Mayor Mike McGinn's high-profile standoff with Gov. Chris Gregoire over tunnel cost overruns at a tunnel oversight meeting last week has been duly noted in the press.

And while City Council Member Tom Rasmussen (who argued with McGinn as well) was also a part of the story, I think the significance of Rasmussen's cameo is being missed.

McGinn, who was cordial in his showdown with Gregoire, pulled a Jekyll and Hyde and was openly cantankerous with Rasmussen. There's a metaphor here that was, I'm sure, hard for Gregoire to miss. It'd be one thing if McGinn's Seattle colleagues backed up his defiance, but here he is in a scrap with the City Council—plain for Gregoire to see—just as he's trying to convince Gregoire that he means business.

McGinn—whom we've taken to calling Hugo Chavez here at Cola HQ thanks to his constant claim that "the people" support him—needs to demonstrate that he's also got other leaders on his side if he wants to succeed at his (I'd say, sound) anti-tunnel agenda. But his belligerence is slowly killing his potential to secure allies in government—a political mistake, and potentially his Achilles' heel.

Witness: His fight with Rasmussen over the tunnel is now affecting McGinn's other basic efforts. As Erica reported today, Rasmussen, in an equally belligerent move, is now trying to fight McGinn with a hostile budget proviso over McGinn's transit master plan (hostility breeds hostility).

Oy. The battle between the council and McGinn over the tunnel is poisoning politics at City Hall.  As I've editorialized before, McGinn has the better position on the tunnel, and the Council will lose that PR war. (The council is for cost overruns?) But McGinn needs to grow up and learn to play well with others if he ever wants his positions to translate into policy.

Funny side note: Currently, McGinn's only ally appears to be King County Council Member Larry Phillips. Last week , Phillips wrote an odd letter to Gov. Chris Gregoire (and he was the only Council Member to sign it) saying the County would not pay any cost overruns on the tunnel.

Erica has a call in to Phillips' office to get some clarity on the Phillips letter.