When Seattle voters elected City Attorney Ann Davison in 2021, the city was just a year out from 2020’s historic Black Lives Matter protests, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, and dealing with an increase in street homelessness, a growing fentanyl crisis and a general sense of disorder in the world.
Davison had run on a law-and-order platform and won 51.5% to 47.7% over Nicole Thomas-Kennedy, a former public defender and police abolitionist who opposed prosecuting most of the low-level misdemeanors in the city attorney’s purview.
Now, four years later, in a city no longer reeling from the pandemic, voters will decide if they want to continue with Davison’s tough-on-crime approach or if they’re ready for something different.
Davison says her leadership has helped drive down crime and disorder in Seattle, but that there’s plenty more to do to improve public safety. Mirroring national trends, Seattle property crime is back to pre-pandemic levels. Violent crime isn’t quite down to pre-pandemic levels — and is mostly the responsibility of the King County Prosecutor — but continues to trend downward.
Her opponents argue Davison has prioritized the expensive revolving door of low-level misdemeanors while ignoring more serious crimes; undercut efforts to break the cycle of crime and poverty; and, as a Republican, is not well-suited to defend Seattle against attacks by the Trump administration.
Davison faces three opponents in the Aug. 5 primary.
Erika Evans is a former assistant U.S. Attorney and former assistant Seattle City Attorney under Davison’s predecessor Pete Holmes.
Rory O’Sullivan runs an employment benefits law firm and previously led the King County Bar Association’s Housing Justice Project for tenants facing eviction.
Nathan Rouse is an attorney with the King County Department of Public Defense who previously worked as a litigator with Davis Wright Tremaine.
To understand what’s at stake in the election, it’s helpful to understand what the City Attorney’s Office does.
Its criminal division is responsible for misdemeanors and gross misdemeanors. Those include theft, trespassing and assault. Domestic violence and DUIs are some of the most serious crimes the office prosecutes. The King County Prosecutor’s Office handles felonies.
The City Attorney’s Office also has a civil division that provides legal counsel to city departments and elected officials, defends the city against lawsuits and enforces city laws including worker and renter protections.
Davison said she came into office with a disorganized criminal division and a backlog of 5,000 cases waiting for a charging decision. Her priority was to reorganize that division and address the backlog, which grew in the pandemic, but was also partially due to Holmes’ decision not to prosecute many of the lowest-level misdemeanors that are often crimes of poverty and survival.
Davison cleared that backlog, in part by dropping 2,000 cases, and worked to speed the office’s decision-making time between when the Seattle Police Department refers a case to the City Attorney and when the City Attorney decides to either prosecute or decline to file charges. She has also focused on prosecuting repeat offenders.
In addition, Davison has successfully pushed several new laws, including SOAP and SODA “stay out” banishment zones for people accused or convicted of drug or prostitution crimes (though few orders have been issued) and a graffiti ordinance.
Davison said Seattle’s drop in crime shows her approach is working. Her opponents say it’s an ineffective and expensive tactic that just perpetuates a revolving door in and out of jail without breaking the cycle of crime and poverty.
Rouse said the reality of prosecuting crimes like shoplifting and trespassing is that people spend a little time in jail and then get released back into the conditions that led them to shoplift and trespass in the first place.
“Unless they’re met with some meaningful support service it has no impact on recidivism. We’re hemorrhaging a lot of resources by pursuing prosecution,” Rouse argued. “I get the reflex for prosecuting crimes like this, the idea we need to pursue accountability and make sure people know it’s not acceptable behavior. But it’s not making a difference and we’re pouring money down the drain.”
All three opponents criticized Davison for ceasing participation in Seattle Municipal Court’s community court program, which allowed people accused of low-level crimes to access services and counseling without pleading guilty.
They argued it was a key initiative for actually keeping people from re-offending. A study of similar community courts in King County found that 84% of people who entered the programs completed them and that participants saw 87% fewer jail bookings.
Davison recently launched a new court alternative for people accused of drug use or possession. Whereas people accused of certain misdemeanors were automatically routed to the old community court, participation in the drug-prosecution alternative is left to the discretion of the City Attorney’s Office and comes with additional stipulations like drug testing and potentially receiving a banishment zone order.
Evans, Rouse and O’Sullivan all said that Davison’s focus on lower-level misdemeanors has come at the expense of domestic violence victims and DUI prosecutions.
“She’s expending all her political capital on SOAP and SODA,” said O’Sullivan. “Then not even doing the thing you’d think a tough-on-crime conservative city attorney would do, which is actually successfully prosecute cases like drunk driving and domestic violence.”
Data from Seattle Municipal Court shows that the average time it takes to file in a domestic violence case went from 25.9 days in 2021, before Davison took office, to a high of 55.9 days in 2024. The average so far this year is 33.2 days.
DUI filings follow a similar trend. In 2019, it took a median of five days for the City Attorney to file in DUI cases. In 2023, it was up to 85 days. Average filing time was 148 days and 329 days in 2019 and 2023, respectively.
“Under her leadership these cases are taking much longer to file and charge, and that is unacceptable,” said Evans. “It’s important to talk about because it puts survivors [of domestic violence] at risk of serious harm. When folks are arrested and released and cases are just in limbo, there’s no protection order protecting the person from harm, no order to relinquish firearms.”
Davison’s challengers have also hammered her for switching parties to run as a Republican in the 2020 lieutenant governor race, and said that in the face of federal funding and policy threats from the Trump administration, Davison won’t be up to the job.
Davison retorted that it’s a nonpartisan office and said she’s run it that way. “I will take action when there’s federal overreach, and I will not hesitate to defend the city and the rights of the people that live here,” she said.
Josh Cohen
If reelected, Davison said, she wants to focus on DUIs to improve road safety, continue addressing prostitution in north Seattle and broadly prioritize public safety in Seattle.
“Our laws really do have to matter,” Davison said. “We’ve made some progress and improvements, and we should not go back to being a city that did not enforce its own laws.”
Evans said if she’s elected, she will prioritize clearing the DUI and domestic violence backlog, rebuilding Seattle’s community court alternative to strike a balance between holding people accountable for their crimes and trying to break the cycle of reoffending and proactively defending the city against Trump policies and funding cuts.
O’Sullivan spoke the most of any candidate about the work he’d pursue on the civil side of the City Attorney’s Office, though he also wants to prioritize rebuilding community court and addressing DUIs and domestic violence. As City Attorney he would take a more proactive role in protecting tenants by dedicating a staff attorney to work with Seattle’s Department of Construction and Inspections to go after landlords violating renter laws. O’Sullivan also wants to dedicate a staff member to work with the Office of Labor Standards on worker protections, as the City Attorney has historically done.
Rouse similarly wants to improve community court and reentry programs for low-level misdemeanors while focusing prosecution on higher-level crimes like domestic violence and driving under the influence. He also told Cascade PBS that he wants to prioritize police accountability by prosecuting officers when they break the law and take measures to protect Seattleites from the federal government, such as introducing legislation around surveillance data privacy and protection.
A recent poll of Seattle voters by the Northwest Progressive Institute found 31% support for Davison, 18% for Evans, 5% for O’Sullivan and 2% for Rouse, with 41% undecided.
Davison has netted endorsements from prominent politicians including Seattle City Councilmembers Sara Nelson, Bob Kettle, Joy Hollingsworth, Maritza Rivera and Mark Solomon, former Governors Christine Gregoire and Gary Locke and U.S. Rep. Adam Smith.
King County Prosecutor Leesa Manion co-endorsed Davison and Evans. Evans also received endorsements from Washington State Attorney General Nick Brown, King County Councilmembers Girmay Zahilay and Teresa Mosqueda, Seattle City Councilmembers Alexis Mercedes Rinck and Hollingsworth and State Rep. Shaun Scott and State Sen. Rebecca Saldaña.
O’Sullivan has been endorsed by State Reps. Sharon Tomiko Santos and Chipalo Street; former Seattle Councilmembers Tammy Morales, Lisa Herbold and Mike O’Brien; Sen. Saldaña; and Insurance Commissioner Patty Kuderer.
Rouse has been endorsed by State Rep. Darya Farivar, former U.S. Attorney Kate Pflaumer and former State Sen. Marilyn Chase, along with the heads of the King and Snohomish County Departments of Defense and a slew of King County public defenders.
