City Hall
Why I'm Skeptical of the "McGinn Slate" Theory
Josh thinks Mayor Mike McGinn is likely to put forward a slate of Sierra Club/Real Change-backed candidates for city council this year. His theory: A slate of candidates, running on the tunnel issue, would have a shot at taking out one or both of the council incumbents who're perceived as vulnerable---Jean Godden or Bruce Harrell.
I'd be skeptical of that theory based only on the fact that mayor-backed "slates" of candidates generally fail to materialize. (How many times did we hear that Greg Nickels was putting together a slate to get back at a recalcitrant council?) But there's another factor that makes me doubt the wisdom of the "slate" strategy: The last time a serious slate of candidates ran for council on a common issue or set of issues, they were completely unsuccessful.
Back in the late '80s, we had the Vision Seattle slate: A group of candidates who ran on the success of the Vision Seattle neighborhood group and the CAP initiative, which capped building heights downtown. None of the seven Vision Seattle candidates who ran in 1987 and 1989 won, although one candidate, Margaret Pageler, did go on to win in 1991, and another Vision Seattle member who didn't run that year, Peter Steinbrueck, was elected in 1997.
A decade before that, efforts to elect slates of reform candidates were more successful, when a bipartisan group called Choose an Effective City Council (CHECC) managed to elect four new council members between 1969 and 1973. However, I would argue that the Seattle of the 1960s had much less in common with modern-day Seattle than that of the 1980s and '90s, when many of the same issues we're debating today---density, transportation, growth---were becoming major factors in city politics.
And, as I've written before, McGinn's blunders in his first year in office have made the council look like grownups---and, I would argue, hindered the mayor's ability to convince new candidates to step forward and challenge the members of the newly ascendant council.
I'd be skeptical of that theory based only on the fact that mayor-backed "slates" of candidates generally fail to materialize. (How many times did we hear that Greg Nickels was putting together a slate to get back at a recalcitrant council?) But there's another factor that makes me doubt the wisdom of the "slate" strategy: The last time a serious slate of candidates ran for council on a common issue or set of issues, they were completely unsuccessful.
Back in the late '80s, we had the Vision Seattle slate: A group of candidates who ran on the success of the Vision Seattle neighborhood group and the CAP initiative, which capped building heights downtown. None of the seven Vision Seattle candidates who ran in 1987 and 1989 won, although one candidate, Margaret Pageler, did go on to win in 1991, and another Vision Seattle member who didn't run that year, Peter Steinbrueck, was elected in 1997.
A decade before that, efforts to elect slates of reform candidates were more successful, when a bipartisan group called Choose an Effective City Council (CHECC) managed to elect four new council members between 1969 and 1973. However, I would argue that the Seattle of the 1960s had much less in common with modern-day Seattle than that of the 1980s and '90s, when many of the same issues we're debating today---density, transportation, growth---were becoming major factors in city politics.
And, as I've written before, McGinn's blunders in his first year in office have made the council look like grownups---and, I would argue, hindered the mayor's ability to convince new candidates to step forward and challenge the members of the newly ascendant council.
