Seattle, WA
Army veteran seeks Seattle mayoral seat to push for more progressive change
One candidate, Thaddeus Whelan, believes Seattle needs bold, progressive leadership, and he thinks he’s the one to provide it. Whelan joined “Seattle’s Morning News” on KIRO Newsradio with Charlie Harger and Manda Factor to outline why his approach to the mayoral office would be different than his predecessors.
“I’ve seen what federal overreach and a heavy hand can cause, how it can cause problems for even just regular people,” Whelan said.
Whelan pushes progressive change in Seattle mayoral race
Whelan is a Texas native who studied at Princeton University and spent time in the Army at Joint Base Lewis-McChord. Even though his campaign focuses on a myriad of issues, Whelan said that government overreach and affordable housing are among his top priorities.
“I would genuinely say that the first step is addressing housing costs so that we can actually have affordable housing for everybody, not just homeowners, but for everybody,” Whelan said.
When it comes to Seattle’s rampant drug problem, Whelan believes that the legalization of drugs is “the genuine way to get to harm reduction.”
“I hate to bring this to our current events with the ICE raids that are happening within the city, but once you criminalize it, and once you start attacking people for for doing these things that are effectively civil in nature, you are causing them to go into the shadows and hurt themselves more,” Whelan said.
Whelan, who lives in North Seattle as a project management analyst for the FAA, says he has experienced the rising unaffordability of the city firsthand, and that rising costs have many consequences on Seattle.
“There’s actually kind of a diasporic reaction when it comes to crime. We’ve seen violent crimes go down, but we’ve actually seen shoplifting, petty theft, and breaking and entering having a slight uptick,” Whelan said. “That is genuinely down to a socio-economic condition that people are just not getting what they need. We don’t pay people enough to live in our city. People are struggling to survive, and a lot of that comes down to just making certain that people have their basic needs met.
Listen to the full conversation below.
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Thanks to Carrie Brown for the westward view of our Saturday night sunset. The high today hit 68 at the airport – eight degrees above normal – but nowhere near the record for this date, which was 89 degrees back in 2016. The forecast suggests two more days of partly sunny, almost-70-degree weather, before the chance of rain returns.
CHICAGO (AP) — The struggling New York Mets placed former Seattle Mariners second baseman/designated hitter Jorge Polanco on the 10-day injured list on Saturday with a right wrist contusion.
Mariners Injury Update: Latest on Robles, Vargas and more
The move was made retroactive to Wednesday, a day after Polanco went 0 for 4 with two strikeouts in a 2-1 loss at the Los Angeles Dodgers. The 32-year-old Polanco is batting .179 (10 for 56) with a homer and two RBIs in his first season with New York, which has lost nine straight.
“When doctors first took a look at him, it looked like he got hit by a pitch when he didn’t,” manager Carlos Mendoza said. “In talking to him, it was just a couple of swings that he took that night. … He didn’t think much of it, but just got worse the following day.
“So you just got to let it calm down a little bit and then we’ll go from there. But we don’t have a timetable for how long this is going to last.”
Polanco, who signed a two-year, $40 million contract with the Mets in December, also has been dealing with an ankle issue.
“He was trending in the right direction,” Mendoza said of the ankle injury. “It’s definitely going to help, obviously now with him being shut down. But the biggest thing now is that we’ve got to take care of that wrist.”
Polanco spent the previous two seasons with the Mariners, who acquired him in a February 2024 trade with the Minnesota Twins.
Polanco struggled during his first season with Seattle in 2024, hitting just .213 with 16 homers in 118 games while playing through a knee injury that didn’t become public knowledge until after the season.
But after the Mariners somewhat surprisingly brought him back for a one-year contract in 2025, Polanco rebounded to hit .265 with 26 homers and an .821 OPS in 138 games last season. He then added three homers during Seattle’s playoff run, along with a 15th-inning walkoff single in Game 5 of the American League Division Series that sent the Mariners to their first ALCS in 24 years.
Seattle Sports staff made additions to this post.
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