Reporting by Cesar Canizales

A fired-up crowd showed their support for King County Councilmember Girmay Zahilay at his reelection campaign launch on Saturday afternoon at Washington Hall in Seattle’s Central District.

“If you give me another term, if you give my team another term—another four years of uplifting the ideas and the brilliance of frontline communities, so we can solve the biggest crises that each and every single one of us want to solve,” Zahilay said.

The 35-year-old, District 2 councilmember said mental health is at the top of his priorities, and he got emotional as he talked about the issue.

“I've got to just power through this one,” Zahilay said as he beat back tears during his speech. “We just see so many of our community members, this behavioral health crisis. It's rough, but I'm glad we get to begin the process of building places where people can go when they're in crisis, so they're not continually cycled through jail and homelessness.” 

He teared up as he worked through the toughest part of his remarks.

Zahilay had many supporters from the County Council at the event, including District 6 Councilmember Claudia Balducci, who strongly endorsed him.  

“Councilmember Girmay is just over three years into his first term as a King County Councilmember,” said Balducci. “And he has been one of the most effective local and regional elected officials you can imagine in such a short period of time. So we’re here for him.”

Larry Gossett, the incumbent whom Zahilay defeated back in 2019, was also there to show his support and endorse him. 

“Girmay righteously grabbed the mantle by its top, and then he’s been running with it and building community support for a community program to serve the most disadvantaged people in all of Martin Luther King Jr. County,” said Gossett.

Many other current members from the council were present as well, including District 4 councilmember Jeanne Kohl-Welles, and many other local officials.

Zahilay said in order to solve the many challenges the region faces, officials must listen to those who are closest to the problem.

“Relationships with the most marginalized will guide us to the best solutions. The people closest to the pain have to be closest to the policy. The brilliance, the ideas, the solutions exist in each one of those communities,” Zahilay said.

Zahilay listed his three top priorities for the coming year.

“Number one, this year is going to be the behavioral health crisis. I'm working on a crisis care centers initiative to build out places for people to go when they're having mental health or substance use disorder crises. Number two is housing and homelessness. Of course, we need to provide every type of home for every type of need that exists out there, all the way from shelter, all the way through homeownership,” Zahilay said. “And number three, I would say, is continuing to invest in the unincorporated neighborhood of Skyway, where we have the highest proportion of Black people in the state of Washington living there. It is extremely diverse, so many languages spoken, and yet, it is the neighborhood that continues to be disinvested from.”

Zahilay, who was at the town hall on violence at Rainier Beach High School on Jan. 12, said gun violence is connected to the issues he is focused on.

“The thing with these issues is that they're all intersectional. They're all connected to each other. Gun violence is absolutely connected to the housing crisis, connected to the behavioral health crisis,” said Zahilay. “And so anything we can do to keep people housed and healthy, that's going to help reduce gun violence, whatever we can do to provide people the mental health resources that they need to thrive, that's going to help with gun violence, whatever we can do to keep communities intact and not displaced and spread all over the place, that's going to help with gun violence.”

Zahilay does not have any challengers for the upcoming election, yet.