Dude, where’s my mayor?
Last night two men had a shoot-out with a third man, firing at each other across 23rd Avenue at Jackson. (The bullets lodged in a Bank of America building, but it’s not likely meant to have been a statement.) The city has recently launched a sweeping Drug Market Initiative that aims to reduce the open-air drug trade. Across town, in Belltown, there’s been a high-profile series of assaults, and crime of all kinds is on the rise. Capitol Hill generates a steady stream of theft and assault. Oh, and there’s an arsonist in Greenwood.
In the meantime our two mayoral candidates are squaring off over a streetcar. Mike McGinn is excited about getting government on your iPhone. Joe Mallahan is trying to become visible in daylight. One of the pitfalls of having accidentally selected two neophytes in the mayoral race (I know I was counting on Greg Nickels testing the primary winner’s mettle) is that they don’t have ingrained a sense of the job’s fundamentals.
The Seattle Times is gamely trying to spin a potential difference of opinion over a streetcar into a “wedge issue” but outside of transit circles, streetcars have not been a burning public topic.
The first candidate to realize what being mayor is about may do well. Otherwise, look out for a write-in candidate who realizes that safety and basic services can only be ignored when there’s nothing all that wrong with how a city is running.
Thank you. This streetcar fake controversy is such a dead issue and is being so poorly spun by the candidates that it already makes me long for the Nickels machine.