1. Turnout heading into Tuesday’s historic primary is low so far citywide at about 14 percent (13.7.) That’s hardly surprising for an off-year August election, though it is the city’s first districted election in modern memory. Traditionally, the numbers double over the last weekend in the runup to the Tuesday vote, so, Seattle is on track for a turnout in the high 20s. King County turnout in the last year there was a city council election, 2013, was about 29 percent, though there was a mayoral race in the mix that time.

Seattle Turnout percentage is highest so far in District Three (Capitol Hill, the CD, Madison Valley), where it’s at 17 percent. Those numbers defy conventional wisdom that older voters are more on the ball. No other district is close to District Three’s numbers right now; District Seven (Downtown, Queen Anne, Magnolia) has the second highest showing right now at 14.2 percent.

The stronger showing in District Three bodes well for socialist incumbent Kshama Sawant whose youthful Capitol Hill base appears to be contradicting the stereotype that they’re checked out. Older, “family” oriented districts such as District One (West Seattle), District Four (Roosevelt, Wedgwood), and District Six (Ballard, Fremont) are currently at 12.4 percent, 13.4 percent, and 13.5 percent turnout respectively.

2. Speaking of District Three: Rod Hearne, the gay rights leader running against Sawant and her top challenger Urban League leader Pamela Banks, hit with a negative mailer late last week aimed at both his rivals. With a picture of a megaphone at an empty council dais seat where Sawant is supposed to be seated, the front side of the flier accuses Sawant of “divisive” “grandstanding” “megaphone politics” concluding that “the socialist dream we elected isn’t delivering for us.”

Turn the mailer over and there’s a compare and contrast between Banks (comically pictured up to her neck in contributions “from developers, corporations, and establishment interests” versus Hearne, “the progressive and effective choice for Seattle…”

The screaming irony, of course, is that if Hearne’s tactic works, and Hearne manages to knock out Banks for a showdown with Sawant, all those corporate dollars (that he intended to get before Banks displaced him, by the way) will go to him in the general and he’ll be up to his neck in Washington Restaurant Association cash as well. Or maybe not; it seems that big donors decided early on that Banks, a charismatic African American woman, has a much better shot at beating their villain Sawant than a privileged white guy. (Banks raised $221,000 in the primary to Hearne's $72,000.)

Another question about Hearne’s hit piece: Is his mailer, with the words “The Unfulfilled Promise,” above the lament about the MIA “socialist dream we elected” implying that he’s the socialist dream?

If so, the mainstream Democratic Party liberal is going to have to do quite the pivot if he makes it through on Tuesday night.

3. SDOT presented its Rainier Ave. road redesign last week. The pilot project changes the dangerous road from a four-lane thoroughfare to two lanes with a center left turn lane. It also comes with bus turn lanes between Edmunds and Alaska in the heart of Columbia City and a southbound bus lead time jump at Edmunds.

I wrote a feature story on the Rainier Valley urban upgrade for the magazine this month.