Re: The News that Sierra Club leader Mike McGinn is running for mayor against Greg Nickels—here’s PubliCola’s report on the press conference McGinn held at Piecora’s Pizza on Capitol Hill a few hours ago where at least 40 supporters crammed in the back of a long dining room by the street-front windows while McGinn, sitting down informally at the head of a dining room table, fielded questions from a gang of reporters who also sat around the table.
First off, he announced some initiatives and priorities:
McGinn said the city would take over Seattle schools two years into his term if there wasn’t “demonstrable improvement in the schools.” He followed that up by saying if there wasn’t demonstrable improvement after for years, “Fire me. Kick me out.”
He also said Seattle City Light should build a citywide broadband network and wire the city for Internet, joking that we live in a “Web 2.0 world, and I’m not sure our government’s even at 1.0 yet.” (He puts the cost at around $400 million, saying we already owned the polls and wires.)
These two initiatives, McGinn said, were part of his top two priorities: education and technology, which fit into the main theme of his candidacy—”making smart investments in our future.” (In case we missed the point, his three elementary-school age children were seated to his right, along the table.)
Using a sports metaphor (which are usually annoying as hell, especially coming from a guy’s guy like McGinn), he actually had a good one. He said when Hockey hall-of-famer Wayne Gretzky was once asked why he was so good despite being slower than other players, Gretzky explained he didn’t skate to where the puck is, but rather, where the puck is going to be. McGinn added that Seattle’s leaders are often skating to where the puck used to be.
McGinn’s third “future” issue was transportation. He was vaguer on this. He said he wanted to banish the phrase “overcrowded buses” from our vocabularly, and he wanted “cleaner, safer, reliable” bus service. He did add that he was against the tunnel option for the waterfront (saying he supported the surface transit option). He pointed out that Seattle voters had gone against the tunnel option by 70 percent. He chastised the mayor for then going out and getting $2 billion from the state to build the tunnel, adding that the city should be in Olympia fighting for that kind of money for schools and expanded bus service.
Asked about pending voter initiatives like the repeal of the city council’s .20 bag tax and the hybrid district elections idea for city council, he said: He supports the bag tax (no surprise there as the campaign is being headed up by McGinn’s Sierra Club colleague, Brady Montz), and he’s for the hybrid district model because having council members represent specific neighborhoods would help decentralize power.
McGinn’s best line of the day came when he was asked why he wanted to oust a mayor like Nickels who was known as a Green mayor. (Indeed, Nickels has gotten national recognition for his effort to get cities across the U.S. to meet the Kyoto Protocols.) McGinn quipped: “It’s equally important that we actually meet the Kyoto Protocols with the decisions we make,” to an impromptu burst of applause, laughs, and cheers. (There were a lot of Sierra Club folks in the room.)
McGinn pointed out that Nickels fought for 2007′s roads and transit initiative which would have built 182 miles of new highways, and that Nickels’ tunnel option is going to “increase green house gases.”
(McGinn also got a big laugh when SeattlePI.com reporter Joel Connelly asked if McGinn was going to pay his communications director $160,000—a reference to Nickels’ high-paid p.r. guy, Robert Mak. “Are you applying?” McGinn joked.)
McGinn, with his socialist-y agenda (building a public broadband network and taking over the schools), did offer an olive branch to business saying that Seattle’s world-renowned private sector—Microsoft, Amazon.com, and biotech (supported by U.W.) were too often left out of the city’s initiatives, and he wanted to turn to them and get them involved. “This town is full of smart people and they’re not engaged or involved in governance. Our city is not doing a good job on that,” McGinn says.
In perhaps the only awkward moment of his lunch table chat, McGinn—who was otherwise at ease throughout—botched a question on public safety, basically saying youth violence was a “priority,” but telling reporter Essex Porter that he’d have to get back to him after he consulted with experts.
McGinn wouldn’t talk about fundraising—Nickels who’s raised about $300,000 (the majority of it from big donors), seems to have a lock on establishment money. McGinn told PubliCola simply: “I want to talk about the issues not inside baseball.” Pressed, he told me: “I’ll do what needs to be done [to raise money].”
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I think we should take up a collection to buy Josh a real camera. I’ll chip in $5. Who’s with me?
Camera???? I though that was a Cézanne painting.
What?!?!?
Sandeep is Nickel’s spokesman??? I guess he was telling the truth in his post “Publicola, Phase 2.”
Publicola is too much (in a good, sort of weird way way)!!!!
@1: That’s a watercolor painting, a good one at that, although perhaps a little heavy on the phallic symbolism.
Count me in for 5 bucks. That cell phone camera is pretty shitty dude!
@2: Shit. You beat me to it!
decent article and this McGinn seems to have made some good promises………Anybody would be better than the emperor Nickels.
How about some commentary such as “Does he have a decent chance or is he an extreme long shot?”. Just a little meat on the bone for us non-insiders. Thanks
Latest TOP 10 most popular names for hizzoner so far:
1. MAYOR McCHEESE
2. MAYOR McCONDO
3. MAYOR NOPLOW
4. MAYOR SNOWJOB
5. MAYOR 5-CENTS
6. MAJOR NOPLOW
7. MAYOR McSLEAZE
8. MAYOR FAILure
9. MAYOR GRIDLOCK
10. MAYOR QUIMBY
All the names that are just too mean to such a nice fellow, like MAYOR McFATTY, MAYOR PORK, MAJOR PORK, MAYOR BIGMAC, etc. will not be included in the Top 10 names for HIS HONOR. This is Seattle, a nice city, after all.
We are monitoring the TIMES, P-I, Weakly, Strangler, Crosscut, Publicola, and a few blogs for the most mentions in comments from the citizenry.
Newest contenders:
MAYOR DISASTER, MAJOR DISASTER, BOSS NICKELS, MAYOR NOSALT, MAYOR NICKELBAGS, MAYOR KNUCKLEHEAD, MAYOR FUDD, MAYOR FIVEPENNIES, MAYOR CHUMPCHANGE, MAYOR KNUCKLES
I’ll gladly support this guy for the broadband network if
1) We can take the port off the taxpayer’s back
and
2) this network cuts the typical broadband monthly cost in half.
This town could use a guy who’ll shake things up a bit.
Not a new idea in the bunch. Same old sludge
hmmm, think this guy poll tested his “priorities”?
Say “bold shit” 10 times as fast as you can.
One word response to the McGinn candidacy: why?
Go Mike!!!
Tacoma beat ya’ to the city built, city wide broadband by 15 years or so.
Supports the bag tax? Wants the surface option? This guy is a L-O-S-E-R. Nickels will beat him like a rug, and I will cheer.
And Josh, it’s Wayne G-R-E-T-Z-K-Y. He’s one of the greatest professional athletes in history, FYI, and if you are too lame to know that, all the credentials in the world won’t make you a real journalist.
@15,
Thanks for pointing out the spelling error. Should be all fixed now.
Sad to see someone of Sandeep’s intelligence working as a flak for a sad sack like Nickels. But hey. I guess it pays well?
I don’t understand the point of this “candidacy.” No management experience. No political experience. No money. Running on environmental credentials when that’s what Nickels gets mocked about all the time. Key issues aren’t even in the City of Seattle’s portfolio. Says nothing about how he’d work with the Council – or budget issues. Or do better with the state legislature. And he says nothing about the real issues the City does have responsibility for – utilities, public safety, libraries, streets, roads, planning and development, etc. If he’s so hot about the school system – why doesn’t he run for the school board? Metro? – run for King County council?
Funny way to go looking for a real job.
This is a sham candidacy. It is token opposition to Nickels’ reelection campaign.
Three months into 2010 take a look at McG’s PDC Form A filings (showing actual expenditures). It’ll sum up to some paltry number like maybe $25K.
The guy’s only declared to make the idiot public think we have real politics in the burg.
Don’t be hasty.
Da Mayor is not all that popular and this is a city without a functional newsmedium. The election will be based on two things:
money
troops
So there is scenario where McG could win. First he needs enough money to organize an Obama style campaign. That means enough funds to create a viral structure that can generate real money. The other lement is contact with the right sort of people skilled in such things. Given his past job he may have access to both the the startup funds AND the skilled web wonks.
Well, if they handle the schools the way the city handled the recent snow crisis, you guys are in worse trouble than you are now with the current administration.
DISCLAIMER: I am a long time supporter of and partisan for Greg Nickels and suffer from all the attendant biases, but at least I’m willing to admit it.
Dear Josh,
If you’re going to fellate everyone (“bold shit?”) who gets in the race against Nickels, at least take their pants off first so we can see if they’ve got the junk or not. (Hint: McGinn doesn’t.)
A better hockey metaphor for McGinn would be the guy who goes where the puck ain’t never gonna be and thinks the reason he’s there all alone is because he’s ahead of the pack. Because of McGinn we came within a hair’s breadth of killing light rail PERMANENTLY in this region. And don’t tell me McGinn knew it would be back on the ballot. That’s bullshit, it very nearly didn’t make it and the irony is that without a lot of hard work by Nickels, it wouldn’t have. McGinn would have killed off light rail and left Sound Transit a rotting carcass, ripe for the picking by the “governance reform” crowd.
So on one of the issues that is most important to our region’s future, something with the potential to significantly move the “puck” forward on transportation, development, jobs, environment, quality of life, we almost lost out because of McGinn’s ideological rigidity. He reminds me of John Fox during the recent TOD debate. And that’s not a compliment. He’d rather have no loaf than half a loaf. No thanks Air Bread.
Lucky for him Nickels skated into the corner to do the dirty work and dig out the puck so the voters could slam it in the net (oh, and without Nickels there wouldn’t have been an MTN campaign either). I will credit McGinn with grabbing the puck out of the net after the goal and putting it on his mantle piece. (I will stop using sports metaphors when you stop begging any and all knuckleheads to run, good for the city or not. “Dear Exploratory Committees of Seattle, I’ve just told you all you need to know.”)
And Gretzky? Fucking Wayne Gretzky? Mike McGinn is no Wayne Gretzky, not on politics OR policy, and you need both skills to govern. Imagine if you dare, how Mayor McGinn would have convinced the ST Board to vote to put Mass Transit Now on the ballot…I can see him now in his polar bear outfit. Most convincing.
So McGinn believes in “making smart investments in our future.” How bold. Isn’t that EXACTLY what MTN is? What single initiative/policy will do more? And don’t say education, because no matter how “bold” taking over SPS sounds, it’s not going to happen (McGinn skates by and asks “hey, where’s the puck?” or in internet lingo “WTP?”). McGinn should run for School Board, or stage a coup and become Superintendant if that’s where his passion lies.
And the hit on Roads & Transit and the quip about Kyoto (“It’s equally important that we actually meet the Kyoto Protocols with the decisions we make”) just shows how little McGinn understands about governing. And how inflexible he is. And unwilling to give credit where credit is due – very small.
Mister “take my ball and go home” (T-BAGH) will learn quickly that other people have balls too and are willing to use them. In what world is Nickels not one of the greenest mayors in the country? In Sierra Club world, that’s where. And contrary to popular belief Seattle is not the Sierra Club (see bag tax comma FAIL or viaduct comma PLEASE REBUILD).
How exactly did his decision making process go? Hey, I know, I’m going to run against Nickels because he didn’t take over the public schools (not the Mayor’s job), he didn’t give me free internet (yawn), and he didn’t banish the phrase “overcrowded buses” (again not the Mayor’s job, although even so I do remember a little something about buses in MTN),…oh and he’s not green enough (purity test), and I’ll get back to you on public safety (could quite possibly be part of the Mayor’s job, but not my thing). Cue “impromptu burst of applause, laughs, and cheers. (There were a lot of Sierra Club folks in the room.).” Or perhaps he just looked at a poll and took Josh’s advice. Bold indeed!
All I can say is WTP? What. The. Puck.
That is a nice post, really significant. You blog is right on.