Morning Fizz
More Names Have Surfaced
1. The 34th District Democrats (West Seattle, Maury Island, and Vashon) made their primary endorsements last night and the winners are: The Seattle City council incumbents.
Tom Rasmussen (who's from West Seattle) won big over his opponent, lefty filmmaker Sandy Cioffi. No one even spoke in favor of Cioffi as Rasmussen got a huge cheers and was endorsed by "acclamation" with a voice vote.
Bruce Harrell got 89 percent over his challenger, former Seattle Times reporter and muni league leader Brad Meacham—who was the only candidate to actually have someone speak against them.
Sally Clark got 69 percent, topping her main opponent, Dian Ferguson.
And Tim Burgess won unanimously after being introduced by hometown hero, King County Executive Dow Constantine.
The only City Council incumbent who didn't score a sole nomination was Jean Godden. After she split the first ballot 34 to 32 with SDOT staffer Bobby Forch (she got the 34), the members opted by 75 percent to go with a dual endorsement.
2. Two more names (in addition to Seattle City Council member Tim Burgess and state Sen. Ed Murray) have surfaced as potential challengers to Mayor Mike McGinn in 2013: City council member Bruce Harrell, who's up for reelection this year, and city attorney Pete Holmes.
Of the two, Holmes seems like a more probable contender: The city attorney has sued to stop an initiative and a referendum on the deep-bore tunnel from going to the ballot, giving him a ready-made campaign issue against tunnel opponent McGinn, whose administration has been defined by the issue. In a recent poll , just 23 percent of voters thought McGinn was doing a good job. [pullquote]Holmes beat then-incumbent City Attorney Tom Carr in 2009 63.85 to 35.92[/pullquote].
But Holmes told PubliCola yesterday: "I'd love to know the source of your rumor, but it's untrue. I love this job and fully intend to earn another term from the voters in 2013."
Harrell did not return our call.
3. The amount of legislation the city council considers ebbs and flows over the years, but council staffers have noticed a steady decline of legislation coming out of the mayor's office since McGinn took over. According to records provided to PubliCola by the city's budget office, which tracks legislation from the mayor and his departments, the number of proposed bills and resolutions coming out of the mayor's office has declined from 181 in 2010, the first year McGinn was in office, to 68 in 2011 so far. Extrapolated to a full year, that works out to about 156 bills proposed---a significant decline.
For comparison, former mayor Greg Nickels proposed 209 bills and resolutions in 2008 and 201 in 2009, his last year in office.
4. You can read our full (serious) report on Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna's announcement that he's officially running for governor here.
For Fizz, we're going to focus on one part of his speech that jumped out at us last night: all the jokes the guy cracked. McKenna was a bit of a card last night.
• For starters, he began his speech by noting how "swanky" his high school alma mater (Sammamish) had gotten, saying that back in his day there was no plush auditorium, and he would have been giving this speech (he was class president, natch) in the cafeteria with "peanut butter on his shoes." (It was an image that stuck for the rest of the evening.)
• When he complained that cuts in higher ed funding were preventing the UW from its commitment to accepting local kids who got straight As, he looked down into the front row at his kids and said: "That doesn't mean you can stop getting straight As."
• Hyping local business success stories, he said Washingtonians are so innovative, they invented a cup of coffee that was so good, "you'll pay four dollars for it."
• After trashing government regulations on small business for being so onerous they make every company's second hire—after the struggle of bringing on that first employee— "a lawyer," he joked, self-deprecatingly, that there wasn't necessarily anything wrong with that.
• After pointing out the bitter irony that education administrations in Louisiana and New York City were closing the achievement gap by using education strategies developed by experts at the UW, while our own state was ignoring local expertise and falling so far behind, he added, impromptu and sarcastically: "Go Dawgs."
• When he chastised our education system for being 1.0 because teachers weren't using the internet as a teaching tool, he joked: "Kids are learning a lot of other things online."
• After someone interrupted his rap about trimming state government with a solo "woo-hoo!", McKenna paused and noted dryly: "And thanks for the woo-hoo."
The point being, McKenna is not the kind of Republican we've seen before in recent high-profile races (I guess that'd be just one candidate, Dino Rossi.) He's not rote and bitter and defensive. He's quick and witty and seems to be having fun. If there's one thing you can say about Rossi, the guy did not seem to be having fun.
Tom Rasmussen (who's from West Seattle) won big over his opponent, lefty filmmaker Sandy Cioffi. No one even spoke in favor of Cioffi as Rasmussen got a huge cheers and was endorsed by "acclamation" with a voice vote.
Bruce Harrell got 89 percent over his challenger, former Seattle Times reporter and muni league leader Brad Meacham—who was the only candidate to actually have someone speak against them.
Sally Clark got 69 percent, topping her main opponent, Dian Ferguson.
And Tim Burgess won unanimously after being introduced by hometown hero, King County Executive Dow Constantine.
The only City Council incumbent who didn't score a sole nomination was Jean Godden. After she split the first ballot 34 to 32 with SDOT staffer Bobby Forch (she got the 34), the members opted by 75 percent to go with a dual endorsement.
2. Two more names (in addition to Seattle City Council member Tim Burgess and state Sen. Ed Murray) have surfaced as potential challengers to Mayor Mike McGinn in 2013: City council member Bruce Harrell, who's up for reelection this year, and city attorney Pete Holmes.
Of the two, Holmes seems like a more probable contender: The city attorney has sued to stop an initiative and a referendum on the deep-bore tunnel from going to the ballot, giving him a ready-made campaign issue against tunnel opponent McGinn, whose administration has been defined by the issue. In a recent poll , just 23 percent of voters thought McGinn was doing a good job. [pullquote]Holmes beat then-incumbent City Attorney Tom Carr in 2009 63.85 to 35.92[/pullquote].
But Holmes told PubliCola yesterday: "I'd love to know the source of your rumor, but it's untrue. I love this job and fully intend to earn another term from the voters in 2013."
Harrell did not return our call.
3. The amount of legislation the city council considers ebbs and flows over the years, but council staffers have noticed a steady decline of legislation coming out of the mayor's office since McGinn took over. According to records provided to PubliCola by the city's budget office, which tracks legislation from the mayor and his departments, the number of proposed bills and resolutions coming out of the mayor's office has declined from 181 in 2010, the first year McGinn was in office, to 68 in 2011 so far. Extrapolated to a full year, that works out to about 156 bills proposed---a significant decline.
For comparison, former mayor Greg Nickels proposed 209 bills and resolutions in 2008 and 201 in 2009, his last year in office.
4. You can read our full (serious) report on Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna's announcement that he's officially running for governor here.
For Fizz, we're going to focus on one part of his speech that jumped out at us last night: all the jokes the guy cracked. McKenna was a bit of a card last night.
• For starters, he began his speech by noting how "swanky" his high school alma mater (Sammamish) had gotten, saying that back in his day there was no plush auditorium, and he would have been giving this speech (he was class president, natch) in the cafeteria with "peanut butter on his shoes." (It was an image that stuck for the rest of the evening.)
• When he complained that cuts in higher ed funding were preventing the UW from its commitment to accepting local kids who got straight As, he looked down into the front row at his kids and said: "That doesn't mean you can stop getting straight As."
• Hyping local business success stories, he said Washingtonians are so innovative, they invented a cup of coffee that was so good, "you'll pay four dollars for it."
• After trashing government regulations on small business for being so onerous they make every company's second hire—after the struggle of bringing on that first employee— "a lawyer," he joked, self-deprecatingly, that there wasn't necessarily anything wrong with that.
• After pointing out the bitter irony that education administrations in Louisiana and New York City were closing the achievement gap by using education strategies developed by experts at the UW, while our own state was ignoring local expertise and falling so far behind, he added, impromptu and sarcastically: "Go Dawgs."
• When he chastised our education system for being 1.0 because teachers weren't using the internet as a teaching tool, he joked: "Kids are learning a lot of other things online."
• After someone interrupted his rap about trimming state government with a solo "woo-hoo!", McKenna paused and noted dryly: "And thanks for the woo-hoo."
The point being, McKenna is not the kind of Republican we've seen before in recent high-profile races (I guess that'd be just one candidate, Dino Rossi.) He's not rote and bitter and defensive. He's quick and witty and seems to be having fun. If there's one thing you can say about Rossi, the guy did not seem to be having fun.
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