Official City Social Media Becomes Bruce Harrell Fan Pages After His Loss In The Primary

If you mistook the City of Seattle’s official social media accounts for those of Mayor Bruce Harrell’s re-election campaign, I wouldn’t blame you. The same day polling predicted a win for Harrell’s progressive challenger, the City of Seattle launched a new official Tik Tok account featuring exclusively Harrell. Similarly, after his crushing defeat, the City’s Instagram has doubled the total number of posts about Harrell for his entire three and a half year term in just two weeks.

The volume of Harrell-promotion on the taxpayer’s dime is so great, the Seattle Ethics and Election Commission (SEEC) is now reviewing the City’s official Tik Tok and Instagram accounts to determine if Harrell has violated the rule against using City resources for campaign purposes. 

“I’m not going to say this is a problem, but nor am I going to say it is not a problem,” SEEC Executive Director Wayne Barnett told The Burner in an email. “I will look into it."

Earlier this year, the consultant class realized the potential power of social media in elections after short-form vertical video became the hallmark of Zohran Mamdani’s successful campaign for the Democratic Primary for Mayor of New York City. Katie Wilson, a progressive underdog who beat Harrell in the primary, caught the wave early, making a splash on Reddit with a short video about the high cost of pizza. 

Now Harrell’s joining the trend — but mostly on official channels. 

A new official "City of Seattle" branded Tik Tok account posted its first video on July 28, which just so happens to be the same day that the Northwest Progressive Institute published polling that showed Wilson performing better than Harrell in the primary. Between then and Aug. 19, the account had posted exclusively Harrell –– the account broke that tradition and posted a random infographic about Fresh Bucks after I sent a request for comment about the Harrell overload. 

That account features 10 videos of Harrell speaking directly to the camera. In some, he’s celebrating the grand opening of a park, feeding hungry children, praising local athletes, or standing solemnly on the steps of the State Capitol building to name a few examples. All the other posts are still images of Harrell or proclamations he’s signed. Many of the captions of these posts are written in first person as though written by Harrell himself. Between all the posts, Harrell has garnered about 40,000 views on the taxpayers dime. 

None of the posts explicitly mention his re-election bid, but given the suspicious timing of the accounts birth, its sole and positive focus on Harrell, it sure looks like campaigning!

Not only did the City make a new Tik Tok fan page for Harrell, he’s appearing on the City’s official Instagram account now more than ever. Between the Aug. 5 primary and Aug. 19, the City of Seattle’s Instagram has made 11 posts, seven of which are “collaborations” with the Mayor’s official account and feature Harrell either in a video, a photo, or his signature on a proclamation. Two non-Harrell posts popped up after I sent a request for comment.

Before Aug. 5, the City had only posted seven posts about Harrell. That means that in the last two weeks, the City has doubled their Harrell related content compared to what the account posted in the 1,667 days between when he took office and when he lost his primary. Sure, the account has posted more in general but the proportion of promo for the incumbent has grown as well. Before the primary, Harrell appeared in about 17% of the City’s posts on Instagram since he took office. After the primary, he appeared in 72% before my request for comment (may have) tipped the City off. 

Harrell’s office and campaign did not respond to my request for comment. 

Harrell may be in violation of RCW 42.17A.555, which stipulates that “[n]o elective official nor any employee of his or her office nor any person appointed to or employed by any public office or agency may use or authorize the use of any of the facilities of a public office or agency, directly or indirectly, for the purpose of assisting a campaign for election of any person to any office or for the promotion of or opposition to any ballot proposition.”

This includes but is not limited to the “use of stationery, postage, machines, and equipment, use of employees of the office or agency during working hours, vehicles, office space, publications of the office or agency, and clientele lists of persons served by the office or agency.”

This rule exists to keep the game of campaigning fair. Harrell’s challengers don’t have equal access to taxpayer-funded megaphones. Instead, Wilson’s team told The Burner that it costs about $4,000 to $5,000 a month to keep up their social media game. By outsourcing some of his digital strategy apparently to City social media workers, Harrell’s campaign could basically save tens of thousands of dollars between the primary and the general. And then he can just repost the content on his campaign account’s story, which he has done.

But this strategy is not free to the public. While it is unclear who is filming the videos (Maybe it’s his communication team, maybe it’s Tim Burgess), recent job listings show that the City pays some social media managers around $100,000. The more than 50% of voters who picked Wilson over Harrell probably don’t want their hard earned money spent promoting the guy they want to lose. 

The line between public service and political self-promotion has always been thin, but in the age of influencer-style politics, it’s getting blurrier. Now, SEEC will have to decide, perhaps for the first time, if a sudden surge in self-promotion on City channels crosses over from regular office duties to campaign activity. 

If the SEEC finds that Harrell violated campaign ethics laws, it could issue fines or demand corrective actions. However, the commission has limited enforcement power — especially when it comes to fast-moving digital media. That means even if the posts are found to be inappropriate, the damage — or the advantage — may already be done.