign off on them. 

Armstrong says they’d try to convince the cops they’d be “better off” without those responsibilities. “I feel like police officers want to specify their role again and not be catch all,” they say. “I think me saying, I will fund a CARE Team separate, that is autonomous from you, that’s able to do the kind of work that a lot of your officers are doing and aren’t able to respond in a fast manner, I think that would be an incentive.”

Armstrong seemed undaunted that that argument hasn’t worked yet or that SPOG has fought to restrict the CARE Department. D-43 Rep. Shaun Scott tried to circumvent SPOG this session with a bill to allow towns and cities to form independent civilian response teams, but it didn’t escape the House. 

Their discussion of public safety doesn’t end with cops, though. Armstrong also wants people to be able to mosey over to Pony “in heels” without worrying about harassment, or a driver hitting them on a dark street on their way there. They want basic infrastructure improvements like more street lights and crosswalks.

The fight for $15 was more than ten years ago and Armstrong says it’s time for us to stop clapping ourselves on the back and ask what we can do next to improve the lives of workers. They pointed to the $44.7 million in wage theft the city’s Office of Labor Standards (OLS) collected between 2014 and 2024, which they compared to a Spotify wrapped (of stealing). 

They want more OLS investigations, and to expand the agency to function as a micro version of the National Labor Relations Board. Businesses making over $1 million a year would have automatic checks on their labor practices, which would be publicly displayed like a health rating. Armstrong wants to strongarm tech companies into reconsidering gas-guzzling, road-hogging return to work policies. Even if that means bursting into Amazon and demanding to see CEO Andy Jassy about the dent they’re putting in our climate goals with those big glass balls of theirs.

“I think Seattle used to lead the region in labor,” they say. “We can’t keep resting on our laurels. The Mayor’s office has to step in and be the equivalence of power to big business. Right now, I feel like we’ve been bought and paid for for 10 years.”

In Seattle, a year of child care can cost more than a year of college tuition at University of Washington and daycare waitlists can be a year long.  tuition at a  Armstrong wants to be a parent and says no one should be forced to choose between family and career. 

Armstrong envisions turning empty office buildings all over the city into day care centers, though not every building can meet state licensing standards. Kids need to be able to easily escape from fire exits in case of emergency and kids need a place to play outside. If the building doesn’t have its own, it needs a partnership with one that does. Daycares must also keep high staffing ratios, one adult for every four infants or seven toddlers; to keep those employees from leaving that demanding job, they’ve got to offer a living wage. Armstrong says they’d pick buildings based on how fast or easy they would be to convert them. The money for all this would again come from business and particularly large corporations. They’ve also toyed with the idea of proposing a new tax benefit district for childcare, similar to what Seattle voters approved to fund city parks in 2014.

Back on stage, Armstrong promised to turn their vision into reality.

“For too long, we’ve let endless debate and bureaucratic inertia block the bold action we know is possible,” they said. “That ends right now.”

Outside the theater at Here-After, supporters drank beer and ate frosted chocolate cupcakes near the bar.Even a woman who said she was allergic to sugar, so they must have been good.

Crystal Yingling’s non-profit Theatre Puget Sound, of which Armstrong is a board member and grew up auditioning for, would have closed if Armstrong hadn’t pushed for a new agreement with the city. She thinks the city needs big change, and Armstrong “was good at big change.”

Alison Pieper fondly recalled the Seattle she moved to twelve years ago, which wowed her with its bustling energy and a mayor who rode his bike to work. It’s fizzling for her and she blames the last three mayors  (“just bad to bad to bad.”) She says she used to work for the city, but left in part because of Harrell's hostility toward city employees during an 18 month contract fight.

“I kind of took it personally,” she says. “I felt like he wasn’t looking out for the employees keeping the city going, doing the essential services. I lost faith in him.”

Kevin Troutt, a marriage and family therapist in Seattle, said only a change in leadership is going to wriggle this city out of the “untenable situation” it's in now. At one point, Troutt thought about challenging Sara Nelson, and met up with Armstrong over a cup of coffee to talk politics. Troutt changed his mind, but the meeting left an impression.

“Ry is someone who made me feel very warm and welcome, and I think someone who is able to do that for someone they just met, who is just an interested person wanting to learn more, is fundamental to building a really good team around them and that’s what makes me excited. A lot of meetings are transactional. I felt like I met another human who cared about the city.”