The Seattle City Council is in terrible shape, a civic embarassment. Among the fiascos in the last few years were resolutions to ban circus animals, breach dams in Eastern Washington, keep Saddam Hussein in office, and promote unlawful immigration. Oh yeah, and then there was the massive deficit in the government-owned power utility. Most recently we had a "scandal" fabricated by the media about a strip club parking lot, where the council members didn't do anything wrong at first, but then completely mishandled the misplaced criticism. If any public corporation had such an inept board of directors it would be ripe for a hostile takeover. I don't know, maybe Bellevue can buy us out. In the meantime, we have some incumbent council members to unelect: Nicastro, Wills and Compton, the Strippergate 3. Especially Heidi Wills the elephant queen, and Judy Nicastro, the student politician who never grew up and still believes in rent control. It's time for them to go.
Seattle happens to have the nuttiest system for electing council members that I've ever heard of. There are nine numbered seats and every seat is elected at large. No, there are no districts (as in most cities), and no, it is not the case that the top nine vote getters all win seats (as in San Francisco). Each candidate chooses a seat to contest and everybody in town votes for each seat separately. So we have nine people all elected at large by more or less the same thin majority coalition, pretending to represent the entire city. And who does one call if one has an issue with city hall, especially if you are of an underrepresented minority (e.g. Republican small business owner) that nobody seems to want in their coalition?
Four of the nine seats are contested in this primary. A table of endorsements is below.
Most of the attention is on Seat #1. Judy Nicastro appears to be the least responsible and most vulnerable member of the council. Unfortunately, the three best candidates in the entire field are all challenging Nicastro, while two seats don't have any attractive candidates.
Daryl Smith helped revitalize a run-down neighborhood the free-enterprise way: as a real estate agent. His solution to the housing shortage:
he thinks the city's housing crunch should be first addressed through changes in the land-use code that allow for increased housing density and smaller lots.Well, yeah.
Robert Rosencrantz has the most solid pro-business credentials in the entire field.
While I'd be happy to see both Smith and Rosencrantz on the council, my personal support in the race goes to Kollin Min. Kollin happens to be a neighbor and our families have become friends. He's more liberal than I am on a number of issues, but he has many good ideas and admirable personal qualities -- he's bright, hard-working, decent, approachable -- and I think he will raise the level of professionalism and seriousness on the council. In his stump speech, he campaigns against the council's circus animal/dam breaching/foreign policy hijinx, and he talks of the need for the city to diversify the economic base and to relax some of its counterproductive zoning regulations. Among his notable accomplishments, he has raised millions of dollars for the Cascades Conservation Partnership, which protects environmentally valuable land the smart, sustainable way -- by buying it for preservation. We can use more of that market-oriented win-win thinking around here.
Margaret Pageler seems to be the most sensible of the incumbents, not having been associated with the council's silliest excesses.
I hesitate to endorse anybody in races #7 and #9, but I'm voting for the least objectionable challangers only to send a message to incumbents Wills and Compton. Hopefully, better candidates will rise to the occasion next time.
| #1 | #5 | #7 | #9 | |
| Alki Foundation | Rosencrantz | Pageler | - | Compton |
| Seattle Times | Min Rosencrantz | Pageler | Della | Compton |
| Seattle P-I | Smith | Pageler | Wood | Manning |
| Seattle Weekly | Nicastro | Thompson | Della | - |
| The Stranger | Nicastro | Falkenbury | Wills | Manning |
| Shark Blog | Min | Pageler | Della | Manning |
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