Caitlin Sullivan (Kenmore City Council Position 2, Washington, candidate 2025)

Caitlin Sullivan

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Nonpartisan

Candidate, Kenmore City Council Position 2

Elections and appointments

Last election

August 5, 2025

Education

High school

Lakeside High School

Bachelor's

University of Washington, 2004

Personal

Birthplace

Seattle, Wash.

Profession

Real estate

Contact

Campaign website

Caitlin Sullivan ran for election to the Kenmore City Council Position 2 in Washington. She was on the ballot in the primary on August 5, 2025.^[source]

Sullivan completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2025. Click here to read the survey answers.

Biography

Caitlin Sullivan provided the following biographical information via Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey on July 5, 2025:

• Birth place: Seattle, Washington
• High school: Lakeside High School
• Bachelor's: University of Washington, 2004
• Gender: Female
• Profession: Real Estate
• Incumbent officeholder: No
• Campaign website
• Campaign endorsements

Elections

General election

General election for Kenmore City Council Position 2

Tracy Banaszynski and Joe Marshall are running in the general election for Kenmore City Council Position 2 on November 4, 2025.

		Candidate
	Submit photo	Tracy Banaszynski (Nonpartisan)
	Submit photo	Joe Marshall (Nonpartisan)

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	Incumbency information for this election was not available.
= candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey.

Nonpartisan primary election

Nonpartisan primary for Kenmore City Council Position 2

Tracy Banaszynski, Joe Marshall, and Caitlin Sullivan ran in the primary for Kenmore City Council Position 2 on August 5, 2025.

		Candidate
	Submit photo	Tracy Banaszynski (Nonpartisan)
	Submit photo	Joe Marshall (Nonpartisan)
	Submit photo	Caitlin Sullivan (Nonpartisan)

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	Incumbency information for this election was not available.
= candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey.

Endorsements

To view Sullivan's endorsements as published by their campaign, click here. To send us an endorsement, click here.

Campaign themes

Ballotpedia survey responses

See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection

Caitlin Sullivan completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2025. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Sullivan's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.

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Who are you? Tell us about yourself.

Hi, I’m Caitlin (pronounced “Kat-lynne” ) and I’m running for Kenmore City Council to create a better future for our residents and to change the way that we think about housing. I was born and raised in Seattle, and after graduating from University of Washington worked in the legal field, began my career in housing, and started a small business in leathercraft. I left my job as a paralegal when our daughter was born, and after the birth of our son we moved our family Kenmore. Currently, I am a managing broker with Compass and work primarily with infill builders and first-time homebuyers. I serve on Port Angeles’ Lodging Tax Advisory Committee and Kenmore’s STEP Housing Committee, and spend my free time gardening, reading books on housing, and advocating for better housing policy. I decided to run for City Council after watching our elected and appointed leaders continue to say they care about housing and then vote for policies that exacerbate the crisis and ignore our working families. As a housing professional and advocate, I not only understand the housing system and how to fix it, but care deeply and will work tirelessly to improve it for everyone in our community. I also understand the complex way that our decisions regarding housing impact our ability to succeed in all our other policy goals. Leading with education, data, and a desire to engage with our community, I will work to improve the future of Kenmore for our current residents and the next generation.

Please list below 3 key messages of your campaign. What are the main points you want voters to remember about your goals for your time in office?

• For most of us, the biggest expense each month is housing, and the cost keeps going up. We’ve already priced countless residents, both former and potential, out of the community, and we haven’t taken meaningful steps to promote actual affordability for our residents. In fact, we keep going backwards. Kenmore has pledged to work on affordable housing, which serves 80% of Area Median Income (AMI), but a thriving and diverse community provides housing that residents at every income level can afford. Crafting our zoning codes to create the variety of housing types and prices that our community needs is vital to the future success of Kenmore, and we need to elect leaders with experience in housing in order to meet this goal.
• Re-thinking the way that we approach density will support a more sustainable fiscal future. Over half of our General Fund revenue comes from property tax and sales tax. With the City facing a financial cliff, our options are limited: raise taxes on our existing residents, cut services, or find a way to sustainably raise our future revenue potential. The way that we encourage or restrict development today will have long-lasting impacts not only on our housing affordability and availability, but our budget as well. By utilizing smart, data-driven development planning, we can increase our General Fund revenues, decrease cost, and create a sustainable financial future.
• Changing how we think about housing and our place in the larger environment also is the key to achieving our climate goals. Our two largest sources of emissions are residential energy and on-road vehicles, both of which are directly impacted by our housing policy. As our region grows, and people need somewhere to live, creating denser development closer to where we work shortens commute time, reduces traffic congestion, and dramatically reduces emissions. As new homes are built, we have the ability to use our building and zoning codes to support the construction of homes with lower energy use, Passive House features, and green building technology.

What areas of public policy are you personally passionate about?

My passion is centered in housing policy, both as it helps alleviate homelessness and promote housing affordability, but also in providing a basis for support that is required to achieve our other policy and community goals. When we see Kenmore not just as the limits of our city but as how we integrate into the broader Seattle-Eastside community, and our environment, it becomes clear that welcoming density instead of closing our borders not only impacts housing but reduces climate emissions by reducing commutes and supports improved transit. Opening our doors to more neighbors is also a key to unlocking fiscal sustainability since we also increase our property tax collections without increasing tax on existing individual residents.

Is there a book, essay, film, or something else you would recommend to someone who wants to understand your political philosophy?

There have been a few books recently that really resonated with me, though not political. One was Brendan O'Brien's "Homesick" -- he does a wonderful job of taking the reader on his journey of discovery of why housing is unaffordable.

What legacy would you like to leave?

I want to leave the world a better place for our children than we inherited it from our parents. When my daughter was born, maternal instincts in overdrive, my top priority in life became protecting my children. Interestingly, I see politics as an extension of that – if we don’t fight as hard as we can to change the path that we are on, what kind of a future are we leaving for our kids? What we can all do is pick a cause and fight as hard (and as smart) as we can to improve it. Mine, if it wasn’t abundantly clear, is housing. What is accomplishable has yet to be determined, but at the very least, I’d like to change the way that we think about, approach, and build housing.

What was your very first job? How long did you have it?

My first job as an adult was managing a phone canvass for the Washington Wilderness Coalition (WA Wild). I was 18 at the time, and I can't remember how long I had the job for, but I did love it. As a former coworker recently said, we were able to do a lot on a shoestring budget, but Seattle was a different place then!

What kind of skills or expertise do you believe would be the most helpful for the holders of this office to possess?

One of the main reasons that I decided to run for office, specifically this position, was because there was a lack of skills and expertise that I believe are fundamental to this position: expertise in housing policy, and a willingness to engage with the community, especially when the conversations are uncomfortable or you don’t agree.

Housing policy is fundamental to the success or failure of our community. Our adherence to urban sprawl created cities with budgets designed to fail, as we have more infrastructure to maintain and services to provide than our tax collections can keep up with. When we’re asking our elected and appointed officials to make decisions about housing, understanding how the policies that they create will impact both the cost and availability (production) of housing once in effect is essential. It’s not enough to write policies that feel good, they must do good. Without experience in housing and development, our elected and appointed leaders often make policies that fall short.

The best outcomes are achieved when we listen to, and engage, a variety of voices within our community. This means taking meetings with members of the community who you think you don’t agree with (but may learn something from) and developing relationships with groups whose voices are unlikely to be heard during the opportunities for public input. These conversations may be uncomfortable, but we need to have them – I often learn more from talking to someone with different opinions than I do talking to someone who shares my own.

What organizations or individuals have endorsed your campaign?

King County Young Democrats, Washington Housing Alliance Action Fund, Moms Demand Action

Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.

Other survey responses

Ballotpedia identified the following surveys, interviews, and questionnaires Sullivan completed for other organizations. If you are aware of a link that should be added, email us.

• VoteWA Profile

See also

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Candidate

Kenmore City Council Position 2

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