Meet Latasha Palmer, Tacoma’s newly elected at-large City Council member
Latasha Palmer describes herself as “homegrown.”
Palmer, 39, is Tacoma’s newly elected at-large City Council member. She has lived in Tacoma for 36 of those 39 years, and in 2026 she’ll become the newest member of Tacoma City Council.
She’s taking on the role at a pivotal time for the city, as it contends with the search for a permanent city manager and police chief, a budget deficit and a new mayor after outgoing Mayor Victoria Woodards concludes the eight years she spent in the role. As the official start of her time on the council looms, Palmer is committing to transparency and visibility in her role. Those values are the lens through which she’ll view her broader priorities, she said.
Palmer positioned herself as the more progressive candidate compared to her opponent Jessica Johnston, another newcomer whose stance aligned more with Tacoma’s business community. After Pierce County elections officials certified this year’s November election late last month, Palmer’s victory solidified, with 56.04% of the vote.
Now, Palmer is shifting her focus. She’s putting together a website that will serve as a tracker of the tasks and projects she hopes to accomplish on the council and as a place for constituents to provide feedback and ask questions. She’s scheduling get-to-know-you meetings with her soon-to-be colleagues on the council and has trainings on her calendar with the Association of Washington Cities.
“The campaign was the start of this, but I’m just familiarizing myself and meeting all of the different groups that are invested in Tacoma right now, our nonprofits, our small businesses, our faith community, our unions and kind of building those roads and coalitions, making sure that they have an inroad to me and we can communicate,” Palmer told The News Tribune.
Kiara Daniels, the city’s deputy mayor and the at-large council member who Palmer ran to replace, said it has been an honor to serve the city,and that she’s “thrilled” to pass on her responsibilities to Palmer.
“Latasha is a dedicated community leader whose heart, vision and commitment will serve our city well,” Daniels wrote in an email. “I look forward to supporting her as she steps into this role and continues the work of building a stronger Tacoma.”
Approach to the job
Palmer, who will starting in 2026 make $67,445.11 a year as a city council member, said her top priorities for her four-year term align with what she told voters on the campaign trail: housing stability, economic security and building neighborhood hubs.
Her first focus, she said, falls under the realm of “neighborhood hubs” – to stay in close contact with people from Tacoma’s various neighborhoods who can keep her apprised of the concerns and needs they have. She also wants to see the city do a better job of tracking and monitoring how close it is to meeting its goals, such as the city’s plans to build 6,000 new affordable-housing units by 2028.
“It’s all organization. I think we have plans, we’ve done the studies, we understand what needs to happen,” Palmer said. “But there hasn’t, in my opinion, been enough of the tracking, the monitoring, how close are we to reaching those goals?”
Approach to the job
Palmer plans to build support from her fellow council members the same way she approached her participation in the city’s charter-review process last year: by doing her research, being accessible and maintaining open lines of communication.
“I will definitely just continue in that vein, making sure I understand the priorities of my fellow council members, and how those fit into what I’m trying to do, so we can come together on those things,” Palmer said.
She won’t need support from all eight of her colleagues to do so. The council is known to vote on most issues 9-0, part of a much-whispered about “consensus culture.” Palmer said having that unanimous support isn’t a bad thing, but it’s not going to be essential to her when she’s in the process of sponsoring resolutions and looking for others to back her.
“I think democracy is messy, and democracy is something that, for it to function well, you need to make sure that you are bringing in different voices and diverse ideas, and that’s not always going to end with agreement,” Palmer said. “It can end with respect, but it doesn’t have to end with agreement.”
Background and past experience
Palmer is relatively new to working directly with the city of Tacoma. Most recently, she was selected to serve on Tacoma’s charter-review committee, a group of people selected in 2024 to study the city charter and propose amendments. That close study of the city’s policies is what eventually “snowballed” into her council campaign, she said.
Before that, she explored the possibility of creating an organization to promote urban gardening. She was learning how to manage markets, about farming and more. That was on the heels of her graduation from Columbia University as a non-traditional student studying African American and African Diaspora Studies.
She’s always been interested in serving her community, she said.
“I’ve been blessed with the ability to be able to pick and choose the things that I put my time and energy into, and just from what I’ve been through in life and understanding where we’re at now, and what needs to happen, I feel like there’s no other work that would be as fulfilling or necessary at the moment,” Palmer said.
Before all else, her first job title is “mom.” As the only parent in her kids’ life, they are her top focus. They’ve appeared in some of her campaign materials, and Palmer said they’ve been excited about the campaign and her new job.
When Palmer has free time – a rarity given her kids and the work of running a campaign – she said she enjoys taking them to places like Point Defiance or Owen Beach to unwind.
“It’s never easy doing it alone, but they’ve been great and very supportive,” she said.
This story was originally published December 8, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
