John Arthur Wilson seeks to make jump from King County assessor to executive position

KING COUNTY, Wash. — King County Assessor John Arthur Wilson announced he is running for county executive to replace Dow Constantine in 2025.

Wilson said public safety has been the driving reason he is running for executive.

“One of the things you start with is you stop allowing our bus system to be used as rolling fentanyl dens. Crackdown on that, and you say that's not going to happen anymore,” he said about addressing the fentanyl crisis. “We let too many people linger in what is not a compassionate approach, of continuing to be hooked on these terrible narcotics that have just devastating effects and sometimes deadly effects, rather than having the kind of smart intervention that says, if you're going to pursue this, we're either going to put you in jail, or we're going to put you in treatment, but you're not going to get back on the bus.”

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Wilson also said if elected, he would seek to eliminate funding for the King County Regional Homeless Authority.

“Unless you can show me some miracle turnaround strategy that they have, it hasn't worked. It cost millions and millions of bucks," Wilson said. "And when you talk to service providers, the people who are doing the work on the ground, they'll tell you it's been an impediment rather than a benefit.”

Wilson also acknowledged the crisis with youth detention and rising juvenile crime. He said closing the youth jail, as Constantine pledged to do, is off-limits.

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“I was Chief of Staff to the county executive when we had an earlier jail crisis, which led to us building the brand-new jail because the previous jail was an awful facility. It was physically falling apart, and it had all kinds of managerial and structural problems that needed to be fixed. The fact is, is, sadly, we have dangerous juveniles on our streets that need to be taken off our streets and held in custody until again. We can get them the kind of addiction treatment that they need or mental health treatment, but not put them back on the street.”

As far as how he is different than Constantine, he said, “Put the charter responsibility of the county to operate the public safety system first and foremost in our budget process, and that means, if need be, we scrub the budget to look where we can find adequate funding. It's not just cops and prosecutors, but it's public defenders, it's mental health counselors, it's enough jail beds.”