On Friday, doing a little editorializing, Morning Fizz decided Joe Mallahan gave the best answer of the night at Thursday night's KCTS debate.

When KUOW reporter Deborah Wang asked each candidate to name one thing they'd like to accomplish if they only get one term, Mallahan said he would want to make sure everyone in Seattle who wanted a job would have a living-wage job. It was a powerful response that surely pleased his union supporters at the King County Labor Council, which endorsed him last month.

I called Mallahan's campaign a couple of times on Friday to follow up on his statement. Would he push a living-wage ordinance as mayor?

City council candidate David Bloom is running on the living-wage issue, basing it on ordinances like ones in L.A., San Francisco, Oakland, Baltimore, and the Twin Cities in Minnesota. In those cities, city contractors in traditionally low-wage jobs like parking garage attendants, janitors, security guards, and gardeners have to earn pay that puts them above the poverty line. In Washington State, the minimum wage ($8.55) only works out to about $17,784 a year—less than the federal poverty rate of $18,000 (a nationwide average that's low for high-cost metro areas like Seattle).

Supporters of a living wage in Seattle, including Howard Greenwich of Puget Sound Sage, suggest a minimum of around $13 per hour—enough for "self sufficiency" in a two-working-parent family with two kids, to make rent, afford transportation for work, buy food, and clothes for your kids. "The bare bones," Greenwich  says, "enough so that you're not on goverment assistance like food stamps and medicare." He's basing his numbers on a study done by the Workforce Development Council of Seattle-King County, a non-profit that works on low-income issues. (Go to page 68 on the study.)

Mallahan has not gotten back to us to explain how he would promote living wage jobs. His spokeswoman, Charla Neuman, said she didn't know where Mallahan was on the issue, but she too thought it had been his best answer. "That just came out. That wasn't part of the debate prep," she said.

I called McGinn's campaign to see where McGinn was on the living wage idea as well. McGinn said he supports the living wage idea. McGinn tells PubliCola: "As the mayor, I will explore that option."

While Mallahan is leading McGinn in union endrosements with KCLC, the aerospace machinists, the transit union, the local carpenters union, and the police guild among many others, McGinn was endorsed by one of the more proletariat unions in town, UFCW 21, the grocery workers union.