Changing of guard underway at City of Tacoma. 7 leadership posts changing hands
Four of eight Tacoma City Council seats are up for election this year, and Mayor Victoria Woodards does not plan to run again after her term ends this year. Longtime city manager Elizabeth Pauli plans to retire this summer, and the council selected deputy city manager for internal services Hyun Kim to serve in her stead in the meantime. Additionally, former Police Chief Avery Moore resigned in February, and interim police chief Patti Jackson has held the position since March.
City officials have said they want to delay the search for both a permanent city manager and a permanent police chief until after the election in November, hence Kim and Jackson's appointment.
Tacoma residents will have a better idea of who will lead the city over the next few years after the Aug. 5 primary election, for which ballots go out on July 18.
Here's a breakdown of who's leaving and who might replace them:
Six candidates have jumped into the race to replace Woodards at the end of her second term as mayor. Current City Council member John Hines and former City Council member Anders Ibsen have raised the most amount of money of the six, positioning the two as likely opponents after the primary. Hines as of June 18 had raised $148,600.42, and Ibsen by the same date raised $152,468.62. The candidate who had raised the next closest amount was Whitney Stevens, who raised $18,327.86.
Neither Hines nor Ibsen are strangers to the council – Hines now represents District 1, and Ibsen represented the same district in the eight years leading up to the start of Hines' tenure in 2019. Stevens currently the chairs the 27th Legislative District Democrats' executive board and is founder of The Viability Project, which helps first-time candidates, women and people of color run for elected office.
Sarah Rumbaugh, Sandesh Sadalge, Joe Bushnell and Kiara Daniels representing council district's 2, 4, 5 and at-large position 6, respectively, will see their terms come to an end this year.
Rumbaugh, Sadalge and Bushnell plan to run again.
Rumbaugh is set to face off against Ben Lackey, who has yet to report any funds raised for his campaign but whose priorities include addressing homelessness and funding basic services.
Sadalge was appointed to the District 4 seat after former council member Catherine Ushka died in 2024 and will face Silong Chhun and Israel James McKinney, who unsuccessfully ran for the same seat in 2021. As of June 18, Sadalge was in the lead for money raised for his campaign with $24,708, with Chhun at $22,822.38. McKinney has yet to report raising any funds.
Bushnell is running for the District 5 seat against community organizer Zev Cook, also the co-founder of Tacoma For All. Bushnell by June 18 had raised $22,583.26, and Cook raised $39,002.28 by the same date.
The most hotly contested seat on the council so far appears to be the at-large position 6 seat, which has six candidates in the running. Krista Perez, Latasha Palmer and Jessica Johnston have raised the most money – $22,111.9, $20,640.22 and $9,288.00, respectively. Perez has the endorsement of seven members of the City Council, including Daniels, who currently holds the position. Palmer has council member Jamika Scott's endorsement, and Hines did not appear to have endorsed any candidate in the at-large position 6 race as of June 18.
After serving as city manager for eight years, Pauli plans to retire on July 1. The council after weeks of interviews selected Hyun Kim to replace her in an interim capacity, a title that will become effective as of June 30.
The job of picking a city manager falls on the council, and the City Council decided to hold off on the search for Pauli's replacement until after the election this year, so the council members who will work closely with the city manager can be involved in selecting the new one.
'I think that is the best process for us because I think the selection of a permanent city manager, seeing as we're on such a short timeline, should be that of the next full council,' Mayor Victoria Woodards said at a council study session in January.
Kim has served as Tacoma's deputy city manager for internal services since June 2023, coming to Tacoma after having worked as city administrator for Gillette in Wyoming, and city manager for the city of Fife before that.
Former chief Moore resigned as police chief in February, and deputy police chief Paul Junger was fired shortly after in April.
Patti Jackson, who previously worked in the Corrections Bureau at the Pierce County Sheriff's Office and ran an unsuccessful campaign for Pierce County sheriff, has been serving as interim police chief since March. Last month, Pauli said in a statement that the city will pause its search for a permanent police chief to ensure an 'alignment of city leadership.'
'It is prudent to empower the city's new leadership to play an integral role in confirming the appointment of a permanent police chief,' the statement reads. 'This approach will help ensure the chosen leader fully aligns with the evolving vision and future priorities of our city government.'
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Democrats in states with strong pro-Republican gerrymanders like Wisconsin and Ohio were more skeptical of the integrity of the elections in their states than Democrats in other states. The same was true for Republicans living in states with gerrymanders designed to benefit Democrats, like Illinois. But Bowler emphasized that this isn't purely about sour grapes. Voters who belong to the party that benefits from a gerrymander can also be affected by the perception that the electoral victories they had hoped for were earned illegitimately, he argued. 'To some extent it doesn't matter if it is 'your' side doing it or not,' he said. 'It's not really fair play.' Bowler expanded on that point in a press release about the study. 'If they didn't win fair and square, why should I believe what they say?' he said. 'Why should I pay my taxes? You get an erosion of civic behavior.' A separate poll released on Thursday added more evidence to support Bowler's argument. It found that Californians oppose Gov. Gavin Newsom's proposal to redistrict their state in response to Texas's potential gerrymander by a two-to-one margin. Other national polls have found that few Americans support the Texas GOP's redistricting plan. They have also found that strong majorities believe partisan gerrymandering is a major problem and that the practice should be illegal. Bowler told Yahoo that even lawmakers who might be indifferent to changes in voters' faith in democracy should be wary of going too far out of their own self-interest. 'Let's say you are a Republican voter in Texas and have voted GOP for years … because of gerrymandering, there is maybe less incentive to turn out and vote,' he said. The belief that results are all but decided well before Election Day could also undermine a party's fundraising, which could make a difference in races where the outcome is more in question, he added. In their study, Bowler and Donovan also looked at how corruption — or even perceptions of corruption — among a state's elected officials affected voters' faith in democracy. They found a similar decline in trust among respondents in states where lawmakers had been convicted of crimes like bribery and campaign finance violations or had faced highly publicized accusations of corruption.
