For the last several months, I’ve refrained from publicly opining on the mayoral race. A personal friend of mine, Joey Gray, jumped into the race at the last moment and hired me to help her campaign. Now, it’s over, and I can write freely again.
I came away from spending months neck-deep in a nine-person race with my previous convictions strengthened: that it takes tremendous commitment and energy to run for office, any office; that our electoral system is constructed to favor the types of people (arrogant, glib, self-promoting) whose personalities are least appropriate for public service; and that with few local news outlets left and most people not having much information other than the candidates’ own marketing and the often-skewed perceptions of the reporters that remain, it’s very difficult to make wise choices in a local election.
Most people wind up voting for a brand: a carefully constructed image of a person not necessarily having much to do with who that person actually is or how they’d behave in office.
Misogyny in politics
The most surprising thing to me was how poorly the female candidates — Gray and Kate Martin, both of whom were serious about wanting to be mayor — were treated. On any number of occasions, they were excluded, dismissed or singled out for ridicule in a way that the long-shot guys were not. This suggests that, while women have thrived in Seattle in legislative offices, there’s a reason why no woman has even come close to winning the city’s top job in nearly a century.
Misogyny — like its cousin, racism — remains a problem in polite, liberal Seattle. In a race dominated by the fund-raising of six men (including Tim Burgess, who dropped out in May), gender issues like the report that Seattle has the worst gender-pay gap of any large city in the country hardly got mentioned.
But even that was a subset of a larger problem of style. One Mike McGinn supporter dismissively told Gray, who impressed a lot of people with her inclusive demeanor and thoughtfulness, that she’d “brought a Popsicle stick to a knife fight.” It’s a perfect quote, not least because the primary was waged largely as a referendum on McGinn’s often-abrasive style, with almost every candidate decrying “divisiveness” and promising “civility” and to “bring people together.”
Yet, at the end, it was the two candidates with a reputation for abrasiveness and bullying tactics who won out: McGinn and Sen. Ed Murray, who’s known in Olympia for often alienating colleagues and staff alike.
Once again, this year, testosterone — and money — dominated the field. “If you’re not with us, you’re against us” is no way to unite a city.
An ugly contest
The four top candidates in the primary — McGinn, Murray, Peter Steinbrueck, and Bruce Harrell — all have exemplary records in some areas and are problematic in others. In the end, as often happens, money and the visibility of an incumbent candidate (with McGinn cynically using stunts like his Whole Food kerfuffle to stay in the news) trumped everything.
Three years ago, McGinn was considered dead-in-the-water, and he remains unpopular in many circles, including among some of the folks who helped elect him. Outside their immediate base, much of the support for Murray, Steinbrueck and Harrell was an anti-McGinn vote.
In a race featuring lots of socially progressive, business-friendly Democrats, the ideological gradations are narrow and vary from issue to issue; personalities become more important. And people either love or hate McGinn. Judging from the nearly 75 percent of people who didn’t vote for the incumbent mayor in the primary, he’ll have his work cut out for him to beat Murray.
But don’t underestimate McGinn’s knife skills. He nearly won the primary, and Murray, beloved as he is (for good reason) by many, has his own problems. He picked up the bulk of Tim Burgess’ business support when Burgess dropped out of the race and has since been tacking right on a number of issues (a reminder that this is the same guy who endorsed Mark Sidran for mayor in 2001).
McGinn, in turn, has been tacking left, and his supporters have been making much of Murray’s comment that this will be a historically ugly contest. Yet, so far, a good deal of the ugliness has been coming out of the McGinn camp.
In all likelihood, two progressive champions will spend the next few months circling each other and throwing knives. It’s the sort of thing that makes a lot of people cynical about politics — and a reminder that, whatever the merits of either man, this is a terrible way to elect the city’s most powerful public official.
GEOV PARRISH is cofounder of Eat the State! He also reviews news of the week on “Mind Over Matters” on KEXP 90.3 FM. To comment on this column, write to QAMagNews@nwlink.com.
[[In-content Ad]]