By Erica C. Barnett
After Publicola broke the news yesterday morning that the former partner of King County Assessor John Arthur Wilson just got a restraining order against him for allegedly stalking and harassing her, elected officials and local leaders across the county called on Wilson to resign his position and drop out of the race for King County Executive.
Wilson was reelected in 2023 and will remain in his $225,000-a-year job until the end of 2027 unless he steps down voluntarily or is recalled in a countywide election.
An incomplete list of the people who’ve called on Wilson to step down includes the two frontrunners in the County Executive race, King County Councilmembers Claudia Balducci and Girmay Zahilay; Interim King County Executive Shannon Braddock; Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell; State Sen. Manka Dhingra (D-45, Redmond); former King County Sexual Assault Resource Center director Mary Ellen Stone; King County Democrats chair Beth Bazley; and King County Councilmembers Jorge Barón and Rod Dembowski.
As we reported, Wilson’s former partner, Lee Keller, received a restraining order against Wilson earlier this month and is seeking to dissolve their domestic partnership. Keller’s allegations are similar to the ones she made last year, when she accused Wilson of, among other things, calling the employer of a man she had been seeing and accusing him falsely of sexual assault in an attempt to get him fired.
Wilson did not respond to our questions about the calls for his resignation. He did speak to KUOWtelling them that he does not plan to step down. Wilson also echoed comments he made to us earlier this week, when he claimed that he and Keller were still in a relationship; he also told us that Keller had withdrawn her petition. Keller told us that she and Wilson are no longer involved and that the restraining order still stands, which court records support.
In a statement, Harrell said he was “appalled” by the allegations and said they were “disqualifying for public office. We need to send a clear message to survivors of intimate partner abuse that this type of behavior by people in positions of trust is not tolerated.”
During a press call with Balducci, Stone, Dhingra, and Bazley on Thursday, I asked Balducci why she did not call on Wilson to resign when the Seattle Times reported on Keller’s original allegations and restraining order last year. (She did issue a statement at the time, saying she was “deeply disturbed by today’s reports of stalking, abuse, and issuance of protective orders against County Assessor Wilson.”)
“I am in a campaign,” Balducci said, and “I was concerned at the time that the focus should be on survivors and supporting survivors. … Today, we have ongoing behavior. It hasn’t stopped. It just keeps going, and I have no reason to believe that it will stop even after today. … And we can’t allow somebody who’s actively engaging in this kind of behavior to just continue being in a position of leadership.”
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Wilson, Balducci noted, had to have known when he filed to run in early May that Keller was filing for another restraining order against him. “But he decided to file anyway, I assume because he thought his behavior would be tolerated, because it too often is especially for men in positions of power,” she said.
During the call , Post Alley writer Joel Connelly asked what would happen if it turned out Keller was lying. (Wilson has not specifically denied any of the allegations, which include harassing text messages that are part of Keller’s request for a protection order.).
“I know that both of these people very, very well,” Connelly said, throat-clearing about his personal connections to Wilson and Keller for a while before asking what he called a “basic question. Say Wilson resigns as assessor and pulls out of the race, but the investigation turns up either ends up inconclusive or exonerate him from some of the allegations that Lee has made. Where does John Wilson go to get his reputation back?”
Balducci responded first, noting that the events Keller described in her motion for a restraining order “are essentially uncontested and that Wilson is free to try to “rehabilitate his reputation. But he has not attempted to, as yet, and if he has a defense, we haven’t heard it.”
