A politician admits a mistake? Never happens, but it did in Seattle

This is about a little thing. With time, though, it has a shot at becoming a big deal.

The little thing is that the other day a politician admitted to making a mistake.

This basically never happens. We have become accustomed to politics being dominated by abject narcissism, especially at the national level, where every error is not only denied or outright lied about, but flipped upside down, to be reality-distorted into something "perfect," golden or the best thing ever.

The one who just went the other way from this trend is Seattle's new mayor, Katie Wilson.

Seattleites are probably aware she's been on the media hot seat due to comments she made about the rich and big businesses. She called Seattle "filthy rich." She waved "bye" to disgruntled millionaires. She called for a boycott of Starbucks - which was closely followed by the company, coincidentally or not, moving 2,000 headquarters jobs to Tennessee.

The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times - all have now weighed in on what I called "gaffes." By which I meant she made statements of true feelings that also were so impolitic as to cause damage.

That column got some pushback. Wilson's defenders argued her statements were not missteps at all. They were what real progressive leadership sounds like.

"She is doing what she said, and what we want," one reader wrote. "She wants to elevate unions (even at the expense of Starbucks and the Amazon C-suite!)"

"Katie Wilson openly ran as a democratic socialist," another wrote. "Is it then surprising that she would support striking Starbucks workers by urging a boycott of the stores? That's not a mistake; that's ethical consistency. What is the purpose of such a strike but to hurt the bosses by keeping customers away?"

Fair questions all. However, just look at the result. Calling for a boycott of a top 10 local company, and then having that boycott not only fail to catch on, but the company moves 2,000 jobs elsewhere - that's considered leadership in the world of democratic socialism?

In the weeks since this boiled over, the mayor and her staff have mostly sidestepped the conflict. In a budget talk on the Seattle Channel, on May 7, she was asked directly: "Are you still encouraging people to boycott Starbucks?" She talked instead about working with Starbucks on other issues.

Her staff has also tried deflecting with humor, as seen in their weekly roundup of Wilson's activities: "She was out and about in the community this week, meeting with people, listening, getting stuff done, and hearing more commentary about waves than the British royal family."

Then The New York Times weighed in, this past Sunday. That the tension remains high was spelled out right in the headline: "Seattle's Socialist Mayor Taunts the Rich as Rift with Starbucks Widens."

Yikes - that headline is bad for everyone listed in it. It's bad for the mayor, who still has to govern. It's bad for the rich, who live here. It's bad for Starbucks, which presumably wants to keep doing some business here. And it's especially bad for Seattle, which is in a pickle right now with large budget deficits, job losses and a tenuous business environment.

Three-fourths of the way into the story though came a plot twist. Referring to Wilson's boycott call, it said this: "Today, she says that was a mistake, and a rough spot on the learning curve between liberal activist and elected leader. ‘Those comments were not productive in the sense that they caused more harm than good,' she said in an interview."

This seems like news. The boycott wasn't successful as activism, and the larger political fracas was clearly a drain on the job of governing a city. To acknowledge it was a mistake speaks well of the mayor.

"The mayor said she understands now that everything she says will be parsed for potential anti-business soundbites and that she should have ‘a multidimensional relationship' with companies like Starbucks," The Times said.

Finding the anti-business sound bites didn't take much parsing, but again, this backtrack seems good. "Have multidimensional relationships" hardly gets the protester blood pumping. But it's a pretty good description of the job of being mayor.

Admitting errors in public is hard, as I can attest, having wincingly done it many times. Conventional political wisdom says it means you're weak. In this case, I'd argue it's a positive sign for the future of both the mayor and Seattle.

It means the mayor is at least more grounded in the real world than some of her blinkered progressive fans.

It suggests the mayor's brand of socialism could well be nuanced, as she had pledged it would be. Maybe it really can be a building-up socialism, a "sewer socialism," rather than the tearing-down, waving "bye" type.

Maybe this is a chance to reset relations with businesses - at least ones other than Starbucks, where it may be too late.

And maybe the mayor, who's barely started her first term, will become something we don't see often: a politician bigger than the ego.

I know, that's a lot to pile on one acknowledgment of a mistake. But in politics, it's like seeing a unicorn.

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This story was originally published May 20, 2026 at 1:13 PM.