HorsesAss.Org

There are a number of set strategies that come into play when running or opposing a ballot measure, and some of the most time tested involve the ballot title. So it is curious to consider the No side’s strategy in challenging the title to Referendum 71, which would put the recently passed domestic partnership legislation before voters.

No doubt the the original title assigned by the Attorney General’s office is more than acceptable to the Yes camp (those who would favor upholding the legislation), while the alternative proposed by the R-71’s sponsors (those who oppose the legislation) is more favorable to their electoral prospects.  Here is the original ballot title language:

“Same-sex couples, or any couple that includes one person age sixty-two or older, may register as a domestic partnership with the state. Registered domestic partnerships are not marriages, and marriage is prohibited except between one man and one woman. This bill would expand the rights, responsibilities, and obligations of registered domestic partners and their families to include all rights, responsibilities, and obligations granted by or imposed by state law on married couples and their families.”

And here is the alternative proposed by a referendum sponsor:

“The bill would expand the rights, responsibilities and obligations of registered domestic partners to be equal to the rights, responsibilities and obligations granted by or imposed by state law on married couples, except that domestic partnerships will not be called marriages.”

The original title is certainly more informative than the proposed alternative, accurately noting that “Registered domestic partnerships are not marriages, and marriage is prohibited except between one man and one woman.” Specifically restating our state’s DOMA-enforced definition of marriage can’t help but soften opposition to expanding rights for domestic partnerships, so I’m guessing that’s the language that the R-71 sponsors are most opposed to.  And for good reason.

But while a favorable ballot title (that is, favorable to your side) can amount to as much as a point or two advantage at the polls, it’s not worth a hill of beans if you don’t get your measure on the ballot in the first place, and that’s the kind of Sophie’s choice the two camps were faced with in making their calculation whether or not to challenge the ballot title.

R-71 sponsors have only until July 25 to collect 120,577 valid voter signatures. Add the recommended 20% cushion to account for duplicates, mismatched signatures and other discrepencies, and you’re looking at a target of about 144,000 signatures in less than eight weeks… and counting.

Had the No camp let last Friday’s challenge deadline slide, they could have printed petitions overnight and started collecting on May 23, giving them 63 days to gather their signatures at an average rate of about 2,286 signatures a day. But now, with a Thurston County Superior Court judge not scheduled to hear their challenge until next Tuesday, R-71 sponsors will have at most 52 days to gather signatures. At an average rate of over 2,769 a day, they’ve effectively added almost 500 extra signatures a day to their burden—a 21-percent increase—while losing two Sundays, a definite blow to a canvassing campaign that will likely rely on churches to produce a large chunk of its signatures.

Without a large infusion of cash to pay professional signature gatherers (we’re talking several hundred thousand dollars) this target just doesn’t seem doable, especially considering how noncontroversial the domestic partnership legislation has proven within the general population. Perhaps the R-71 sponsors are hoping for a miracle, but I don’t remember Jesus performing any magic tricks in the interest of promoting discrimination.

Meanwhile, the ballot title challenge itself was a crapshoot to begin with, with judges tending to retain the AG’s original language more often than not. Yes, the stuff about marriage being between one man and one woman sucks a lot of the outrage out of voters on the fence, but it will be hard for the No camp to successfully argue that voters should be presented with less information, unless they are fortunate enough to draw a judge who both sympathizes with their agenda, and is willing to use his court to act on it.  (You know, one of those damn activist judges the right is always complaining about.)

So it makes me wonder what the No camp’s strategy really is? Do they really believe they can gather the requisite signatures in a little more than seven weeks? Are they confident they have a chance of prevailing at the polls if they do qualify? Or have they wisely started to question whether waging a losing battle over R-71 might ultimately cause their anti-gay agenda more harm than good?

Yeah, I’m cynical, but this ballot title challenge sure does look like a poison pill. Which I guess, ironically, might make this religious right backed referendum our state’s second documented case of death with dignity.

UPDATE:
The ballot title challenge has been withdrawn after wasting a week of precious signature gathering time.  So I guess there’s no dignity after all.

Last week, the first Washington resident took advantage of the new Death with Dignity law, and chose to end her terminal illness with her family and her dog by her side. Another half-dozen individuals in the state have received the medication after being certified by physicians. This law, as in Oregon, is only used by a few dozen people a year. No one gets excited about people using the law, but supporters still work to make sure that people know it and can discuss it with their doctor. As Barbara Coombs Lee from Compassion & Choices explains in the Huffington Post, it pays off:

Most Compassion & Choices supporters would eagerly bargain away a few days of extended life in an intensive care unit in exchange for final days spent at home, in relative comfort and meaningful communion with those they love. Such folks don’t adhere to the doctrine of redemptive suffering and would rather slip away peacefully if imminent dying would be otherwise prolonged and agonized.

Well, the evidence is in. Recent studies indicate the single most powerful thing a person can do to improve the chance for gentle dying is — simply and courageously — to talk about it.
Talk to whom? First and foremost, talk to your personal physician. It’s never too early for this conversation. This March an important study appeared in the Archives of Internal Medicine. A large, multi-institutional study, it evaluated the quality of life at the end of life for people with advanced cancer.

Lo and behold! Those individuals who had discussed end-of-life values and preferences with their doctors experienced significantly less suffering in their final week of life. A significant reduction in intensive care hospitalizations and high technology interventions accounted for this desirable outcome. Not too surprising, the patients who had talked with their doctors, and who experienced a more peaceful, pain-free end of life, also received less costly care than those tethered to the tubes and machines meant to extend their lives.

But one finding is stunning enough to be a game-changer in end-of-life care. For all the suffering they inflicted and all the cost they incurred, the tubes and machines actually bought no life extension. None.

Coombs Lee goes on to give some good advice on how to start up that conversation with your doctor, as most doctors will not initiate it. Compassion & Choices has been doing a tremendous amount of work making sure that Washington’s law works as well as Oregon’s, where even death with dignity opponent Sen. Ron Wyden conceded in front of Congress that the law has worked incredibly well when it comes to improving end-of-life care:

While I do not know how I would vote if the issue were to appear on the Oregon ballot once more, I believe it is time for me to acknowledge that my fears concerning the poor elderly were thankfully never realized, and the safeguards appear to have worked quite well in preventing potential abuses.

What is often not discussed by opponents of the Oregon law is the Oregon Death With Dignity Act has brought about many improvements in end of life care in Oregon. Pain management has improved. My state remains the only state to discipline a physician for the under-treatment of pain. However, perhaps the most important side effect of the law is that families, health professionals and patients know they can, and should have conversations about how they want to die and what their wishes are concerning treatment.

The end-of-life rules before I-1000 was passed into law allowed for physicians to make decisions on end-of-life care that should have been left up to patients. Changing that protocol and allowing for conversations about different choices to take place is not just giving patients better options, it’s also improving their care overall.

Arnold Schwarzenegger on Rush: “I think that they say that Rush Limbaugh is the 800 lb. gorilla in the Republican Party, but I think that’s mean spirited to say that because I think he’s down to 650 lbs., so I think one should be fair to him about this whole thing.”

On Tuesday, a medical marijuana grower in Wallingford named Roger Spohn was raided by what appeared to be four FBI agents. He soon realized that the agents were actually robbers and called the police. When the police arrived, however, they confiscated most of his plants. Spohn is a registered medical marijuana patient who was maintaining a grow for multiple patients, something which is not allowed by state law but in recent years has been overlooked in King County according to attorney Douglas Hiatt.

When Washington’s medical marijuana law was being revised in 2008, this was one of the major concerns from the patient community. At the time, I’d spoken with individuals who had grown for patients who were either too ill or too frail to grow for themselves. Some of these folks were known by law enforcement to be growing for multiple patients, but were left alone because they weren’t selling to non-patients. Many were worried that codifying a specific plant limit would lead to situations like the one that happened on Tuesday. They were right. After the police came to his house, Spohn was left with only the state-mandated limit of 15 plants (out of the nearly 200 he’d been growing).

At this point, I can’t say for sure whether or not Spohn was diverting any of his grow output to non-patients, but I’ve known Douglas Hiatt long enough that I’d be surprised if he stood up for a grower who was doing that. Most growers are patients themselves and worry greatly about going to jail. And Spohn hasn’t been charged with anything, meaning that the police don’t have any evidence that Spohn was diverting any of his supply. Hopefully, SPD is more concerned with finding the robbers who are not only guilty of breaking and entering and theft, but also of impersonating law enforcement.

If the police are unable to prove that Spohn wasn’t just growing for authorized patients in this state, SPD should return his plants. That’s not a legal judgement on my part, it’s a pragmatic one. Medical marijuana patients who were relying on Spohn for their medicine are now going to have to find alternative avenues. For a city that is so concerned with street dealers and gang violence, this was an incredibly short-sighted move by those officers. They just gave some very brazen criminals a larger customer base along with their stolen goods. To believe that that move couldn’t come back to bite SPD in the ass is wishful thinking.

The last time we had an incident with SPD confiscating medicine from an authorized patient, the DEA eventually got involved and the marijuana was never returned. Unfortunately, because Spohn was technically in violation of state law, even Obama’s DEA could get involved and the same outcome may transpire. If that happens, it will be another illustration of how last year’s attempt to improve our state’s medical marijuana law to protect patients was a failure.

I’ve already gone out on a limb by predicting that none of the challengers in the Seattle mayor’s race have the political chops to unseat unpopular yet effective incumbent Greg Nickels.  It’s not an endorsement of Nickels, I just calls ’em as I sees ’em.

So why haven’t I made a similar effort to handicap the King County Executive race? Well, because like nearly every other political observer I’ve talked to, I haven’t the foggiest idea who’s gonna eventually come out on top.

What I do know is the that the wet dream scenario for each of the four Democrats would be to face off against Susan Hutchison in November, but while she’s the only Republican, the only woman and the only candidate with name ID north of 30% in the race, I’m still not so sure this scenario is such a sure thing. Name ID and gender won’t do it alone, so if Hutchison expects to make it through the primary she can’t keep ducking interviews and candidate forums. And while I suppose the $58,200 she’s raised thus far is respectable, nearly $45,000 of it has come in the form of double-max donations from the usual suspects (Kemper Freeman, Bruce McCaw, John Stanton, et al), accounting for a stunning average of over $1000 per contributor. Thanks to contribution limits, at some point Hutchison is going to have to expand her base beyond the very, very wealthy if she expects to stay competitive, even in the money race.

Before Hutchison stepped in, the primary was shaping up to be a regional playoff, with Eastside legislators Fred Jarrett and Ross Hunter battling to faceoff in November against the winner of the Seattle bracket contest between Dow Constantine and Larry Phillips. But Hutchison is at the very least a monkey wrench that makes all efforts at prognostication nearly impossible. A fairly even split on one or both of the Democratic brackets works strongly in Hutchison’s favor, but even mildly lopsided outcomes in the regional contests could easily result in an early exit for the former newscaster. We’ll see.

As for the Constantine vs. Phillips, Hunter vs. Jarrett subplots, well, it’s too early to pick discernible favorites.  For a while there I thought Constantine was picking up momentum, but that appears to have stalled at least for the moment. And neither Jarrett nor Hunter have had time to do much campaigning or fundraising since the end of the legislative session.

So while I don’t know how interesting the debate will be, for the moment at least, it looks like an interesting horserace.

There are a lot of wire stories the Seattle Times could reprint and plug from their home page, but they chose this one:

National sales tax idea getting fresh look

With budget deficits soaring and President Obama pushing a trillion-dollar-plus expansion of health coverage, some Washington policymakers are taking a fresh look at a moneymaking idea long considered politically taboo: a national sales tax.

Uh-huh.

Had John McCain won the White House… were the Republicans currently even a credible opposition party, if not a legitimate threat to seize control of the House or Senate in 2010… then perhaps the notion of a highly regressive national sales tax might amount to something more than just a right-wing fantasy.  But he didn’t, they’re not, and it won’t.

So the question remains, why would the Times reprint this particular piece of pointless, idle speculation? Wishful thinking?

Oy.

Photographs of Iraqi prisoner abuse which U.S. President Barack Obama does not want released include images of apparent rape and sexual abuse, Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper reported on Thursday.

The images are among photographs included in a 2004 report into prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison conducted by U.S. Major General Antonio Taguba.

Taguba included allegations of rape and sexual abuse in his report, and on Wednesday he confirmed to the Daily Telegraph that images supporting those allegations were also in the file.

The issue isn’t really whether horrific images are made available to the public, the issue is whether the leadership of the Democratic Party has the moral fortitude to do something to make sure this can’t happen again.

And that will require something like a Church Committee. There is certainly enough evidence to suggest that a large formal inquiry is warranted.

If the position of the Democratic Party is “we don’t like torture but we’re just going to forget it ever happened,” then we’re no better than the Republicans. This is bigger than partisan politics anyhow, it goes directly to what kind of civilization we supposedly are.

If top Democrats wind up being embarrassed or worse, then they have whatever is coming to them as well. We already know the Republicans will screech about “criminalizing politics,” as if all this is just some unfortunate accident rather than the result of deliberate policy. This wasn’t soldiers losing control in combat, this was systematic torture of defenseless people, executed with gleeful savagery.

The Obama administration has a choice to make, and for the sake of future generations, it better find a way to deal with this ugly episode in American history and give the people a full accounting of what was done in their name. A government that abides barbarism undermines its claim to being of, by and for the people it represents, a flaw similar to those of European tyrants that prompted the creation and growth of this noble experiment in the first place.

George H. W. Bush was, seemingly, a traitor in the Wingnut War on Empathy™:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whAgq0HeiB8[/youtube]

A few weeks back I wrote a post arguing that as bad as the fundamentals may be newspaper industry wide, struggling publishers need to take a little personal responsibility for their own poor business decisions:

For while the whole industry is struggling, the financial precariousness of some of our most threatened papers is at least partially due to the awful business decisions of their owners, in particular, the incredibly over-leveraged position they find themselves in as a result of ill-advised acquisitions and other bone-headed ventures.

For The Columbian, it was the construction of a new $40 million office tower that landed a shrunken newsroom back in its old digs, and publisher Scott Campbell in bankruptcy court.  For The Times, it was Frank Blethen’s ill-fated foray into the Maine media market that has left him with a couple hundred million dollars of debt coming due, and no obvious means of raising more capital.  Both papers are currently losing money on their daily operations, but neither would be struggling to survive this particular recession if the bankers weren’t pounding at their doors.

That’s the kind of critical analysis one doesn’t often read from a medium tasked with covering itself, and so it was no surprise to be castigated in my own comment thread for daring to challenge the self-soothing meme that it’s Google and bloggers and various technical and economic macro-trends that primarily threaten the industry, rather than the poor business decisions of industry leaders themselves. But it’s an analysis I stand by based on the available facts.

And, it’s an analysis that just got a dumpster load of support in the form of an incredibly in-depth and well-sourced article in the latest edition of Seattle Business Monthly that details the Blethen family saga, and how their own dysfunction accelerated the Times’ “slide toward insolvency…”

What is remarkable about the Times Co.’s current financial state is not that it is happening—newspaper companies from the august New York Times Co. on down are struggling. But while it is true that the Seattle Times Co. has been hammered by the same forces affecting others, the management performance of the Blethens themselves during the past decade has contributed significantly to the Times’ current troubles.

“We asked questions that any one of our own publishers would have known, and Frank didn’t know the answers,” says Tony Ridder, chief executive of Knight Ridder, which owned 49.5 percent of the Times Co. from 1929 to 2006. “It was,” Ridder adds, “a weak business leadership.”

Ouch. It’s one thing when this kind of critique comes from me, the Times’ self-proclaimed volunteer ombudsman, but it’s another thing entirely when it’s coming from Bill Richards, a former Wall Street Journal and Washington Post reporter who the Times had hired for three years to cover its own JOA battle with the P-I.

Among the many disclosures culled from board meeting minutes, interviews and a Harvard Business School case study:

• In 2005, the Blethens blew off a Knight Ridder offer of $500M+ for their share of the Times Co. This offer, which was never disclosed, was solicited by Frank Blethen, according to Ridder.

• In 1997, Tony Ridder blocked the Blethens from using the Times as collateral to purchase a chain of Maine newspapers.

• The owners of the Maine newspapers manipulated the bidding for the property so that Blethen ended up bidding against himself and overpaying for it, and no one else ever made a formal bid for the chain.

• During the run-up to the disastrous 2000-01 strike, Frank Blethen took such a hard line, anti-union negotiating stance that Times labor relations chief Chris Biencourt, in a post-strike assessment prepared for the Blethen Corp., called the resulting strike “inevitable.”

• Top Times officials were so sure the unions would fold they failed to secure adequate strike insurance before the 49-day walkout.

• Frank Blethen and his cousins have used their dominance of the Seattle Times Co. to attempt to redress wrongs and injustices they felt were done to them by their own parents, including forcing the Times Co. to buy the Blethen Maine chain and providing jobs for any family member who completes college.

Richards concludes:

Blethen’s pride has repeatedly driven him into endeavors and to actions that have undercut the Times’ ability to survive and remain the family’s centerpiece. “Journalistically,” says Tony Ridder, attempting recently to explain this dichotomy, “The Seattle Times was a good newspaper. But Frank absolutely did not make good business decisions.”

Double ouch.

It’s a fascinating and, at times, somewhat sad read. It’s easy to feel empathy for a man like Frank Blethen, who says that he took his first job at the Times at the age of 21, in order to become acquainted with his physically absent and emotionally remote father, a man who never sent him a birthday card or a letter, and never called throughout Frank’s entire adolescence. It’s a tortured tale of Citizen Kane-esque proportions.

And it’s hard not to respect Frank’s goal of building family cohesion, and instilling pride in the newspaper and its values amongst the fifth generation of Blethens.

But as a businessman, that doesn’t let Frank off the hook, and I’m tired of reading his editorial board demand that individuals take the same sort of personal responsibility for our actions that the Blethen family has thus far refused to publicly take for their own.

Some Republicans seem to think having empathy is a bad thing. This explains a lot.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWgyASf0KrA[/youtube]

The Seattle Times editorialized yesterday that a citizens commission used sound logic in freezing the pay of Washington state elected officials over the next two years, a sentiment with which I can’t argue in light of our current budgetary woes. But at the same time I think it needs to be pointed out that at only $42,000 a year, we don’t pay our state legislators nearly enough to attract a large pool of qualified candidates.

Yes, that’s right… those same legislators at whom I’m still more than a little pissed off for their collective lack of creativity and courage during the past session… I’m arguing we need to pay them more, perhaps even double. In fact, I’d argue that the body’s lack of effectiveness is at least partially due to the low pay, and the sort of candidates who can afford to accept it.

What we get now are basically two groups of candidates: the very wealthy, who don’t need the money, or the kinda candidate who looks at $42K and thinks “Hey… I’ll be living large!” There’s also a third group in the middle, who accepts the job and the huge cut in standard of living that comes with it, out of a sense of public service or narcissism or both, but those sort of legislators become fewer and fewer as the gap between what legislators could earn and what they do earn grows ever larger.

Now I know some of you will retort that $42K ain’t bad for a part-time legislature that only meets in session for six months out of every two years, but I’d argue that the job is only part-time if you’re doing it wrong. The best, most effective legislators are the ones who make themselves available to citizens, interest groups and their colleagues year round, providing constituent services while seeking community input and expert opinions as they prepare legislation and strategies for our artificially condensed sessions. And for state reps, hell, running for office every two years is a full time job in itself.

So if we insist on maintaining the fiction that this is a part-time job, and continue to compensate accordingly, well, if I remember my Adam Smith correctly, you get what you pay for. The wealthy legislators (think Eastside Dems), however pure their intentions, can’t help but lose touch with the struggles of average Washingtonians, while the pool of less affluent, highly qualified candidates, willing and able to make the financial sacrifices necessary to serve, grows ever smaller. And, more compromised, for we’ve virtually designed a system that requires many legislators to leverage their political expertise and position to earn outside income.

The shrinking size and power of the legislative middle class is reflected in a body whose politics and priorities have increasingly come to resemble a caricature of economic reality, where thoughtful policy debates have been replaced by B-movie showdowns between evil industrialists and union bosses. Or so it often seems. What’s lost in all this are passionate, effective voices who not only understand the needs and aspirations of the vast majority of Washingtonians, but who live this life every day.  Oh, we have plenty of legislators who walk the walk, and plenty more who talk the talk. What we’re sorely lacking are knowledgeable, competent, and courageous legislators who are able to do both.

This hollowing out of the political class—this increasing dominance of amateurs and hobbyists—can only lead to the election of legislators who are less capable of representing the needs of their constituents, or who lack the empathy to do so. For example, much has been made year after year about how Washington state consistently lags well behind the national average in teacher pay, but you gotta wonder how much sympathy this earns the profession in Olympia, when the average teacher still makes several thousand dollars a year more than the legislators who sign their paychecks? Perhaps this partially explains a Legislature that could pat itself on the back for passing landmark education reform, while obstinately refusing to even entertain the notion of honestly debating the kind of tax restructuring that would be necessary to make full funding of these reforms even a remote possibility?

So yeah, sure… now’s the wrong time to increase legislative pay. Not during this recession, in the midst of this outsized budget crisis. But if we want a Legislature better capable of handling the next budget crisis—or perhaps even avoiding it entirely—it’s past time to start thinking about paying a wage that might attract a more capable class of legislators.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaP9eiWuX3s[/youtube]

It would have been a pretty scary Supreme Court. Personally I think they must have been working for the DNC.

The nomination of Palin had to be part of the same plan. There’s no other explanation.

It’s Tuesday evening, which means that the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally meets for an evening of politics under the influence. The festivities take place at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. beginning at 8:00 pm. Or stop by even earlier for dinner.


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIRGjxkmmUY[/youtube]

Not in Seattle? The Drinking Liberally web site has dates and times for 332 chapters of Drinking Liberally sprinkled liberally across the globe.

In writing last week about why a campaign based on process and personality won’t be enough to defeat Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels in November (“Will Voters Tune In to Seattle City Government’s Family Feud?“), I raised a question that’s surely on the mind of his challengers and their self-soothing consultants:

Now some might counter, if Nickels is so strong, why are his polling numbers so weak? But that’s a question for another post…

Well, with retiring City Council member Jan Drago officially announcing her candidacy today, it’s time for that post, and I don’t think it’s one the field of challengers will find any more encouraging or flattering than the last.

Let’s begin with the facts. Every survey out there—the mayor’s, his opponents’, and those from third parties—shows Nickels’ approval rating consistently polling somewhere in the mid-thirties, and anybody who knows anything about electoral politics will tell you that for a two-term incumbent, that’s an awfully bad place to be.  Just falling below 50% is conventionally considered a sign of vulnerability, but 35%…? It’s time to start sending out your resume.

So it’s understandable why Drago and the other challengers might feel buoyed. Up until Drago’s entrance it was a crap-shoot as to who might win the second spot on the November ballot (my sense is that Nickels and Drago are now the clear favorites to make it through the primary), and going up against such an unpopular incumbent, it would be the challenger’s race to lose.

Or so dictates conventional wisdom.

But the the thing about conventional wisdom is that it’s so damn conventional, and as such, tends to obscure the vagaries that surround all candidates and influence all political campaigns.  And as I wrote last week, anybody counting on 35% in April to automatically translate into defeat in November has another think coming, especially since, quite frankly, Mayor Nickels never seems to poll all that well.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen the mayor poll above fifty percent,” one long time Nickels aide told me.  You know, except on election day… the only day that really counts. As to why the mayor polls so poorly, well, that’s hard to say, but I’m guessing it has something to do with his penchant for attempting to do stuff.

Are you an ardent opponent of light rail? Then you probably hate the mayor… likewise for those of you for whom the monorail was the stuff of wet dreams. Prefer the rebuild or surface/transit options for replacing the Viaduct? Well then, screw Mayor Nickels and his gold-plated, faith-based tunnel.

Angry at losing the Sonics?  Convinced the grocery bag tax is nanny-statism gone awry? Think Nickels is anti-business and/or in the pocket of developers? Affordable housing vs. plummeting home prices… transit-oriented development vs. preserving our neighborhoods… service cuts vs. tax increases… whatever side of whatever issue, you name it and you can probably find reason enough to blame the mayor.

Of course, the only alternative to doing stuff is to do nothing, but that’s just not in Nickels’ character, and besides, whatever reputation the mayor has for a willingness to spend political capital (sometimes frivolously), it can’t help but appear exaggerated compared to the how-low-can you-go profile of the city council.

I mean, here’s a thought experiment for you: pull out your stopwatch and see how long it takes you to come up with nine things you don’t like about the mayor and his policies. Pretty easy, huh? Now time how long it takes you to name all nine city council members.

See what I mean?

Yeah sure, there’s something about Nickels’ style that particularly pisses off those establishment types steeped in a lazy political culture that puts every contentious issue up for public vote, and too often confuses leadership for arrogance (all the while whining about the lack of the former), but he’s not the only executive to head into an election year with less than stellar approval ratings. Gov. Chris Gregoire had only just inched up to 45% by April of 2008, yet still managed to win by over six points come November.  And perhaps more relevantly, former King County Executive Ron Sims’ approval rating was likewise mired in the mid thirties in April of 2005, yet he still ran away to a 16-point win in his landslide bid for a third term.

So while no doubt the mayor’s people would prefer to see his approval ratings climb, they won’t start shitting bricks unless and until the coming barrage of campaign advertising fails to budge his numbers.

So now that we’ve settled that—35% approval rating bad, but not fatal—let’s talk about what the challengers can do to exploit Nickels’ obvious vulnerability.  And the answer is… um… not much. For despite the litany of mayoral gripes I’ve outlined above, and the many, many more I’ve neglected, there really aren’t any big, consensus building issues with which to attack the mayor.

Drago and the others can focus all they want on Frozen Watergate, but in a city that experiences major snowstorms every decade or so, snow removal is hardly a top priority, while efforts to spin the icy streets as emblematic will be hard pressed in the absence of evidence of a broader culture of mismanagement. The city failed to clear the streets for a week, and…? They better come up with an “and” or two if they truly want to use this issue to their advantage.

We had the snow as bad as anywhere down in my neck of the woods, but that’s one week out of the 385 or so Nickels has been mayor.  Over that same tenure our crime is down, our streets have been paved, our libraries renovated, and our playfields re-turfed. We’re not too happy about the direction our schools are going or the level of Metro bus service, but somebody should remind Mike and Jan that these two services don’t fall under the mayor’s purview. Meanwhile, we’ve got a shiny new train running through the Rainier Valley that’s driving much needed redevelopment, and is about to make us the envy of the region.

And I live in South Seattle, one of the most neglected areas of the city.

I’m not saying there aren’t failures in the mayor’s administration, there just haven’t been any major failures, and certainly nothing endemic. A couple weeks ago I chatted with a staffer for self-financed candidate Joe Mallahan, who after failing to goad me on snow removal and Key Arena (“Aren’t you angry about the Sonics leaving… or don’t you like sports?” she asked me, I think implying something lacking in my manhood should I affirm the latter), raised the specter of Seattle’s budget deficit as evidence of Nickels’ unfitness to manage city affairs.

The budget? Really?

Seattle’s projected $29.5 million revenue shortfall is nothing compared to that of the state or even King County, and the mayor’s proposed budget adjustments have proven proportionately less painful and controversial, mostly consisting of a mandatory one-week furlough for library employees, the elimination of 59 positions (half of which were already open) and a $5 million transfer from the city’s rainy day fund (leaving another $25 million in reserve, compared to the mere $2 million he inherited in 2001).

All in all, I’d say the city has recently managed its finances quite well, and I don’t get the sense that many voters are convinced otherwise.

Likewise, despite the many opportunities Nickels has had to piss off one constituency or another through positions he’s taken and the policies he’s advocated, it hardly adds up to a throw the bum out consensus, especially considering the utter lack of differentiation his opponents have enunciated on these very same issues. How exactly does Mike McGinn expect to court the environmental vote away from one of the most outspoken environmental mayors in the nation? Does Drago really believe she’ll be embraced as a credible alternative when she’s been the mayor’s most reliable ally on the council?

Yes, opinion polls show the mayor remains unpopular, but it’s not due to any major scandal—personal, ethical, performance or otherwise—and its not due to the stances he’s taken on major issues, which have largely been in step with the vast majority of Seattle voters. The fact is, Mayor Nickels is neither corrupt nor incompetent nor out of sync with our values. Folks just don’t like him.

The dilemma for the challengers is this: how do you defeat a competent, scandal-free mayor whose values you share, and whose policy agenda you largely support?  You beat him by being a better politician.

And that’s why I’m convinced that none of the challengers in this race, not even Drago, can beat Mayor Nickels, for as vulnerable as he is, and as grating as his style obviously can be, none of his opponents possess the force of personality necessary to get voters excited about change. I don’t write this as Nickels booster; I’ve got nothing against the mayor, though I’ve got nothing particularly for him either, and there have been plenty of issues on which we’ve disagreed.

But issues don’t win races, candidates do. Thus the solution to beating a scandal-free incumbent, even one with a pathetic 35% approval rating, is to simply be a better politician. And sadly for them, none of the challengers are that.