In anticipation of our endorsements in the Seattle mayoral races (as well as city council, King County Executive and Council, Seattle Port Commission, and Seattle school board races) which we will publish on Monday, we're running a special series of Q&As this weekend with the four major candidates for Seattle mayor.

Questions and answers are excerpted from our endorsement interviews with the candidates.



Up first: Joe Mallahan, a T-Mobile executive who put more than $200,000 of his own money into his race against incumbent Greg Nickels and won the dual endorsement (with Nickels) of the Seattle Times yesterday.

City Council member Jan Drago will have her say later today, followed by Seattle Great City Initiative founder Mike McGinn and Nickels tomorrow.

PubliCola : Tell us what specific experience you have, other than your management experience in the private sector, that qualifies you to serve as mayor of Seattle.

Joe Mallahan : I have managed complex projects. I believe my management experience makes me the best candidate to effectively run city government and get the city back on track with regard to basic services. I have a record of making strategic decisions—assessing a situation and making a principled choice that people may disagree with.

I have applied my management skills to a number of different situations. I showed up in this wireless telecom company with zero telecom experience and added material value from day one.

PubliCola : You've said repeatedly that you prefer to make "strategic," rather than "political," decisions. Can you give an example of a time when the mayor has made a political decision that you disagree with?

Mallahan : The decision to keep [Seattle Department of Transportation director Grace] Crunican was a political decision on his part. [Crunican has been criticized for botching the city's response for last winter's snowstorm and for allowing mismanagement in her department. Mallahan has called for her resignation.]

I think Grace Crunican arrived with a strong resume. She has proven herself a great policy leader. But she has utterly failed to manage a very large department. She has failed to deliver on one of the mayor's top priorities, which is maintaining streets and building sidewalks. She bungled the snowstorm.

It's not my intention to single out department heads, but I believe the pulbic record has been so clear with SDOT that I believe it was appropriate to call for Grace's resignation.

PubliCola : You've been accused of being anti-union because of a memo that went out to T-Mobile managers advising them on how to bust an effort by the Communications Workers of America to organize line workers. You're one of T-Mobile's top managers, yet you claim to have never seen the memo. How is that possible?

Mallahan : I was unaware of a memo written by somebody in HR. It's a 30,000-person company. All the teams I've managed at T-Mobile are white-collar professionals. I've never had line management experience.

PubliCola : You say you'd restore the Seattle Police Department's gang unit, which you argue Mayor Nickels disbanded. Where would you get the money?

Mallahan : We have 500 uniformed patrol officers on the streets every day, and the neighborhood policing plan calls for 600. I've said we've got to get there as quickly as possible. People say, "That costs a lot of money." I say, "No, it's not. It's $10 million. We spend $125 million on consultants at the city. We need to increase our internal expertise so we're not relying on consultants. A ten percent reduction in spending on consultants  would allow us to hire 100 more officers.