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McGinn's Party: The Wrapup
Eric Nusbaum here.
Otis Redding gave way to Tupac at what has quickly become a Mike McGinn victory party. There’s no dancing yet, but there might as well be. Beer and mojitos and the kind of satisfaction that only an all-volunteer staff can feel are flowing tonight. Those who want to talk must do it outside in the parking lot, where Mike McGinn has spent most of his evening.
I got the chance to speak with a few of McGinn’s big-time volunteers tonight, and perhaps it was the wisdom of hindsight speaking, but all said they sort-of expected this kind of night going in. In his second speech of the evening, McGinn himself agreed. The media underestimated us, he said, but we never underestimated ourselves.
McGinn’s volunteers are the real story coming out of this party tonight. McGinn’s unpaid staff was more qualified, heavier-hitting, and more dedicated than the paid campaign professionals on board with Nickels and Mallahan. Just wandering through the crowd tonight, I spoke with multiple Camp Wellstone grads, a former Nickels appointee, organizers, architects, executives, and computer geeks. The people that propelled Mike McGinn to this point were not your typical phone-bankers.
Nate Cormier, a landscape architect and member of McGinn’s informal kitchen cabinet, said they gathered on a common intellectual vision and a common belief that McGinn was the man to lead Seattle toward that vision.
“This is somebody who has a sixth sense for where progressive, urban, green-minded Seattle is headed,” said Cormier. He went on to use the same language that I kept hearing all night. He spoke of empowerment. McGinn, Cormier and others said with pride, was not afraid to fail or to let his volunteers fail. He gave them room to work, room to succeed.
When McGinn himself stepped to the podium to thanks his supporters and officially send the night toward drunken oblivion, he reiterated. “Never underestimate the power of people talking to people about ideas,” McGinn said, before pointing out that his campaign was outspent “six, seven, eight to one.”
They did it by working the grassroots, with people talking to people, by believing in the Seattle that is and can be. “We told a better story,” said volunteer and Sierra Club organizer Craig Benjamin earlier tonight.
That story was optimism. And nobody summed it up better.
Otis Redding gave way to Tupac at what has quickly become a Mike McGinn victory party. There’s no dancing yet, but there might as well be. Beer and mojitos and the kind of satisfaction that only an all-volunteer staff can feel are flowing tonight. Those who want to talk must do it outside in the parking lot, where Mike McGinn has spent most of his evening.
I got the chance to speak with a few of McGinn’s big-time volunteers tonight, and perhaps it was the wisdom of hindsight speaking, but all said they sort-of expected this kind of night going in. In his second speech of the evening, McGinn himself agreed. The media underestimated us, he said, but we never underestimated ourselves.
McGinn’s volunteers are the real story coming out of this party tonight. McGinn’s unpaid staff was more qualified, heavier-hitting, and more dedicated than the paid campaign professionals on board with Nickels and Mallahan. Just wandering through the crowd tonight, I spoke with multiple Camp Wellstone grads, a former Nickels appointee, organizers, architects, executives, and computer geeks. The people that propelled Mike McGinn to this point were not your typical phone-bankers.
Nate Cormier, a landscape architect and member of McGinn’s informal kitchen cabinet, said they gathered on a common intellectual vision and a common belief that McGinn was the man to lead Seattle toward that vision.
“This is somebody who has a sixth sense for where progressive, urban, green-minded Seattle is headed,” said Cormier. He went on to use the same language that I kept hearing all night. He spoke of empowerment. McGinn, Cormier and others said with pride, was not afraid to fail or to let his volunteers fail. He gave them room to work, room to succeed.
When McGinn himself stepped to the podium to thanks his supporters and officially send the night toward drunken oblivion, he reiterated. “Never underestimate the power of people talking to people about ideas,” McGinn said, before pointing out that his campaign was outspent “six, seven, eight to one.”
They did it by working the grassroots, with people talking to people, by believing in the Seattle that is and can be. “We told a better story,” said volunteer and Sierra Club organizer Craig Benjamin earlier tonight.
That story was optimism. And nobody summed it up better.
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