Results tagged “mayor”

• The big news in local blogs today is the Seattle Times "collaboration" with hyperlocal blogstars such as West Seattle Blog, MyBallard, Capitol Hill Seattle, and Rainier Valley Post. Sure, there's warranted kicking and screaming about anything to do with the Times and online media, but is this the beginning of a beautiful friendship?
• Speaking of hyperlocal news, belltownpeople (giddy about being the densest neighborhood in Seattle) and CHS broke out mayoral race votes by 'hood.

Well, there you have it. Mayor Nickels conceded the race--well, he never actually said the word "conceded"--but he wished primary election leaders Mallahan and McGinn a good mayoral race during this morning's press conference. As for the candidate he plans to vote for and endorse? He said he's undecided. But knowing his 22 years of public office, we say just go ahead and write your name in, Greg, we understand.

Early primary results show a Seattle mayoral race three-way, with incumbent Greg Nickels on the bottom and the Seattle Times still stabbing viciously. But for the Times, it's a bittersweet used-to-be-friends assassination: Anti-tunnel crusader Mike McGinn leads Joe "T-Mobile" Mallahan by less than a percentage point.

Publicola got their hands on a UW research poll that shows leftward-leaning Mike McGinn "leading" in the mayor's race among Republican voters. McGinn's got 15 percent to Nickels' 10 percent. McGinn says the appeal is due to his "fiscal conservatism" in being against the deep-bore tunnel. That said, the poll's 600 people surveyed left Nickels in the lead, with Mallahan, Donaldson, Drago, and McGinn each divvying up about 10 percent.

Our August 18 primary is being held entirely by mail--we got our ballot last week. If you're still scratching your head over the mayor's race, check out Publicola's interviews with the mayoral contenders (scroll down to item #5).

Mike McGinn, local enviro and an increasing threat to Greg Nickels's re-election effort, is doing his damnedest to make Nickels pay for lobbying so hard for a waterfront tunnel. The Times has a report on McGinn's strategy today, while Publicola points out McGinn supporters have launched a new anti-tunnel website.

Anti-tunnel mayoral candidate Mike McGinn, who just picked up endorsements from the 37th District Ds and the Sierra Club (Nickels snagged the Washington Conservation voters' love), claims a new poll shows him winning handily if only everyone in Seattle knew he was against that $4.2-billion boondoggle tunnel. The poll his campaign commissioned shows 64 percent of Seattle voters are against building a tunnel, just like Mike "Tunnel Over My Dead Body" McGinn. The rest live in West Seattle, and just don't realize their transportation needs have already been met.

Mayor Nickels, speaking of the tunnel for which no cost overruns can be foreseen, noted that, "The design work and engineering on the 'mile in the middle,' which has been the controversial part, will go forward in about two years." Does that mean what it sounds like? Is the most controversial part really undesigned? (The Weekly's Damon Agnos has some terrific quotes from someone who looked like the Mayor speaking out strongly against a tunnel a little while ago.)

Yesterday, after Publicola was reporting that mayoral hopeful Joe Mallahan had donated $200,000 to his own campaign, Sandeep Kaushik, Nickels' spokesperson, sent out a response: "The voters of Seattle are going to see through what is an obvious attempt by a wealthy individual with little experience in public service to buy their way into elected office. In contrast to our opponent putting hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own money into his campaign, we have raised our campaign funds from over 1,000 donors across the city of Seattle." Greg Nickels, defender of the little guy. Or course this is also the same Nickels whose $300,000+ campaign war chest was keeping people from even bothering to run against him. Even funnier? About 26 percent is from donors outside Seattle. Keep on keepin' it real, Mr. Mayor.

A friend of ours was at the Washington Conservation Voters auction fundraiser last night, where Mayor Greg Nickels was being applauded for his greenery. But when Nickels got to the part about the deep-bore tunnel, the response was noticeably tepid. Perhaps thinking people needed a little push, Nickels mentioned his excitement about the tunnel again, only to hear some back-of-the-hall derision. Did his staff not tell Hizzoner that real greens don't buy into tunnel-vision?

For a while we were nursing the small hope that Peter Steinbrueck might make Mayor Nickels' rerun election interesting, but Joni Balter at the Times has snatched that from us: "Steinbrueck will be spending the first of the next four years in Cambridge, Mass. He landed a prestigious urban design fellowship at Harvard University, as he says, 'researching the politics, principles and plan for urban sustainability of U.S. cities.''' What is it with Harvard stealing our mayors, anyway? (H/t to Publicola)

Publicola says Sally Clark's office isn't denying that the politician will run for mayor at some point. Investigative fiend Josh Feit was investigating a rumor he'd heard and ran into surprisingly soft resistance to his inquiries; whether or not that means anything other than a spokesperson having a mischievous day is yet to be determined, but this is an interesting scoop. Hmm. Sally Clark in charge doesn't sound awful. It doesn't sound awful at all.

Newly minted mayoral candidate Mike McGinn has already provoked an awkward situation. While McGinn didn't want to get into Nickels-bashing at his press conference, his campaign fired off an email critical of mayor Nickels' green credentials today, so Publicola's Josh Feit got Nickels' man on the horn for a response. Only thing is, Nickels' man is Publicola's Sandeep Kaushik. Kaushik responded, “Nickels has an excellent environmental record,” and “I’m surprised Mike McGinn is going negative so early in this race," and did not say, "This is an untenable position, and I can clearly have no comment."

According to Publicola, James Donaldson has officially entered the mayoral race alongside Dan Savage, Mike McGinn, and the incumbent, Greg Nickels. The former Sonics player's press release reads a little like a locker room halftime speech, or at least what we'd imagine a locker room speech would sound like if we ever have occasion to hear one, but it leaves us lukewarm. Gotta do better than that, Donaldson.

In announcing his run for mayor of Seattle [video], Michael McGinn wanted to say three things: schools, broadband, buses. But staying on message isn't easy when you have a whole press conference to fill, and McGinn, despite his Greenwood Community Council and Sierra Club past, looked like a rookie early on. He whiffed on what should have been softball questions in the Q&A: "Why are you running against Greg Nickels?" and and had no public safety plank.

Says the Stranger's Dan Savage: "I've had it with Peter and Tim and and Nick and Richard pansy-assing around about running for mayor. They announce they're thinking about it, they think about it, and then they announce that running for mayor is just too scary or too expensive or that Greg is just too formidable an opponent. Christ, do these guys have one lonely little nut between the four of 'em?" He promises to remain mayor for only 24 hours, then hand over the title to the city council president. We've heard that before. You elect these Chicago boys, they get comfy in the mayoral palace fast.

• Jobs are difficult to find, but not so scarce that P-I staffers aren't feeling free to turn down Hearst's online operations job offers. "Bottom line: An online-only P-I is not a done deal. At least not yet," says Publicola's Sandeep Kaushik.
• Southlake reports on a man shot in the butt, and Queen Anne View has a kickass firefighter who won a stair-climbing competition.
• Over at Schmudget (caution: policy wonkstrosity ahead), they're talking about sub-prime lending in Washington state all week long. Today, their angle has to do with the depressing racial disparity in the mortgage market. Best of all, the post includes an infographic!

As you recall, there's a Facebook fan page for Peter Steinbrueck urging him to run for mayor. Guess what? Steinbrueck wrote its founder and asked for some feedback: "I'm overwhelmed by the outpouring of people interested in new leadership in the mayor's office! Well, it's gotten me thinking... political leadership should always be about change. I am in a listening mode, and I would like to ask ask a simple question of those who are urging me to run. That is: Besides a new mayor, what three things, 'For the Love of Seattle' would people like to see changed?" We feel like we're writing Santa a letter but okay: 1) affordable housing for the full spectrum of those making less than 60 percent of the median income, 2) a waterfront Central Park, and 3) city-funded start-up incubators (for profit and nonprofit) in partnership with the SBA. Drop your suggestions in the comments--we'll find a way to forward them--or over here.

We've been following the news releases--cleverly disguised as Slog posts--issued by Peter Steinbrueck's stealth campaign manager, ECB, and she's gotten us fired up. Now if they just work on Steinbrueck himself, we'll be all set. Yesterday ECB was publicizing green golden boy Steinbrueck via a "RUN FOR MAYOR" Facebook group that has sprung up--it had 41 members then and this morning we became 99, just like in Get Smart. Today ECB has hit the e-bricks early, quoting an unnamed "recent poll" in which "Steinbrueck wallops Nickels 46.6 percent to 24.1 percent, with 29.4 percent undecided" in a head-to-head match-up. (ECB doesn't mention our equally scientific 5-way poll in which Nickels just edged out Steinbrueck 38 percent to 36.) So all we've really learned so far is that ECB would vote for Peter in a heartbeat--but maybe...just maybe...that's enough?

Ooohhhhh...what a sickening feeling to get this kind of note. Just when we thought everything was going so well with Tim. We were really thinking about maybe moving the relationship forward.

The son of former Seattle mayor Charles Royer is running for mayor himself, and that's straight from the HorsesAss. On the plus side, it looks like Jordan Royer is more together than mayor Nickels' son, Jake. West Seattle is sort of freaking out about the snow, while the Rainier Valley Post is freaking out for another reason: the Lakewood Seward Park Community Center is in danger of closing--there's a meeting about it Thursday. But where one door closes, a produce stand is poised to open. MyBallard reports that Top Banana should soon be back in business. And PhinneyWood has the 411 on how to find out when your bus will arrive.

Oh, Portland! This Seattlest contributor's hometown is currently in the midst of its biggest and juiciest political scandal in years. Turns out, Mayor Sam Adams, the city's first openly gay mayor, had a relationship with a legislative aid intern who , Tim Keck's Portland alt-weekly, has been drawn into the entire mess with accusations she helped cover up the affair.

It's a Seattlest special report...from the future! We sent Editor Emeritus Seth Kolloen into 2009--let's face it, he's not getting much done the rest of 2008 besides raiding our liquor cabinet and shooting at "squirrels" who "looked at him funny." Just like Martin Sheen at the start of Apocalypse Now, we hadda send him upriver.

We've said it before and we'll say it again: the mayor's proposal to ban guns on public property is an ill-founded idea. Attorney General McKenna has said Nickels doesn't have the legal authority to follow through on this plan, but so far all the opposition seems to have barely registered with the man and the ban is barrelling full steam ahead. That is, unless enough people make it clear that there are better ways to combat gun violence. Tonight is your chance to speak up in public on how you feel about the gun ban, as City Hall is hosting an official City of Seattle hearing on the subject at 6:30 p.m. No word on whether Mayor Nickels will be there to sign autographs (sorry!).

Mayor Greg Nickels thinks so! But a City Council committee--and thank God for this--shut him down immediately, saying, "WTF R U thinking Nickels?" Nickels' intentions were to make the city's executive salaries competitive, but Councilman Licata smacked that one down. "It's bad timing," he told the Times. Damn right, it's bad timing; it's worse timing this year than it was both years previous, when Nickels made the same request for raises. During a year when the President-elect tells Barbara Walters on national television that in his opinion CEOs should forgo their Christmas bonuses, what kind of reasonable man thinks it's a great time to ask for executive raises?

Commenter Simonian brings up an excellent point: who, exactly, is this Greg Smith who may or may not be running for mayor against Greg Nickels? Here's what we dug up:

The rumor weed is running rampant across the lawn of Seattle's local politics regarding a possible Greg Smith run for Mayor next year. It looks like he might even have a fighting chance, though the well-funded Nickels is certain to run for a third term. There are other names persistently sprouting up here and there as possible opponents: former and current City Councilmen Peter Steinbrueck and Nick Licata (respectively), and--hell, why not consider familiar Nickels foe Mark Sidran again? What do you think? Which of these men should be our next Mayor? Our poll will close tomorrow at noon, and opinions are welcome in the comments.

The Seattle Police Department gave residents of Nickelsville a 20-minute warning at 12:15 p.m. to vacate their encampment or face arrest. As of 12:35 p.m., the homeless residents of Nickelsville were officially considered criminal trespassers and subject to arrest. According to reports, some campers have chosen to follow orders while others have decided to stay and face charges. Sadly, at least those who stay at Nickelsville against orders are more likely to have a roof over their head tonight in jail than those who chose to comply.

We apologize, Greg. We got a little hot under the collar last week, after hitting one pothole too many, and we became...intemperate. The Pothole Rangers are not hiding out; they're working hard and filling potholes whenever you notify them. This weekend we were biking along, ready to dodge this one (pictured), when we were startled to see it had been filled, just three days after our post about it. Point for Mayor Nickels and the transportation crew. Our high-mileage 1970s 3-speed thanks you.