Mayor who got $10k from parents to help with campaign gets fined by ethics commission

Newly elected Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson was forced to pay a $250 fine by a city ethics commission after failing to adequately disclose more than $10,000 in contributions made by Wilson’s parents to her campaign.

After her election victory in November, Wilson defended taking her parents’ money to help her run for mayor, saying in a CNN interview that it made her more “approachable” to voters. The money, Wilson said, was used to help pay for child care.

The City of Seattle’s Ethics and Elections Commission found last month that the money Wilson received from his parents constituted “campaign contributions” and said corrective action was warranted to avoid creating a way for future candidates to circumvent campaign finance laws. In the letter, Jessica Pisane indicated that the fine was only $250 because what happened was “a new issue” that had not been brought before the commission.

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“This is the first time this has happened in a municipal election campaign,” Pisane noted, adding that Wilson also reimbursed her parents for money that exceeded the contribution limits Wilson was supposed to meet.

Fox News Digital reached out to Wilson’s team for comment but did not receive a response.

“Campaigning for office is stressful,” Wilson said after his election victory, amid questions about his parents’ contributions. “Seattle is one of the most expensive cities in the country, our child care is overpriced, and honestly, I think a lot of people in my generation, younger and older, found it very relevant that during this stressful campaign my parents helped pay for their granddaughter’s child care costs.”

Wilson said during her campaign that the cost of child care was about $2,200 a month for her and her apparently unemployed husband.

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Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson (R) defeated incumbent Bruce Harrell to become the city’s next mayor. (Katie Wilson for Seattle)

Before moving to Seattle in 2004, Wilson lived in upstate New York. After graduating from high school in Binghamton, Wilson studied physics and philosophy at Oxford University, with financial assistance from his parents again living in New York. Wilson left Oxford debt-free, which she attributes to her parents. However, she also left without a degree, dropping out just six weeks before graduation.

Before earning her new salary as mayor, Wilson was paid by the nonprofit she founded in 2011, the Transit Riders Union. She began collecting paychecks for the group in 2019. Before that, Wilson worked a series of odd jobs, including barista, shipyard worker, apartment manager, lab technician, baker, construction worker and legal assistant.

Tax records show Wilson earned $72,669 in 2022 as president of the Transit Riders Union. There is no record of Wilson’s salary for 2023 or 2024, apparently due to the nonprofit recently changing tax preparers, according to PubliCola. The taxman does not require nonprofit organizations to disclose the salaries of employees earning less than $100,000 per year.

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Meanwhile, in a financial statement to the city after declaring his candidacy for mayor, Wilson reported earning between $60,000 and $99,000. She also reported receiving “less than $30,000” from PubliCola, The Urbanist and The Stranger, respectively, for her work as a “columnist” for left-wing online media outlets.

As Seattle mayor, Wilson will hit a six-figure figure, based on past mayors’ salaries. Wilson has been compared to socialist Zohran Mamdani, who campaigns on policy proposals like those of New York’s self-proclaimed socialist mayor. This includes, through her support for a “solidarity budget” that would have cut Seattle’s police force by 50 percent and other funding for police stations, Wilson was forced to abandon her support for government-run grocery stores, calls to tax the wealthy, and a proposal to “Trump-proof” the city of Seattle.

Seattle elected Katie Wilson, who has been compared to Zohran Mamdani, as its next mayor. (Getty Images)

Andrew Mark Miller of Fox News Digital contributed to this report.