Help us improve in just 2 minutes—share your thoughts in our reader survey.

Rory O'Sullivan

From Ballotpedia
Revision as of 16:48, 1 July 2025 by Tyler King (contribs)
(diff) ← Older revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)
Jump to: navigation, search
BP-Initials-UPDATED.png
This page was current at the end of the individual's last campaign covered by Ballotpedia. Please contact us with any updates.
Rory O'Sullivan
Image of Rory O'Sullivan
Elections and appointments
Last election

August 5, 2025

Education

High school

Bainbridge Island High School

Bachelor's

University of Washington, 2001

Law

Georgetown University Law Center, 2006

Personal
Profession
Attorney
Contact

Rory O'Sullivan ran for election for Seattle City Attorney in Washington. He lost in the primary on August 5, 2025.

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

Biography

Rory O'Sullivan's career experience includes working as an attorney. He earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Washington in 2001 and a law degree from the Georgetown University Law Center in 2006.[1]

Elections

2025

See also: City elections in Seattle, Washington (2025)

General election

The candidate list in this election may not be complete.

General election for Seattle City Attorney

Incumbent Ann Davison and Erika Evans are running in the general election for Seattle City Attorney on November 4, 2025.

Candidate
Image of Ann Davison
Ann Davison (Nonpartisan)
Image of Erika Evans
Erika Evans (Nonpartisan)

Candidate Connection = 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.

Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team.

Nonpartisan primary election

Nonpartisan primary for Seattle City Attorney

Erika Evans and incumbent Ann Davison defeated Rory O'Sullivan and Nathan Rouse in the primary for Seattle City Attorney on August 5, 2025.

Candidate
%
Votes
Image of Erika Evans
Erika Evans (Nonpartisan)
 
56.0
 
106,137
Image of Ann Davison
Ann Davison (Nonpartisan)
 
33.5
 
63,510
Image of Rory O'Sullivan
Rory O'Sullivan (Nonpartisan) Candidate Connection
 
5.8
 
10,959
Nathan Rouse (Nonpartisan)
 
4.8
 
9,057

Total votes: 189,663
Candidate Connection = 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.

Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team.

Endorsements

O'Sullivan received the following endorsements. To send us additional endorsements, click here.

Campaign themes

2025

Ballotpedia survey responses

See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection

Candidate Connection

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

Expand all | Collapse all

My career has tracked the needs of the community. I represented homeowners facing foreclosure at Northwest Justice Project during the height of the Great Recession. In 2015, when King County declared a homelessness emergency, I served as the Managing Attorney for the King County Bar Association’s Housing Justice Project, protecting people from wrongful evictions. As a policymaker, I collaborated with elected officials to develop renter protections and successfully defended those protections when they were challenged by the landlord lobby. I have appeared before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and the State Supreme Court. I've taught constitutional and administrative law and was an Administrative Law Judge during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2022, I founded Washington Employment Benefits Advocates, PLLC, a private practice law firm representing workers seeking unemployment insurance benefits.

As a democracy reform activist, I fought to get corporate money out of our elections. I helped create Seattle’s democracy voucher program and chaired the board of FairVote Washington when ranked-choice voting was passed in Seattle.

I live with my wife, my son, and our dog in Columbia City.
  • When the Trump Administration tries to take back funding that has been appropriated and contracted for services in Seattle, I'll fight back. I'll sue to protect the federal funding we need. When our national guard is being used against us, I will work to protect the free speech rights of the people of Seattle. I'll partner with our friends and neighbors in the immigrants rights community and the LGBTQ+ community to ensure that we are doing everything in our power to protect people who are being targeted by the federal government.
  • Our current city attorney closed community court while case filing times on the most serious crimes that the Seattle City Attorney prosecutes, like DUI and DV cases have skyrocketed. As city attorney I will ensure that we prioritize public safety. That means, bolstering our therapeutic courts that help match low level offenders with the services that they need to disengage from the criminal legal system while focusing our prosecutorial resources on crimes like DUI and DV.
  • I will work to support Seattle's Office of Labor Standards. I have experience holding bad employers accountable. Seattle has strong labor protections, but those protections don't help workers if they aren't enforced. When bad employers are not held accountable, it not only hurts workers, but it hurts employers who are trying to follow the rules. I will ensure that the Office of Labor Standards is supported with staff from the city attorney's office to assist with investigations and to take swift action against uncooperative employers.
I am personally passionate about improving our democracy. That's why I helped to create our democracy voucher program and pass ranked choice voting. I'm passionate about housing. That's why I represented homeowners facing foreclosure and tenants facing eviction. In order to address all the issues facing the city, we need more housing of all forms. And I'm passionate about worker's rights. That's why I founded a law firm to represent workers who were denied the benefits that they earned.
Successful elected officials articulate a positive vision for the future and motivate a broad community to work toward that vision. They need to be good listeners and coalition builders. They need to be nimble enough to adjust when necessary, but they also need to be steadfast in their core values so that they earn the trust of the voters.
I had a paper route for two years when I was in middle school.
Insurance Commissioner Patty Kuderer, Senator Rebecca Saldana, Representatives Sharon Tomiko Santos, Chipalo Street, Brianna Thomas, and Adison Richards, Former City Councilmembers Tammy Morales, Lisa Herbold, and Mike O'Brien, Former County Councilmember Jeanne Kohl Welles, Former Senator Adam Kline, the King County Democrats and the King County Young Democrats, the 32nd, 36th, 37th, and 46th Legislative District Democrats, ILWU Local 19, American Federation of Teachers, SEIU 6, the Seattle Dispatcher's Guild, and FairVote Washington.

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 O'Sullivan completed for other organizations. If you are aware of a link that should be added, email us.

See also


External links

Footnotes

  1. Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on July 1, 2025