Let me say at the outset, this is a judgment call. While Seattle has been scratching its head over which of the two neophytes to choose for mayor, we can at least be glad that we’re choosing between two candidates who are deeply invested in Seattle, and who each represent, in their ways, a lot of what Seattle has going for it.

I’ve been wrestling with which of the candidates to vote for. Even though McGinn is far and away the more knowledgeable about city politics, I still wanted to know if he could be mayor of all of Seattle, not just The Stranger.

I stopped in at a mayoral candidates debate held over the weekend at Seattle University to get an in-person read. While McGinn’s anti-tunnel stance warms my heart, I’m not prepared to vote for him on that basis alone–as McGinn himself mentioned during questioning Saturday, if the deep-bore tunnel is the boondoggle he thinks it is, it may very well stop itself in its tracks.

Mike McGinn

I want to bring up the very-much-alive ghost of Governor Moonbeam because Jerry Brown’s tenure as mayor of Oakland was markedly centrist and business-friendly, and a quick Google search will provide years of pillorying by disillusioned East Bay leftists.

As a former Sierra Club chapter chair, McGinn has bona fides that make green hearts beat faster. But McGinn’s resume, including his undergraduate degree in economics and years lawyering for Stokes Lawrence, indicate a strong pragmatic bent.

Pragmatism is a favorite word of McGinn’s opponent Joe Mallahan, but in usage, at least, Mallahan seems to be confusing a pragmatic turn of mind with support for the status quo.

He proclaims himself “first and foremost a social-justice Democrat,” but his speeches are about “optimizing” and “seeking efficiencies.” “There are a whole bunch of red flags,” he said Saturday, referring vaguely to City spending practices that he means to, I suspect, “right-size.” That MBA in Finance had quite an impact.

I liked Mallahan, despite his inability to present a coherent platform and get beyond corporate jargon. As I look over my notes, I find him disagreeing with nothing a good Seattle liberal might like and Mike McGinn. After an angry young woman laid in to him for selling us on a customer-centric relationship between citizens and government, he said, “I like your passion.” He was upset by her attack and clearly disagreed, but he meant it.

Joe Mallahan

My problem with Mallahan is, I’m not electing a city manager, treasurer, or auditor. I’m voting for a mayor. And to my mind, the single biggest issue that Seattle faces is not the deadlock of Seattle process, but the fact that these procedural impasses are engineered by highly committed groups.

We need a real centrist bloc, and it’s not simply a question of finding out what a larger number of disaffected, disinterested people think. It’s not about better polling or government by initiative, but inspiring and welcoming bottom-up civic engagement.

I’ve taken issue with McGinn’s attempts at a visionary posture before, but when he mentioned that his goal was to get Seattleites more engaged in their own government, I finally felt he’d put his finger on why Seattle is an underachiever, in comparison to the resources we have.

Paraphrasing Jane Jacobs, he said it’s not that everybody gets everything, but that all of us get something. The corollary of that, of course, is that all of us put in something. If McGinn truly dedicates his time as mayor toward building a Seattle populace that gets involved, I think “visionary” could be usefully applied.

The neighborhoods–and their neighborhood associations–are not going away any time soon, so it was heartening to hear a candidate break out of the fer-’em-or-agin-’em box. McGinn said that he would pursue “better district-level solutions,” arguing that the city is overly focused on either lot-by-lot or citywide regulation.

It would really be something, true, to reverse our civic disengagement, which is at such a level that Joe Mallahan can skip voting in 13 elections and still run seriously for office. I have been critical of the early stages of McGinn’s plans to address the problem. But this is what leadership is, setting goals that we are not sure are entirely within reach.

It’s easy to deride attempts to shake things up–and it’s also frightening to some to shake at all–but I am much more interested in adding McGinn to the status quo than Mallahan. McGinn is making a fight of it, but he’s also aware of the realities. His opposition to the deep-bore tunnel is based on a desire “to get out from under” the burden of probable cost overruns on a multi-billion dollar project. But he added, “If the public approves it, I might lose that fight.”

If Mallahan loses, I’m not sure what he’ll have lost, besides the money he invested in his campaign. He’s not promising much, besides the benefits of his vaunted management background. Have we been demanding better customer service management? Or did we want to elect someone who is crazy enough to ask us to step up?

“ah, nuts” courtesy of The SunBreak Flickr Pool member Nareshe

Tim Eyman has an I-1033 editorial in the Seattle Times this morning, and while there are many assertions he makes that you can–and should–take issue with, I want to start with his point that an earlier attempt to straitjacket government turned out great: I-747.

At the time, Big Business, Big Labor, politicians and the press went ballistic — they said it’d be “devastating” and “impossible.” […] It was neither “devastating” nor “impossible.” Governments have repeatedly proved that they’re much more adaptable than they’re willing to admit.

What governments have proved themselves capable of adapting to is eliminating (or reducing) the quality of services, and having taxpayers make up the difference through other means. Emergency medical services and fire fighters simply resorted to special levies to keep operating. (Full disclosure: I still have a grudge against Eyman from I-695, which has so far raised the Seattle-Bremerton passenger-only fare from $3.35 to to $6.90, with no end in sight.)

---

In any event, it doesn’t seem like Eyman has interviewed the family of anyone who has died or was permanently affected because of I-747 cutbacks to emergency services see if they feel it was “devastating” or not. He seems like a man who’s burnt all his furniture for firewood crowing about how uncluttered his house is.

So who is benefiting? Danny Westneat points out that Eyman’s simple attempt at fiscal discipline does great things for the wealthy. Bill Gates, for instance, could see a refund of over half his $1 million annual property tax assessment.

It’s tempting to call Eyman an idiot or a tool–and I don’t mean to argue that–but his initiatives succeed because he’s able to bring up a pain point (property taxes, in this case) and a call to action: “Taxes are too high! Cut the fat!”

---

It’s up to people like Westneat to point out that property taxes fund education throughout the state. (Does anyone else think that it’s neurotic to be launching a teacher-qualifications push while students are being packed into classrooms like sardines? Isn’t it a bit like testing water quality after you’ve pissed in it?)

It’s up to Sightline to note that tuition at state universities has jumped 30 percent already, to make up for existing cutbacks, or that low-income health care fees are doubling.

But it doesn’t matter, because the response to pain is reactive, not thoughtful. Eyman’s initiative offers people struggling with finances an immediate way to cut down on a large bill, or at least feel secure that it won’t get suddenly larger. When people are stressed financially, they tend to think about themselves and their families first, so the context of where the tax money goes is at most secondary.

In every case, the Democratic legislature has decided to play chicken with Eyman’s stupidly written initiatives rather than respond to the legitimate concerns they represent. They do add taxes where it’s easiest to pile on taxes, rather than fairest. They do decide to spend billions of state dollars on a two-mile tunnel under Seattle to make it easier for passenger vehicles to bypass downtown Seattle. They argue for the state’s latitude in how to raise and spend tax money while refusing to allow citizens the same wiggle room.

I could wish the I-1033 supporters had found someone other than Tim Eyman for a spokesperson, but in the past decade I can’t say the legislature has ever made Eyman–assclown, leech, stinkbug, call him what you will–irrelevant to roughly 50 percent of the state. So what does that say about our leadership in Olympia?

“I’m thinking of writing in Nickels,” writes a commenter on the seattlepi.com recap of the Monday mayoral candidates debate hosted by City Club. “I wonder if people didn’t realize how the top-two system worked and thought they were voting for who to run against Nickels, and then forgot to actually vote for Nickels.”

At The SunBreak offices, we’ve been kicking around the idea of a “Write In Nickels” campaign, now that everyone has had their chance to punish the mayor in the primaries. While there are certainly Mallahan and McGinn partisans, another segment of Seattle remains bewildered by the primary results.

If you missed the standing-room-only debate at the Seattle Public Library, you didn’t miss much. “Monday night’s debate at the downtown Seattle library was a departure from the campaign’s focus on the candidates’ disagreement over whether to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct with a $4.2 billion tunnel project,” reports the Seattle Times.

That meant the evening focused largely on management style and ducking hard questions, as when Mallahan refused to explain why he expects people to vote for him when he’s not shown much interest in the most basic element of civic responsibility. (13 skipped elections, Joe? You realize that voting is a key part of being a “lifelong Democrat,” yes?)

I happen to like McGinn’s anti-tunnel stance, and he can easily out-debate the catch-phrase-spouting Mallahan, but he’s so far been unable to connect on bread-and-butter mayoral issues. He’s also retained an activist’s righteous petulance on issues you’re not smart enough to agree with him on, which is a troubling flaw in a mayoral character.

It’s not too late to write in Nickels. But it is the last minute for a “Write In Nickels” campaign. Anyone want to get this thing started?

You haven’t read much here about Joe Mallahan, Seattle’s other mayoral candidate, and that’s because Mallahan has seemingly adopted a “loose lips sink ships” policy to this point. While Mallahan never misses a chance to tout his “progressive values,” his demeanor is archetypically conservative. He projects himself as an authority, and bridles at being asked to go into detail. If he says he’ll do it, he’ll do it.

But the Seattle Times reports that Mallahan is now searching for ways to fund the $191 million dollar Mercer Street redevelopment, after coming out strongly against the project in the primary. The Times quotes Mallahan as saying earlier that the project was “stealing” from Seattle’s neighborhoods.

The new Mallahan says things like: “I think the Mercer Street project is a very good neighborhood development project and it will do great things for South Lake Union. If it were properly financed, I would be in favor of it.”

Vulcan, South Lake Union’s 800-lb. gorilla, would very much like Mallahan to reconsider his opposition, and suggested as much by paying for anti-Mallahan phone calls during the primary.

Today, the Times also says, Mallahan will announce his Coalition of the Willing, a team of a dozen or so advisers, including the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce’s Tayloe Washburn. Washburn has no love but Mallahan in the mayoral race, given Mike McGinn’s opposition to the deep-bore tunnel, which Washburn believes is the answer to Seattle’s Viaduct conundrum.

The shift in his Mercer stance makes Mallahan the fiscal conservative who is advocating spending a $191 million on Mercer and $4.2 billion on a deep-bore tunnel (with Seattle responsible for cost overruns)–and is critical of “the cost of building light rail to the rest of the city’s high-density neighborhoods.”

You can’t say the mayoral race doesn’t offer you a choice.

As an occasional Amtrak passenger who tends to travel without armaments, I read with surprise the news that the Senate is forcing Amtrak to let passengers check luggage with handguns inside. Five years ago, just after the Madrid train attack, Amtrak instituted a gun ban I had no idea didn’t exist before then.

---

Now the Senate wants to withhold Amtrak’s $1.6 billion subsidy unless Amtrak lets its passengers add some firepower to their luggage. Our Washington senators, Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray, voted No, but 27 other Democrats joined 40 Republicans in voting Yes. Now the only thing that stands between you and a Glock-sponsored baggage car is a presidential veto.

Amtrak, for what it’s worth, argues persuasively that without a security apparatus to match that of airports (and really, who wants that?), the move is unwise. Even so, Amtrak will need to spend money it doesn’t have on making its baggage cars more secure, and assigning guards to make sure the baggage car doesn’t go off accidentally.

I keep hearing people talking with stunned surprise about the fact that Greg Nickels lost in the mayoral primary. McGinn and Mallahan fans alike seemed to be picturing their guy running against Greg–with the unspoken “safety” option of voting Nickels if their initial crush faded. So let’s take the temperature of the room. If you had to vote today, who would it be?

---