Here's the depressing news: The filing deadline for the November elections just came and went, and the only people who seemed excited by its passage were the candidates themselves. On Friday, four council incumbents and their challengers let loose a confetti of invective-riddled campaign press releases that, despite their undoubtedly record-smashing length (Casey Corr's led the pack at an impressive 644 words) and ruthless dissection of pointless non-issues (embedded in Corr's accusatory announcement was a link to an eight-month-old Drago press release) were virtually content-free. Such is the paradox of this year's council campaigns, where even a moribund monorail agency, a failing viaduct, and a transportation-budget hole big enough to drive a truck through are not enough to keep city council candidates from tinkering over trivia.
Ready for the really depressing news? The filing deadline for the November elections came and went, and only six people bothered to file for two elected positions on the Seattle Monorail Project's fractured board. They include the two embattled incumbents; two perennial candidates, including self-proclaimed genius Stan Lippman; and one former cab driver and failed city council contender, Dick Falkenbury. Although some observers expressed surprise that more monorail opponents didn't jump into the ring, others were blasé, noting that, come November, there may not even be a monorail.
Consider: Even if the agency survives through the November elections, it could still be disbanded by state legislators next year. On Monday, August 1, state Rep. Brendan Williams (D-Olympia), sent a letter to Governor Christine Gregoire calling for a special session to discuss "canceling" the troubled project. The SMP, Williams wrote, "is such an abject train wreck that it warrants state intervention." (State Sen. Ken Jacobson, one of the most vocal opponents of the monorail in Olympia, says his own efforts to shutter the monorail have so far met with little success.)
Meanwhile, council challenger Paige Miller, whose relentless rhetorical defense of the monorail appears to be occurring entirely inside a political vacuum, remains untroubled by growing public antipathy toward the agency. On Friday, Miller followed a typically humdrum filing-day announcement with a surprisingly vituperative volley: a press release, titled "Courageous Conlin changes course; calls for half a monorail," accusing incumbent Richard Conlin of flip-flopping to support a truncated monorail line from downtown to West Seattle.
Contacted at his office Monday, Conlin called Miller's claim, based entirely on two paragraphs from a story in the West Seattle Herald, a mischaracterization of his position. While he acceded that "if the monorail was going to survive, [West Seattle] would be the place to go," Conlin added that in the absence of a monorail-saving financial deus ex machina, "the SMP needs to be shut down." That kind of opinion used to earn Conlin reproaches from diehard opponents around the city. These days, it's an applause line. n
