A West Coast Mamdani

By Donald Kimball

Saturday, December 06, 2025

 

A hostile business climate and an unpunished looting problem have created “food deserts” in Seattle. But Katie Wilson, Seattle’s newly elected socialist mayor, doesn’t see it that way.

 

While America focused its attention on New York City’s mayoral race between youthful democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani and old-guard Democrat Andrew Cuomo, a quiet revolution was unfolding in Seattle’s race between two similar contestants. Bruce Harrell, the city’s incumbent mayor, failed to adequately build a coalition of moderate-leaning Democrats, independents, and Republicans. He recently conceded the race and paved the way for Seattle’s first millennial mayor to take over. And while Mayor-elect Wilson’s charisma does not match Mayor-elect Mamdani’s, her ideas very much do.

 

“Access to affordable, healthy food is a basic right,” Wilson said at a recent rally. “We cannot allow giant grocery chains to stomp all over our communities, close stores at will, and leave behind food deserts.” Seattle’s focus for the future appears to be on creating obstacles for businesses that wish to close rather than helping businesses succeed.

 

“Food deserts are not natural,” Wilson continued. “Corporations create them when they abandon our communities.” By this view of the world, cities are ecosystems where grocery stores naturally spring up on street corners, and hunger is a disease created by corporations to sell food. It is fitting that a New York-raised socialist in her 40s who still receives welfare checks from her parents believes that the natural order of things is guaranteed providence. But Wilson shouldn’t ask what creates poverty; she should ask what creates wealth.

 

Within free markets, people tend to spontaneously cooperate to pursue their individual interests. This benefits the collective by generating wealth. When individuals specialize in growing food or running a business, society becomes more efficient and prosperous. The “natural” order of human action is to freely exchange that of which you have plenty for that of which you have little, which in turn creates an abundance of resources for everyone. A system of free enterprise takes nature from scarcity to profusion.

 

But when this pattern is disrupted, problems like food deserts emerge. If governments tax businesses until they become unprofitable, or if criminal activity goes unpunished and deprives businesses of revenue, stores that might otherwise stay and flourish must necessarily close.

 

Mayor-elect Wilson’s remarks indicate that she is unaware of this reality. Seattle is already an expensive market to enter, and with whispers of increasing tax burdens and little promise of criminal justice reform, even the suggestion that a business may not be able to freely close a store could be enough to scare away new competition.

 

Much like Mamdani, Wilson has expressed a keen interest in filling the vacuum with government-run grocery stores. She cites a failure of the market to provide adequate options. But putting a government bandage over a government-created wound creates a dangerous spiral from which it is difficult to recover. Government-run grocery stores will only serve to cost the city more by driving the need for further tax increases and causing more businesses to flee.

 

Commissaries run by the Department of Defense are the best comparison we have to government-run grocery stores, and the net cost of running them is $1.7 billion. The government can spend taxpayer dollars to provide groceries for cheap, but this is not sustainable. Unlike the city government, Walmart and Fred Meyer can’t just raise taxes on citizens to cover their losses. And when the government artificially subsidizes the cost of groceries, all competition will naturally abandon the area.

 

Ironically, Wilson’s insistence on government intervention in an area “too important to fail” echoes President Donald Trump’s efforts to muscle a federal stake in private companies such as Intel and MP Materials. This, too, is a failing strategy, just as it was during the Industrial Revolution — Cornelius Vanderbilt built a successful monopoly in large part because his competitors accepted government subsidies and were beholden to their bureaucracy. Whether the product is processor chips or potato chips, government-entangled entities rarely work best.

 

Mayor-elect Wilson will inherit a city with many problems, but her basic worldview means she is ill-equipped to solve them. Her lack of understanding of the causes of wealth and a proposed cure that will only worsen the disease spell rough roads ahead for Seattle.