Downtown

About 55 folks—including members from the hotel employees' union and the service employees' union—showed up outside Seattle's Rainier Club on August 14 to wave signs and chant "Corruption!" as GOP Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) and Cantwell challenger Mike McGavick slipped from tinted SUVs into a $500-per-head fundraiser inside the Ivy-League-style Fourth Avenue club.

The proletariat had reason to raise a ruckus: McGavick supported Frist's political ploy earlier this month to blackmail Democrats into supporting the estate-tax repeal—which would have benefited the richest .3 percent of Americans—by tying it to the Democrats' pet issue, a minimum-wage increase. The GOP bill also cut the minimum wage for tipped workers to $2.13 an hour. There are around 122,000 workers in Washington State whose wages would have been sacked by a third. Fewer than 200 families in Washington would have benefited from the estate-tax repeal. SARAH MIRK

Northgate

Five years after developer Matt Howland requested a rezone on North 113th Street to build a pair of six-plexes in a single-family zone, the city council finally approved the request on August 14 in a 9–0 vote. It's not clear if the news is encouraging or disheartening for those looking to challenge Seattle's single-family zoning orthodoxy (75 percent of the land available for residential use in Seattle is zoned single-family).

Upzoning could create 12 townhomes, which willl go for around $300,000. Three single-family homes there would go for probably $600,000.

The south side of 113th Street—across from Howland's lot—was already zoned multi-family. And 113th Street bumps up against bustling Northgate Way and Meridian Avenue, which already has plenty of infrastructure, like downtown bus lines. Adhering to single-family zoning along the short unkempt stretch seemed archaic.

Three cheers for the pro-density council? Yes, but it took five years to overcome neighbors' objections. Most developers aren't going to wait around like Howland did. NANCY DREW

The Boonies

Initiative I-933—the looming "property rights" initiative that threatens Washington's land regulations ["Defeating I-933," Sarah Mirk, Aug 10] is part of a larger play by a PAC called Americans for Limited Government. Not only has ALG donated $200,000 to I-933 (43 percent of the campaign's donations), it's funneling money to subsidiaries (like "Montanans in Action") currently running property-rights campaigns in six Western states such as Nevada, Idaho, and California.

ALG chairman, Howard Rich, is a real-estate millionaire and former higher-up in the Libertarian Party. SARAH MIRK