I’m still on Other Coast Time, so I couldn’t help but drift off after writing up the 8:15 election results, but I think I dreamt last night that I awoke to find Greg Nickels with a comfortable lead in the Seattle mayor’s race, the later ballot drops having flipped the early numbers. I guess even my unconscious had trouble believing that Mayor Nickels might not survive the primary.
Of course, there wasn’t much in the way of late ballot drops as only the handful of ballots from the county’s three accessible voting centers were added in at 10 PM, and so the mayor really has found himself at the shortest end of a three-way statistical tie in a top-two primary. The mayor’s camp tells me they have some cause for optimism, as late polling showed Nickels doing better against Mallahan than the early vote, so with another 45% or so of ballots still outstanding there’s a good chance the mayor could catch him, but as I wrote last night, they’ve gotta be feeling kinda sad.
Winning a third term is awfully tough (a truism Gov. Gregoire should take to heart as she continues to raise money, presumably in preparation for 2012), even under the best conditions, and these weren’t the best conditions for Mayor Nickels, who despite managing our city into arguably one of the more stable financial situations of any major city, county or state government during this nearly unprecedented economic downturn, has faced brutal attacks on his management skills from a press that apparently believes that his response to a nearly unprecedented snow storm is a better measure of his managerial abilities.
Voters tire of you. And citizens have reason to be fatigued, considering the miserable city response to last December’s snowstorms.
[…] The anti-tunnel vote got a huge bump with support for McGinn, who wants to undo that decision. Welcome to Groundhog Day, as the city revisits the decision again and again. McGinn’s solution, surface transit, will jam our streets and overwhelm the freeway.
Yeah, well, I oppose the tunnel myself (at least, this tunnel, under this financing deal), but perhaps the Times might have thought about the potential consequences before nailing the mayor to the cross over a trumped up Frozen Watergate scandal. (I always find it a little irritating how the press plays such an active role in influencing elections, and then sits back and pretends to be a neutral observer after the fact. At least I’m honest about my activism.)
So as it stands now, we face the very real prospect of the man with the reputation for being one of the greenest mayors in America being unceremoniously shoved aside by an environmental activist. Really?
Don’t get me wrong, Mike McGinn and his supporters deserve a helluva lot of credit for running a grassroots campaign, and impressively so, whatever the final results. I’m eating a breakfast of not so tasty crow this morning for questioning the value of phone banking. And I certainly have my differences with the Nickels administration.
But it’s just hard to believe that a scandal-free mayor of a relatively well-managed city with few if any major problems compared to, say, the big city of my birth from where I’m typing my morning after observations, might potentially fail to make it through such an unimpressive, if crowded field of primary challengers.
How very Seattle of us.
Though thankfully we don’t have to deal with corruption in Seattle government, I don’t think it’s unreasonable that we ask for efficient well managed government. On that count Nickels has always placed loyalty above competence. The snow debacle brought that painfully to light for the average Seattlite. This city spends way too much money delivering very average to poor service to the citizens. Nickels apparently is now paying the price for this malfeasance.
I find that Tabasco helps with crow. Three things:
1) Nickels has gone soft as illustrated by an anemic primary campaign. Too little…waaaay too late.
2) The people are ready for someone new.
3) Camp McGinn deserves high marks for achieving such success with a literal fraction of the cash-on-hand relative Nickels/Mallahan. Voter contact brah.
The mayor has no vision for the future.
He gave himself a B which was an insult to voters.
His tunnel plan which even you can’t admire is a disaster and shows complete incompetence. Basing a megaproject on a law you say is unconstitutional? or if it’s not, laying all overruns on city residents?
Saying “there will be no overruns”?
This is the most incompetent plan ever seen hereabouts. And that says a lot.
As far as revisiting the tunnel time and time again, the voters didn’t decide to go for this bored bypass tunnel, the voters were asked about a tunnel and said NO. So the voters are consistent. They’re consistent with what they voted, they’re consistent in giving McGinn the lead, they’re consistent in giving O’Brien the lead, they were consistent in rejecting roads and transit as favoring roads too much, they were earlier consistent in rejecting a gas tax, You and other media keep saying how green he is but he’s for being green on the cheap, at US conference of mayors, then coming home and favoring senseless wasteful, carbon subsidizing, megaproject ROADS all the time.
It’s a fraud. The man ain’t green, ain’t competent, ain’t pro environment, and these road warrior projects are financially wasteful to boot.
And it’s not what Seattle voters have said they want over and over and over.
What part of “we don’t want to waste billions on senseless roads that harm the planet” do you folks not understand?
And should Nickels pull ahead in the later counted ballots, so what? He’s not going to break 45% and an incumbent with less than 45% is toast.
Too many people remember too may promises not kept by Nickels. We were supposed to have a running waterfront streetcar after he gave away the land that the trolleybarn used for maintenance to the Sculpture Park. We were supposed to have a safe and legal docking facility for his other pet project, the Water Taxi. He gave that to King County and we still don’t have a safe dock (have you ever seen them loading a wheelchair at low tide at the West Seattle end? Scary!)
He got my vote two times for mayor. No third strike for him. He’s getting voted off the island.
@2 – I think #2 is a most of it. After a while we often get sick of any politician.
I don’t agree with about 35% of what Nickles has done, but he’s done a ‘good’ job. We have no major Chicago like scandals, a relatively good budget compared to most of the nation, and a generally happy populace. But there’s nothing wrong with some change every now and then, otherwise you do get complacent and lazy.
The tunnel project is cool in the abstract, but like the monorail (which I also liked in the abstract) it needs SOLID money behind it, and I just don’t think we have it.
The sad thing, if we abandon the tunnel (which we likely will now)…we’re back to square ONE with a new mayor. I see YEARS AND YEARS of new votes, new meetings, new town halls, new discussions over what we want.
I love Seattle, but one fault we have is waffling, for F**KS sake can this city just make a decision. We waffled on the monorail (voted for it 5 times), waffled on the light rail for 40 years, and have voted and discussed ONE SINGLE TINY STRETCH of road (downtown viaduct) for 8 years. Just make a decision and stick with it folks.
If these “avoiding responsibility” politicians make me vote one more time on this, or “ask” my opinion one more time I’m going to scream.
Polical leaders are born and bred in the neighborhoods structure in Seattle. Norm Rice is a good example. Trying to undermine the relative autonomy and democracy of that system is what came back to bite Nickles in the ass–there is a lot of animosity in those circles toward Nickels because of it. Some say that this pathway upwards in the neighborhood deal is part of the problem, the “Seattle process” but in fact was designed in response to mass “urban renewal” some decades ago.
How ironic that in some cases it has been long co-opted by those forces that were supposed to be placed in check, in that is has become a way to mange grassroots neighborhood rabble. (See SLU).
What is disturbing is the newer so called “progressives” that are merging green with corporatism. McGinn represents that, as the Sierra club is the most “corporate” of the environmental wing. If he is elected, I don’t see him talking to Olympia and the Port in a constructive way about SR99. Some of his vocal supporters are implicitly anti-union, if not tacitly, as we have seen by a couple of writers at Publicola during their careers.
Mallahan, at least has some expereince with labor relations, and the jury is still out as to whether he is generally a union supporter. But McGinn is cut from the cloth of managerial greens, and if he is elected, he will piss off the unions, due to his disreagrd toward their issues. He will continue to isolate Seattle from other polical bodies and especially from the rest of the state.
What I earnestly hope Gregoire will consider is that she hasn’t given us any reason to support her for a third term. Everything she accomplished in her first term, she wiped out in her second term, so progressives’ net gains from her 8 years in office are essentially zero. Plus, she has proven herself indecisive and timid on tough issues like the budget and AWV. What would a Gregoire third term produce? Why waste another 4 years to find out what we already know, that she’s another unproductive governor in the mold of Gary Locke? It’s time for her to move on to a cabinet position or a cushy rainmaking job in a big law firm.
@3 As much sympathy as I have for my feral fauna fellows, and yes I’d like to preserve the arctic ice as much as anyone else, I still don’t comprehend how the anti-road crowd thinks our economy can function without vehicles.
The painting contractor who has to carry ladders and buckets of paint to the job site ain’t gonna ride the bus or light rail to work.
The cargo containers being offloaded from ships on the waterfront aren’t going to be transported to warehouses and distribution points by bicycles, buses, or light rail.
Seattle is a north-south strip city with only two north-south highway arterials. The viaduct carries one of them, accounting for about a third of this city’s through traffic. No, we don’t need and shouldn’t build a gold-plater tunnel; and I’m not a Nickels supporter. But the notion of tearing down the viaduct and replacing it with bicycle and pedestrian paths, or a surface arterial with cross streets and stoplights at one-block intervals, is poppycock. That would not only paralyze commuter traffic but also choke regional commerce. The idea that we can abruptly, overnight, abolish cars and trucks from the earth is pie-in-the-sky utopianism, not a practical program for survival much less prosperity. There are things we can do to lessen the impact of fossil fuels during the interim of our inevitable transition to non-fossil energy technologies, but eliminating SR 99 isn’t one of the viable ones.
The $2 billion Nickels wants to spend on the tunnel, with taxpayers liable for any cost overruns, amounts to about $4,000 for every city resident — if there are no cost overruns. Its sole usefulness is to “beautify” a waterfront few city residents visit or see more than a few times a year. This is why Nickels is going to lose. He, like all his predecessors, is totally captive to the moneyed downtown business interests whose goal is to increase their property values by spending other people’s money.
It’s nice to see Mr. Nickel Bag Fee get his comeuppance. He continually panders to the loons….but is a weak manager as evidenced by the snow removal debacle.
And to comment #1–How do you know there isn’t any “corruption”??? Someone would have to care enough to look. The Times & P-I would never do it.
@10
“And to comment #1–How do you know there isn’t any “corruption”??? ”
LOL. Because we haven’t seen any corruption means we should think there’s corruption? LOL. Priceless! Usually when you have a corrupt city (New Orleans, Chicago, San Diego) it’s VERY obvious and leads to strings of city employees moving into jails. Face it, our politics are BORING compared to most of the country. We’re just not that interesting. :)
I’m not saying there’s NOTHING going on…but that relative to the rest of the country, we’re pretty darn good in that respect. Our bitch on here about Locke was that he was boring and ineffective. Compare that to Illinois, where 3 out of the last 4 governors have been charged with crimes or put in jail.
@10 How about if we bury those billions of never-degradable plastic bags on your goat farm? Maybe your grandchildren can mine them for their petroleum content after the oil is gone.
Add to comment #10: How do you know there is? Usually the burden of proof for a proposition is on its proponent; and as you’re the party making the assertion that Seattle city government is corrupt, you have the initial burden of proof.
Cynical @10,
When did you stop beating your wife?
Soon enough the viaduct will fall down and with a bit of luck not kill anyone. Then some sort of replacement will be built.
Speaking of corruption, what about the Port of Seattle? Or the monorail board where all those folks were ‘earning’ five figure salaries for nothing, or what about the snow removal where a city report months before the storm pointed out problems in the department (see this morning’s Times)?
Just because it seldom snows here doesn’t mean that every ten years when we get a big snow we should be surprised when the articulated buses fail and when they decide not to plow down to the pavement and/or use salt. A well run city, especially one on an earthquake zone should have emergency plans that work.
My main issue with Nickels is the deplorable way he has treated the homeless in this area. I am also very disappointed in the way too cozy relationship he has with the real estate development crowd. Apparently he didn’t see a single inch of green space that he didn’t feel the need to cover with a structure of some kind. If I wanted to live in a concrete jungle I would move back to the East Coast.
1 ewp
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Nickels played the fool and even grinned ear to ear as the Sonics packed for OKC. Apparently the developer’s lackey as well as a fool, he’s the latest pol to contribute to the transformation of skid road into something that’s really, um, bland, although it’s a developer’s rather unfortunate wetdream come true. That damned monstrosity on the SW corner of First and Union happened on Nickel’s watch. That development basically says “fuck you” to First Avenue and everything it ever was.
Yes, really.
I am also dumbfounded by this.
I respect this mayor a lot but have been very upset by his machine style government. He has neglected traditional Seattle style neighborhood/interest group politics for big block and big dollar support from the party organizations, labor, and business. Given the lack of any real news media, I thought this was MORE than enough.
However, it comes out, I suspect that something quite amazing has happened. Seattle has triumphed over a traditional political machine.
This is good news for the DL/HA/winged liberal coterie and should encourage MORE local activism.
The immediate problem, however, is that neither of the Ms for mayor (MvM vs M&M?) is impressive and neither seems likely to bring good skills to the office. Mallahan seems to be a qualified business man with absolutely NO experience dealing with the politics of a city. He is in for a rude awakening if he should win. McGinn may have his heart in the right place (ie on the left) BUT he lacks any executive experience or political experience outside the environmental niche. Morevoer this would be a lousy time to change course once again on the effin tunnel.
If either of these guys do win, they will have a major problem building a political machine adn an admin in a time where both are parlous. The obvious opportuniyt is for the City Council to re-emerge as what it has been in the past .. a true political, representative body.
Are the gonads there for such an activity?
Nickel’s environmental cred. has always seemed more hot air than anything real to me.
#20 seems to have about the right take on things.
I spoke to at least a half dozen people who were supporting Nickels, but went with either Mallahan or McGinn to have input on who his challenger would be.
If Nickels ends up losing by a couple hundred votes, I’ll bet this dynamic will have played a deciding role.
Roger Rabbit – usually I agree with you, but not on the Viaduct.
If – taking your numbers – a third of Viaduct trips are through trips, two thirds aren’t – meaning they begin or end in downtown. The tunnel does literally nothing for them, whether they are car trips, transit trips, or bike trips.
That remaining third of trips (and studies suggest it’s even less than that) will still get there! From the rhetoric, you’d think that the I-5/surface/transit proponents are proposing to tear up every road through the city. It’s a ridiculous strawman argument.
The fact is that I-5 through downtown could be rebuilt to be vastly more efficient for both “to” and “through” trips, plus a new surface Alaskan Way built, plus transit added, plus other surface streets reconfigured, for about 2/3rds of the cost of the tunnel.
And everyone in the city – not just “downtown developers” – gets the waterfront back.
And, that’s setting aside how the state has reneged on the tunnel deal already. There’s a reason why the state’s stakeholder process endorsed I-5/surface/transit.
Check out http://www.tunnelfacts.com/ (which, BTW, I had no part in creating)
@ 23
Good post.
A couple of thoughts:
1. Seattle HAS a lot of opportunity to improve and reconfigure its NS roads to make access to and form the city better. The obviously underused corridors are Elliot Ave/14th NW one the west and the entire Rainier/23rd/Lake City Way corridor on the east.
Both of these have relatively long stretched where land is underused or state-owned. The east corridor would also help revitalize the central area and be a great add-on to the light rail by hooking into local NS buss routes at each stop and from the UW terminus to Lake City. The West road would offer BETTER access to SLU/QA/the waterfront/ and downtown then the aurora mess does now.
2. I am not convinced that the tunnel is a good idea. BUT. the costs of yet another failed Seattle project are scary. How much would it cost to NOT do the Tunnel now? What effect would this have politically on the EW _floating_ bridge issues or future mass transit efforts?
It seems to me that a time comes when one has to move on. I think Nickles is a practical guy and he realized this in supporting the tunnel.
The Pelletizer is right about the Tunnel.
It is yet another “KLOWN feelgood with no attention to cost” example of how to bankrupt a municipality.
Besides, when the earthquake hits the Cascadian Faultline, none of this will matter.
Hey, you mean the Viaduct hasn’t fallen down yet???
How can that be.
Years ago we were told it’s demise was imminent.
KLOWNS!
Those of you who are spouting on and on about how long it will take to get a transportation solution if we nix the tunnel are the same people who said we would never get light rail if we didn’t accept the Roads and Transit package.
You guys said we had to accept 182 miles of sprawl highway or else we’d never end up with light rail. It only took 1 more year to pass a rail only package and rail will actually be built sooner than if we had passed Roads and Transit.
Oh, the poor crows.
You kknow, I was wondering if the Cyniclown had stopped beating his wife…and porking his goat for that matter.
Such a vile man.
@26
I honestly don’t care whether we build the tunnel or not, what I do not want to do is waste another 1/2 billion dollars because Seattle is so poorly led OR end up putting the dollars into half assed solutions like the down town choo-choo train.
Half assed solutions like light rail? Or you talking Street Car. SockPuppy, what’s the alternative?
“The Pelletizer is right about the Tunnel.
It is yet another “KLOWN feelgood with no attention to cost” example of how to bankrupt a municipality.Besides, when the earthquake hits the Cascadian Faultline, none of this will matter.”
Huh, Mr.Cynical? On one hand, you’re stating an earthquake will make the decision for us. On the other hand, you’re mocking the fact it hasn’t come down yet in an earthquake…
Explain, please.
“This city spends way too much money delivering very average to poor service to the citizens. Nickels apparently is now paying the price for this malfeasance.”
What, was ewp another one of those pathetic rear wheel drive guys who thinks a snowplow should have arrived at his driveway a couple times a day for several weeks?
Look at all the new roadway being paved, the new parks being built and improved, the new civic and transportation infrastructure being delievered. Heck, we even have brand new, quieter green garbage trucks which run on natural gas.
ewp personifies the SPOILED ROTTEN Seattle whiner. The guy obviously hasn’t lived in any other big city – or even visited, for that matter. Just wait until incompetents Mallahan / McGinn are confronted by the SPOILED ROTTEN Seattle mob who elected them.
Expectations will be raised even higher (“we demand 5 Star service at a 2 star price!”), and either man will fail miserably. Or, they will be do-nothing mayors, ala Norm Rice. Which means the bureaucrats take over again…or the clowns on the city council get their way…
@25 Um, it’s the Cascadia subduction zone. Klynical must be dreaming that he’s both a structural engineer and a seismologist. Alas, he’s just another dumbass wingnut who has no fucking idea what he’s talking about.
I think that Steinbrueck and Licata are really kicking themselves for not running this time around. If Nickels was THAT vulnerable that he would be unseated in the primary by two guys with little practical experience with city management… well… that’s stunning.
Nice play on words in the headline, btw.
God, you are all so full of shit it is pathetic. This fat bastard is getting beat by a guy who is greener than he is AND another guy who doesn’t know if he is a disciple of Milton Friedman or Al Gore. McGinn is worse than Nickels but he is different. Malloran, or however the hell you spell it, doesn’t even know his political philosophy. Repair the viaduct and be done with it. All the parks in King County are closing because you do not have any money. This is not a time for grand schemes. Fill the potholes and screw the rest.
@31
You mean after all this time on HA Libtardos you just came to this “conclusion”.
@35
They are all Dummocrapts! Nuff SAID Suckas!
$4000 trash cans
Proposed beach burn bans
Yep you get what you vote for.