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Mike McGinn was much lauded for frequently using Twitter to communicate with supporters along the campaign trail. Now that he and his staff have moved into their new digs, he should probably start playing Foursquare. Aside from racking up points and letting constituents know where he's spending time, he could also claim virtual mayorship of his new office. Until then, we'll just have to imagine this showing up in the @MichaelMcGinn timeline.
"Here's the way I see it," said our legal correspondent over lunch, "the City Council sends a representative to the state legislature and asks that municipalities be given the choice to opt out of state enforcement." We were talking about legalizing marijuana, but not from any personal interest. (I prefer a smoky Scotch.) We were looking for "new revenue" responses to the state's fiscal crisis.
Raising property taxes is a nonstarter. Upping sales taxes is not only infeasible politically, but leaves the state dangerously dependent on consumer confidence. No one but budget policy wonks is still pushing an income tax. But there is a huge hole in the state budget that is cutting into essential services, and the future only looks to bring reassessed, post-bubble property values.
In Olympia, the political will for decriminalization is almost there--in Seattle, it's already been elected. Mayor-elect Mike McGinn told KUOW recently that "We recognize that, like alcohol, it's something that should be regulated not treated as a criminal activity and I think that's where the citizens of Seattle want us to go." ("Legalize marijuana and tax it" is the number two entry on the Ideas for Seattle website.)
On December 14, the Seattle City Council unanimously passed a resolution in support of SB 5615 and HB 1177, bills decriminalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana, which were introduced by Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles and Rep. Dave Upthegrove.
"We support reclassifying possession of small amounts of marijuana from a misdemeanor to a civil infraction," is the Council's word on the matter (video), putting possession in the realm of jaywalking in terms of public safety priorities. Under Kohl-Welles bill, possession would draw a fine of $100, but no jail time.
Wrote the senator in an op-ed: "Our state Office of Financial Management reported annual savings of $16 million and $1 million in new revenue if SB 5615 passes. Of that $1 million, $590,000 would be earmarked for the Washington State Criminal Justice Treatment Account to increase support of our underfunded drug treatment and prevention services."
State Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson takes it even further, reports Publicola:
...Dickerson wants Washington farmers to grow pot and sell it in our state’s liquor stores. The revenue, she says, will go to pay for drug and alcohol treatment programs (and to cover the WSLCB’s costs for adding the new product to its shelves.) She estimates the revenues from pot sales would be similar to booze sale revenues, which are currently at $330 million.
Mayor Mike McGinn
When the Seattle mayoral election was finally decided last night, after King County Elections dutifully counted up the votes, Joe Mallahan graciously conceded, and Governor Gregoire announced she was looking forward to working with the new mayor.
It sounded like business as usual, but Mike McGinn’s election was the biggest upset victory in Seattle politics in more than three decades. This was the 1980 U.S. hockey team over the Soviets, Truman over Dewey, David versus Goliath. It was an epic long shot and it shakes Seattle politics to its very core.
Seattle is no Chicago, but we have our own version of the political machine. Business, plus labor, plus the Democratic Party equals victory.
Mallahan won endorsements from state Democrats, the Governor, the Seattle Chamber of Commerce and its political arm the Alki Foundation, big business and labor. McGinn won the election.
Mallahan outspent McGinn by a 3.5-to-1 margin. Mallahan loaned his own campaign about as much as McGinn received in total. McGinn won the election.
Now, Seattle’s traditional powers-that-be are scrambling to figure out just how it all happened. All the money, all the powerbrokers, and all the political muscle didn’t deliver the knockout punch. There are all sorts of theories.
McGinn was helped by Mallahan’s complete ineffectiveness in debates. Mallahan struggled to get two thoughts together in a coherent fashion. In nearly every debate, he bobbled the easiest questions and completely missed on the major issues. The fact that McGinn’s lead increased as the counting went on suggests that the late voters broke for him, not Mallahan. Seems the longer Joe talked, the less people liked what they heard.
McGinn won the election just the way he said he did, by talking to people and by listening to people. He won by energizing his supporters with a message of common sense and a determination to fight for change....
"Taillights through the rain" courtesy of The SunBreak Flickr pool member Great Beyond
As of Friday evening, mayoral candidate Mike McGinn was looking like a winner, with a lead of 2,384 votes over Joe Mallahan. This makes the news of 860 ballots found in a ballot drop box with a vandalized lock less earth-shattering. In general, the election results were pleasing for King County's right-thinking lefties, with R-71's "everything but marriage" approved, I-1033's "government-spending straitjacket" rejected, and Prop. 1's "homelesss housing" passing handily even in a recession.
On the same day as the police procession to honor slain Seattle police office Timothy Brenton, just as his memorial at Key Arena ended, in fact, police confronted a "person of interest" in the shooting of officer Brenton, who was shot by police after drawing a handgun. (Monfort's now in critical condition.) The Seattle Times reports that bomb-making materials, linking Christopher Monfort to the October 22 pipe-bombing of SPD patrol cars, have been found in his apartment. Seattlepi.com worked up their own profile.
Arson flared up twice in Greenwood, making a total of seven arson-related fires over the past few months. Just two weeks ago, four Greenwood businesses were burnt out. This time, the businesses were an accountant's office and a guitar shop....
It's a squeaker! Mike McGinn still leads Joe Mallahan, but by just 462 votes. City Council races are not so close: Richard Conlin, Sally Bagshaw, Nick Licata, and Mike O'Brien all have comfortable leads over their rivals. Pete Holmes has still soundly thrashed Tom Carr in the city attorney's race. Full results are here. More updating this time tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, until the last syllable of recorded time. I don't agree with Susan Hutchison on that much, but waiting for all the mail-in ballots to arrive is anti-climactic.
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.
I want to bring up the very-much-alive ghost of Governor Moonbeam because Jerry...
"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...
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?
Yesterday, the big mayoral race news was the McGinn for Mayor camp's long-awaited release of a public safety plan, which matches our era of diminished expectations nicely.
Both candidates made it through the primary without addressing the issue in much detail. (Today, over at Joe Mallahan's site, there's video of police and firefighters endorsing Mallahan, which is...not a plan. But Mallahan does sound like Callahan, so he has that going for him.)
Still, it counts as a response to my post last week, asking a candidate to step forward and take on public safety. (The McGinn camp has not responded to my request for an interview on the "voter's remorse" topic, now that we don't have an experience pol like Nickels as an election "safety.")
McGinn's plan is built on "enforcement, engagement, and prevention." He's identified as top priorities gangs and crimes involving guns.
He'd bring back the gang unit--"Too often in the past, we have seen programs work--and work so well--that we assume they aren’t needed any more"--and push for bringing gun crimes to federal court, as well as for stiffer prosecution of minors who use guns. And though there are indeed people who strenuously argue for the right to enjoy public parks with guns, he joins Mayor Nickels in seeking a ban.
He wants better crime reporting and statistics. He supports drug and mental health courts. He would continue the Drug Market Initiative (DMI), and try to deal with the so-called "root causes" of crime through transition programs for newly released offenders, and working to find them jobs.
He would not prioritize stings like "Operation Sobering Thought," which, after 17 arrests at local bars and nightclubs, resulted in no convictions. (We have to agree, belatedly, with City Attorney Tom Carr, who called the 17 arrests "shocking"--making 17 arrests that don't stick is really remarkable.)
As Publicola points out, the plan is long on good and other people's ideas, and short on how to pay for them. More police officers in communities? Terrific. Now, about that $72-million-dollar city deficit? Not spending money the city doesn't have on a deep-bore tunnel doesn't actually increase city revenue.
I'd also like to hear more from McGinn on the petty crimes that make your blood boil--the smash-and-grab car break-in that costs you more in window replacement than whatever is taken, the rash of pedestrian and jogger muggings where a phone or iPod is snatched, and more disturbingly, the home intrusion robberies. These are all up in a down economy, and the level of police response has not always reassured victims that theft is a priority.
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...
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