1. State Sen. Ed Murray (D-43, Capitol Hill) leads incumbent Mayor Mike McGinn 52-30 in a KING 5/Survey USA mayor's race poll released this morning. It's the first polling to be released after the two candidates made it through the August 6 primary. 

A potential bright spot for incumbent McGinn, though: 44 percent believe the city is on the right track—an uptick from June polling that found 37 percent felt the city was on the right track. (At the time 41 percent said the city was on the wrong track while 39 percent feel that way in the latest poll.)

UPDATE: Clearly a bit surprised at seeing such a major advantage for their candidate (and trying to tamp down expectations), the Murray campaign (who, according to the recent campaign expenditure reports are doing some polling of their own) quickly released a cautious statement this morning:

While it is great to see numbers like this, and while we do think that Seattle voters are responding positively to Ed's message of providing effective, collaborative, progressive leadership (as opposed to the current divisive approach from Mayor McGinn), we also anticipate the race to be significantly closer than these numbers would indicate.

The King 5 poll was off in the primary, and as I recall a late October poll showed Mallahan seven points ahead of McGinn in the 2009 race. So we would caution the media to take these numbers with a grain of salt.

We certainly raised questions about the pre-primary KING 5 poll.

2. Enough readers gonged Friday's Fizz for raising a question about Team Murray using high school volunteers (who get credit for their campaign work) that we rescind the query. However, that question was a footnote; the item began by rasing the larger question of why the Garfield PTSA was only offering Team Murray internships and not Team McGinn internships as well—was the school taking sides?

No. It turns out the Murray campaign had just been the first out of the gate with the opportunity. Sure enough, McGinn's campaign is now also offering GHS kids a chance to get involved.

3. Two notes from the Convention Center (one texted and one emailed from PubliCola readers) about last night's Maggie Awards, the state Democrats' annual awards dinner.

First, related to the mayor's race, one attendee (an elected official) texted in: "Isn't it weird that the 'progressive' candidate for mayor missed the State Dems largest event? Murray was there ; ) ."

And, then this, emailed this morning with the subject line: "WA Democrats' Maggie Awards" :

Those happened last night. What better way to show how diverse of a Party we are then by having all of the presenters and speakers be straight, white men.

The monochrome (and mono chromosome) speakers list: Democratic State Party Chair Dwight Pelz; US Rep. Denny Heck (D-10); Gov. Jay Inslee; US Rep. Derek Kilmer (D-6); and former Ohio governor Ted Strickland. 

There were some female and minority winners, though, including state Sen. Sharon Nelson (D-34, Vashon, W. Seattle) and political consultant Monisha Harrell.

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