Over the last two months, Crosscut — a daily source of on-line, quality journalism — has been kind enough to ask me to attend interviews with Seattle’s candidates for mayor.
The interviews usually happen over lunch, sandwiches or pizza, though some contenders can’t make the noon hour as they have steady jobs.
Tim Burgess dropped out due to image. In a town like Seattle, image means all politically. He was deemed to be too conservative, a broad brush painted.
Burgess has endorsed Ed Murray, state senator from the 43rd District, which includes Eastlake, the University District, Montlake and Capitol Hill.
I respect most on the long list of Jet City contenders voters will choose from in the primary. A few aren’t serious; most are. Who would be mayor of Seattle?
In the weeks and days leading up to Seattle’s Aug. 8 primary, we’ll have spin from activists, advocates and aficionados who want our attention, with this or that ax to grind, positions to take, agendas to push.
Writing now, I’ll be fair, fairer than some candidates themselves. In the last few weeks before the final two make the electoral slate, expect weird campaigning.
Strange, uninformed…
First up, Charlie.
Charlie Staadecker heads the strange. He’s rich and shows it, and his campaign has been marked by glad-handing condescension. He’s released a YouTube video in which he’s surrounded by bottles of alcohol most Seattleites can’t afford. He’d like to arrest transgressors in Belltown, send cops door-to-door in the South End and invest in art.
Next, Peter Steinbrueck.
Steinbrueck’s been a longtime fixture in Seattle. He was the youngest member of the Seattle City Council, elected on his family name — his dad, Victor Steinbrueck, saved the Pike Place Market.
Steinbrueck wants to hire 250 more cops, yet he’s noncommittal on how to pay for them. He says he’ll be ready from the first day to be mayor, yet, in his interview, he did not show that he was familiar with the current status of enforcement of the city’s protocols and ordinances, or how budget cuts have affected city services or department performance. He doesn’t know the house he would sit in.
Then there’s Mary Martin.
Martin is a member of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). A short history: Leon Trotsky, the Russian Marxist revolutionary and founder of the Red Army, was assassinated in Mexico in 1940. Since, his fans coalesced into the SWP. Like Trotsky, they advocate a world of continuous revolution. The SWP has since posed candidates here and there.
Martin’s day job is in a factory in Kent. She was the nicest of the mayoral lot I met.
If elected, she said one of her first actions would be to organize a citywide general strike.
Kate Martin from Greenwood runs on a platform of education reform. There is little the mayor of Seattle can do about reforming education. Nevertheless, most candidates uniformly agree that improving education in the city will be a top priority.
However, Seattle Public Schools is its own ruling body, with the oversight of an elected school board. Superintendent José Banda’s task is to revive programmatic management following the incompetence of predecessor Maria Goodloe-Johnson.
During her tenure, $1.8 million were spent for services that were not provided, with thousands of dollars going into dummy front companies of Silas Potter, the administrator authorized to spend that $1.8 million on programs to help minority-owned businesses compete for school-district contracts.
Why do the candidates speak so much about education, then?
It’s a safe topic, with goals most people agree with: better schools, students prepared for success, enriching children’s lives. Outside of a few support projects, the City of Seattle cannot deliver on these goals as the delivery system is another organization’s bailiwick.
The three front-runners
The primary will really come down to three candidates, though Staadecker, Steinbrueck, Mary Martin and Kate Martin collectively may affect its outcome by drawing votes away from the frontrunners.
Of the three at the top, Bruce Harrell is the most interesting. He’s comfortable in the offices of civic activists and large businesses. He has a long history of meaningful volunteer and professional work. He would bring a level of accountability to the Sound Transit board it has sorely lacked.
When Harrell talks, he doesn’t parse his words; he says what he means, and he means what he says. His recent criticism of the Department of Justice (DOJ) plan for reforming the Seattle Police Department is valid: The DOJ needed to back up its conclusions about the excessive use of force with data it did not produce.
Harrell may be the type of strong, capable leader who arises in the city once in a generation.
Ed Murray was not available for a Crosscut interview at the time of this writing. He’s received many endorsements from politicians, business interests and social organizations.
He enjoys wide name recognition for his leadership in the Washington state Senate on a host of progressive causes.
I know Murray goes the extra distance to research issues that impact his constituency. Following the community failure to get any mitigation for the Sound Transit development on Beacon Hill, Murray’s staff contacted me in 2003 to arrange a meeting. I’d been publicly critical of Sound Transit tactics. He did not want to see Capitol Hill and the University District go through the same experience. Murray does his homework.
The third with a hat in the primary inner ring is Mayor Mike McGinn.
Although he’s regularly and vigorously upbraided in the press and is the unifying target of the other candidates, McGinn has grown as a leader. The first two years in office had obvious growing pains, centered around opposition to the Alaskan Way Viaduct replacement tunnel, controversies that overtook the police department, a broken budget caused by the recession and internal turmoil in some city departments. Still, he has weathered those challenges, and the city is better for the experience.
A leader, not a collaborator
The one word that comes up time and again in the Crosscut interviews has been “collaborate.” The first job of the mayor, though, is not to collaborate with the state, federal or county governments; with businesses or activists; or even the City Council. The mayor’s first job is to lead, to have the backbone to do what may not be popular yet is necessary. It’s not to do what’s right by some people; it’s to do what’s right by the city.
May we be so fortunate electing our mayor.
CRAIG THOMPSON is a longtime community activist. To comment on this column, write to QAMagNews@nwlink.com.
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