
Alexis Mercedes Rinck didn’t have the posh of time. Usually, newly elected metropolis politicians have months to construct their administrative groups, iron out a punch record for his or her first 100 days in workplace, full their onboarding alongside different recent faces, and buckle in for a four-year time period. Rinck, who gained the Place 8 particular election on November 5, had simply 4 weeks to recruit a four-person employees earlier than her swearing in on December 3. From there, she joined an in-full-swing metropolis council—the place, considerably awkwardly, seven of eight members had endorsed her opponent, Tanya Woo. Then, as if she doesn’t have sufficient on her plate for her first 12 months in workplace, she’ll be up for reelection in November 2025.
At simply 29 years previous, Rinck, a self-proclaimed “zillennial,” involves metropolis authorities as Seattle’s youngest-ever councilmember. She grew up along with her grandparents in California. Born, she says on her marketing campaign web site, to “struggling mother and father who have been simply youngsters,” she witnessed her household “take care of the cycles of incarceration, substance use, and homelessness.”
Rinck sees herself as a “generational voice” for the town’s tons of of 1000’s of younger individuals who sometimes don’t discover anybody like themselves—or their long-term issues about affordability and housing—on the dais or the docket.
She attended Syracuse College in New York state, then made her option to the Evans Faculty on the College of Washington to review public coverage. She subsequently joined the King County Regional Homelessness Authority (KCRHA), working with 5 North King County cities to enact a multijurisdictional settlement for tackling homelessness. Lastly, she moved on to work for UW’s coverage workplace, serving to the varsity coordinate with state officers on related funding and coverage issues.
Tackling her platform’s precedence gadgets, which embody stabilizing funding for metropolis applications by producing extra income by way of sources like progressive taxes and addressing Seattle’s affordability disaster, whereas additionally defending susceptible communities from a Trump-led federal authorities, would require working along with her colleagues. An effort by Councilmember Cathy Moore to precise a capital features tax on Seattle’s 800 wealthiest residents is considerably low-hanging fruit; it failed earlier than Rinck’s swearing-in with out assist from then-Councilmember Woo. However past that, Rinck says she desires to convey a consensus-driven ethos to metropolis council much like the one she’s channeled throughout earlier policymaking work.
“I’ve all the time taken this strategy of doing downside definition, placing points on the desk, having laborious conversations, discovering out the place we agree, the place we disagree, and [figuring out how to] transfer ahead and on behalf of the individuals,” she says, “as a result of that’s what persons are asking for.”

Rinck solely started working with Tammy Morales (proper) for at some point earlier than Morales resigned her seat.
That’s simpler stated than carried out, nevertheless, when the individual she simply defeated had been appointed and endorsed by her new colleagues. Although she says she desires to “flip the web page” and transfer on from marketing campaign variations, discovering alignment with the council’s centrist majority could also be difficult for Rinck, who was certainly one of two progressive councilmembers on the time of her inauguration.
After which two progressives whittled down to at least one. Councilmember Tammy Morales, who represented South Seattle’s District 2 since 2020 and was the only councilmember to endorse Rinck, introduced her resignation only a day after Rinck’s swearing-in. Morales tied her choice to the council’s erosion of “checks and balances as a Legislative division,” to a “poisonous work setting” at metropolis corridor, and to strained, unproductive relationships with different metropolis politicians. She additionally stated resigning would let her look after her ailing father. “With Rinck coming in, it’s not truthful for her to get handled the identical method that I’ve been handled,” Morales advised The Stranger.
“We now have seen an entire 12 months of the prevailing actuality of Councilmember Morales…and there’s nothing to point to us that Alexis’s expertise might be any completely different,” says Bailey Medilo, a spokesperson for the Washington Bus, a statewide motion to bolster youth participation and illustration in politics.
Medilo says the Bus, which endorsed and supported Rinck throughout her marketing campaign by way of its 501(c)(4), anticipated that Rinck would “have challenges passing key laws that she ran on” even previous to Morales’s resignation, however that Morales’s departure redoubled the necessity for Rinck to construct a longer-term widespread motion with voters—not simply legislate. Over time, this pondering goes, a mobilized motion can elect a slate of candidates aligned with its targets, turning into a majority in halls of energy.
That’s the place the dimensions of Rinck’s victory comes into play: She obtained greater than 205,000 votes on November 5, essentially the most for any Seattle politician ever. Citywide elections sometimes happen in odd-numbered years, which tends to skew the citizens older. However working in a presidential cycle, for an at-large seat, Rinck trounced Woo by practically 17 share factors, and eclipsed Mayor Bruce Harrell’s 155,294 votes and Council President Sara Nelson’s 139,336 ballots in 2021. She loved the endorsement of native establishment-Democratic organizations in addition to labor teams—establishments that always assist candidates with competing platforms.
“I obtained extra votes than anybody in Seattle’s historical past,” Rinck says. “Now, we will level to the truth that I ran throughout a presidential 12 months and extra individuals have been voting, however I additionally take this as an actual signal to say, , we acquired 58 % of the vote, and by no means as soon as did I draw back from the necessity for progressive income and creating extra truthful tax system and absolutely funding our metropolis providers. So if anybody acquired a mandate to behave accordingly, I really feel actually strongly to convey that to the desk…I’ve to take the need of the voters significantly.”

Rinck is the youngest councilmember in Seattle historical past.
Granted, a part of Rinck’s electoral success comes from Woo’s appointment to metropolis council with out public backing. Voters—name them “knowledgeable” or don’t—can pattern anti-incumbent, and Rinck’s tally may very well be a wake-up name on a council with poor approval scores, a actuality that might encourage some members to alter their tune and think about the insurance policies Rinck endorses.
A litany of different identified and unknown unknowns will additional form how the town council conducts itself in 2025. That begins with the way it offers with the incoming Trump administration. Rinck, who’s multiracial, emphasizes that metropolis authorities must step up and shield undocumented Seattleites from mass deportations, and monitor potential federal slashes to training and well being care funding.
However in the end, Rinck says she’ll choose her success in metropolis politics by measuring the progress she’s made tackling the town’s affordability and community-safety challenges.
“We’re going to want sturdy native partnerships to climate what’s to come back within the coming years, and I’m simply actually dedicated to doing that work with [my colleagues],” she says. “I hope they’ll meet me with that very same spirit.”