Former Seattle City Councilmember Debora Juarez is heading back to City Hall. On Monday, the Council appointed Juarez to fill the District 5 seat left vacant after Cathy Moore’s resignation in early July.
The Council selected Juarez after just one round of voting. The appointment process requires Councilmembers to name their top pick in each round until a candidate gets five votes. In round one, seven Councilmembers chose Juarez, with Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck selecting 2023 D5 primary candidate Nilu Jenks.
Juarez was first elected to represent north Seattle’s D5 in 2015 and reelected in 2019. She spent the last two years in office as Council President before deciding not to run again. A member of the Blackfeet Nation, Juarez was the first Indigenous woman to serve as Seattle’s Council President.
Juarez was sworn in immediately following Monday morning’s vote. She will serve as the D5 appointee and lead the Housing and Human Services Committee until the November 2026 election, when D5 residents will elect someone to finish the remainder of Moore’s term through the end of 2027.
In a brief statement following her swearing-in, Juarez thanked the tribes, tribal elders, Indigenous-led organizations, businesses, labor unions and nonprofits that she’d worked with or represented as a lawyer.
“Representing District 5 was a great honor when I was elected twice,” said Juarez. “And for some reason this feels much more emotional than the other two hard-fought campaigns.”
In her application for the appointment, Juarez said she planned to serve as a caretaker for the position, meaning she does not intend to run to stay in the D5 seat after the appointment is up.
Juarez rejoins a Council with significant challenges and important policy choices on its plate. The greatest among them: a roughly $250 million projected budget deficit likely to be exacerbated by federal funding cuts.
The Council is also still working through the Comprehensive Plan update to rezone the entire city. It’s currently making revisions to the permanent “Missing Middle” rezone of formerly single-family neighborhoods before taking on other components of the plan.
In her time on the Council, Juarez was largely seen as a centrist, sometimes voting with the more progressive wing and sometimes aligning with more conservative colleagues like Sara Nelson and Alex Pedersen.
As Council president, Juarez often urged equanimity among colleagues and celebrated when Councilmembers were able to peacefully work through political and policy differences.
Prior to her election to the Council, Juarez was a lawyer and judge. She represented nearly every tribe in Washington as an attorney for Evergreen Legal Services’ Native American Project. She later served as a King County Superior Court and Seattle Municipal Court pro tempore judge before she was appointed in 1996 as the executive director of the Governor's Office of Indian Affairs under Mike Lowry.
Juarez was one of six finalists for the appointment. Councilmembers also nominated James Bourey, former director of Seattle’s Office of Planning; Katy Haima, a community planning manager with Seattle’s Office of Planning and Community Development; Nilu Jenks, political director at FairVote Washington; Julie Kang, Seattle University’s director of professional learning and development; and Robert Wilson, a senior product manager at Amazon.
This is the third time the Council has appointed someone to fill a vacancy in less than two years. Councilmembers appointed Tanya Woo to citywide Position 8 in 2024 after Teresa Mosqueda’s election to the King County Council, and appointed Mark Solomon to District 2 after Tammy Morales resigned earlier this year.
