Some People Have Spoken

There's approximately 550,000 people in Seattle, and about 45,000 of them voted yesterday. What did this select few decide?

--They gave the Monorail board a few new members.

--They chose Ron Sims to be the Democratic candidate for King County Commissioner.

--They picked a candidate to run against Greg Nickels in November's general election: Al Runte, a former UW professor. On his web site, the neophyte pol says he is "running for Mayor of Seattle as someone who believes in you." Thanks, Al--that means a lot.

--They set the matchups for November's city council races. These will be:

For City Council Position 2, graying Richard Conlin will face brunette Paige Miller.

For City Council Position 4, tropical-shirt-wearing Casey Corr will face giant-necklace-wearing Jan Drago.

For City Council Position 8, chain-smoking Richard McIver will face hard-drinking Dwight Pelz (who, when it looked like he might finish out of the running last night, advised his supporters thusly: "If you're here to stay, try to drink yourself into oblivion.")

The Stranger blogged the evening--if you like blurry pictures and drunken, nerdy, political analysis, check it out.

At conservative blog Sound Politics, blog founder Stefan Sharkansky, who belatedly discovered that elections are run poorly after Dino Rossi lost the governor's race, bitches about every little election mistake he found after spending the day as a "poll judge."

Also, there's apparently something called the King County Council. They decide who grand marshals the Woodinville Pioneer Days parade and how many stoplights Duvall needs. Anyway, the voters decided that these pressing issues could better be decided by 9 people instead of 13, so two districts got mashed together and incumbents had to fight it out in the primary.

In Council District #1, the race between Democrats Bob Ferguson and Carolyn Edmonds is TOO CLOSE TO CALL! Sharkansky, dust off your chad-checking glasses and your indignation. This race was notable for Edmonds calling Ferguson an opponent of mass transit, even though Ferguson is the only councilperson who takes the bus to work.

In Council District #9, Reagan Dunn obliterated man-of-the-people Steve Hammond 57% to 43%. Dunn, the son of former Congresswoman Jennifer Dunn and scion of the Dunn Lumber fortune, is, yes, named for Animal Planet dog show play-by-play man Ron Reagan.

Note: only 43,000 people voted, but there are approximately 120,000 people between the ages of 25 and 34 in Seattle. If we could just form together as a demographic group, we could finally get that 100-foot-high statue of Pearl Jam built on top of the Space Needle. You can make a difference, people!