Candidate Mike Solan On County Council Race

Mike Solan, 52, is running as a Republican for the 7th District seat on the Pierce County Council, which is being vacated by Councilmember Robyn Denson.

Solan is a 27-year veteran of the Seattle Police Department. He was active in the Seattle Police Officers Guild for 13 years and served as president from February 2020 to February 2026. He plans to retire from policing by the end of this year. He and his family have lived in Gig Harbor for five years.

They left Seattle for Pierce County when Solan became concerned for their safety following anti-police protests that erupted in the city and elsewhere following George Floyd’s murder by a police officer in Minneapolis in May 2020. The Seattle Police Guild hall was firebombed Aug. 24, and protestors descended on Solan’s home the night of Aug. 27, one of more than half a dozen demonstrations at the private homes of city officials that summer.

“After threats against my life, doxing of my wife’s work, doxing my kids, we decided to leave Seattle and moved down to Pierce County,” he said.

Solan kept his new address private, including by not registering to vote in Pierce County until March 2026. That decision might have kept him off the ballot for the council race because the county charter requires candidates to have been registered to vote in the county for at least a year. His name was cleared for the ballot in May when the county Superior Court agreed with his argument that the charter overstepped its authority with requirements more stringent than those in the state Constitution.

“We lived in anonymity here, which was nice for several years, but then that becomes smothering because you can’t participate in elections and whatnot,” Solan said. “My wife and I looked at some of the policies and some of the public narrative that we thought was negatively impacting Seattle and King County that we lived and breathed under for a very long time, being adopted here in Pierce County.

“We didn’t want to hide anymore. We want to get off the bench and put our name in the hat to try to slow this thing down and contain it (and) try to change our political landscape here.”

A big part of that landscape is public safety.

“What I’m trying to wrap my head around is why the (Pierce County) Sheriff’s Office has the least amount of deputies per capita in the entire state and the entire nation,” Solan said. “It has me extremely concerned as someone who resides in unincorporated Pierce County. That would be my first course of action, particularly as it impacts the Key Peninsula. Because I feel really sorry for the residents out there who have to fend for themselves.”

In his work for the Seattle Police Officers Guild, Solan said that he “was able to secure two fair labor contracts, working with progressive and moderate mayors. I think I went through three different mayors and four different police chiefs in that tenure of six years (as president).”

It was a measure of success, he said, although many officers left the department during that time, as they have elsewhere, including in Pierce County. There are now 40 vacancies in a funded staff of 229, according to the Sheriff’s Office.

Pierce County has the lowest deputy per capita rate in the state (0.54 to 0.64 per 1,000 residents versus the state average of 1.38), according to the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs. Washington is last in the nation for overall police officers per capita.

“The profession has been so maligned well over 10 years, particularly post-2020,” Solan said. “You don’t see people lining up to be police officers as a long-term career. … But the only way then to try to overcome that pressure point is to incentivize.”

But that doesn’t just mean better pay, signing bonuses, or benefits, he said.

“You have to have the political support. That seems to be more of an uphill battle than just throwing money at it.”

The county council instituted a 0.1% sales tax increase in March dedicated to public safety. The so-called Justice Fund is expected to raise $27 million annually, or 3.5% to 4% of public safety costs. It occurred in parallel with an arbitration after failed contract negotiations between Pierce County Executive Ryan Mello, who drafts the county budget for council consideration, and the Pierce County Deputy Sheriff’s Independent Guild.

In April, the arbiter awarded the guild a 15.8% wage increase over three years, together with back pay and other incentives.

“You have an arbitration, and then the arbitrator issues a reward; at the same time, you’re still bleeding deputies,” Solan said.

The county biennial budget expenditures are $3.5 billion. Public safety receives more than 76% of that, according to Pierce County.

The budget plans on just $3.095 billion in revenue. Reserves will bridge the gap, but the county anticipates a growing deficit because rising costs for salaries, benefits, and core services are growing faster than property and sales taxes, its two main revenue sources.

“I don’t feel another tax is necessary,” Solan said. “You look at the last one (Justice Fund) that was passed: It did nothing to retain the current deputies here. I think a lot of it was put to areas that were not geared towards getting more deputies. I think that’s what people want. Look at how many murders impacted the Key in the past year.”

Just over $4 million from the Justice Fund was allocated to the Sheriff’s Office for staff recruitment and retention; the balance was distributed across the rest of the justice system for staffing, infrastructure, and jail renovation.

“You’re not really gonna know until you’re inside what programs you could cut that are nonfunctional, and ones that are working,” Solan said. “It’s a fine balance, but we’re gonna have some tough decisions here to try to capture the budget.”