Seattle’s socialist mayoral candidate wants leftist media outlets to be state-funded

Seattle’s socialist mayoral candidate Katie Wilson, who has been nicknamed the "Mini Mamdani," has raised concerns among critics about conflicts of interest and government overreach, this time over her plan to tax residents to subsidize media outlets that support her campaign and employ her.

In a recent interview on the Mostly Economics podcast, Wilson promoted a proposal she calls “News Notes”: a taxpayer-funded voucher program that would give every Seattle resident $100 to donate to local media outlets, to save failing outlets from the free market. To pay for it, she floated new property taxes, a capital gains tax, or a digital ad tax.

But the outlets she specifically named as beneficiaries, The Urbanist, Publicola, and South Seattle Emerald, are the same ones that routinely promote her political agenda. Many of them have endorsed her. Some have even paid her.

Wilson lists income from The Stranger, The Urbanist, and Publicola in her PDC filings, each below $30,000 annually, while all three also endorse her for mayor. These aren’t neutral newspapers. They’re progressive advocacy media that cheerlead for every new tax, anti-police measure, and socialist policy put forward in Seattle.

Wilson did not mention subsidizing mainstream or conservative media outlets. She previously threatened to boycott a KOMO News mayoral debate unless parent company Sinclair Broadcast Group kept Jimmy Kimmel on air after the late-night host falsely claimed Charlie Kirk was assassinated by a right-wing activist.

Critics have noted that taxpayer-funded journalism is not “independent journalism,” it is government-approved journalism.

Seattle already experimented with “Democracy Vouchers,” and that taxpayer-funded political program has failed to diversify participation, while fueling corruption concerns and empowering fringe candidates.

Launched in 2017 and sold as a way to amplify “everyday voices,” Democracy Vouchers have instead pumped public money into extreme fringe campaigns, sparked fraud allegations, failed to increase voter turnout, disproportionately benefited well-funded activist groups, and failed to deliver on the ideas promised: to keep big money out of politics.

In fact, the program has become less popular each year it is used, and more PAC money is in Seattle races than ever before. Even progressive experts now admit the program did not democratize elections; it subsidized political machines.

Wilson also draws a salary from the Transit Riders Union, an activist group she runs that endorsed Ubax Gardheere for King County Council after a video surfaced of Gardheere threatening to blow up a school bus filled with children.

Last week, it was revealed that Wilson receives frequent checks from her professor parents in New York to cover childcare, even though her husband is unemployed by choice. Wilson, who dropped out of Oxford University 6 weeks before graduation, claims she wants to be mayor because she “can barely afford to live in Seattle.”