The mayor's $1.8 billion road-maintenance initiative, which council transportation chair Jan Drago has said should be cut in "about half" by the council, has also proved unpopular with the Downtown Seattle Association (which opposes the 10 percent parking tax), the Seattle Chamber of Commerce (which opposes the $25 employee head tax), and the public, which supported the measure by a scant plurality of 43 percent in a recent survey by local pollster Stuart Elway. Last month, faced with this onslaught of bad news, the mayor did what the mayor always does when his pet projects run into trouble: He commissioned a poll (cost to taxpayers: $17,000), this one by local consulting firm Evans/McDonough.

Three guesses what the mayor's poll found: Voters overwhelmingly support the levy, by margins ranging from 52 to 67 percent. And, in the mayor's poll, the larger the levy, the more voters support it: Support for a $150 average annual property tax was 2 percent higher (67 percent) than support for a $100 tax. I'm not a pollster, so I won't pretend to know what the drastic difference in the two sets of numbers means. (Both surveys were of 400 registered voters; both have a margin of error of around 5 percent.) But given the giant discrepancy between Elway's numbers and Evans/McDonough's, I think it's safe to say that one of these sets of numbers is fishy. My hunch is that it isn't Elway's. People are willing to pay for unsexy stuff like roads and bridges, but only up to a point. And $1.8 billion is past that point.

Another potential ballot initiative—an advisory measure to gauge voters' support for the various viaduct-replacement options—is gaining new steam at the council, despite several council members' (Drago and Peter Steinbrueck among them) strong opposition to putting the question before the voters. In recent weeks, council staff have quietly begun drafting potential language for the November ballot, though it remains unclear whether their work reflects a shift on the council toward a public vote on the protracted viaduct issue.

Sally Clark, at five months on the job the most freshman of the four first-term council incumbents, has already raised nearly $30,000 toward her 2006 reelection campaign, and three June events (including fundraisers sponsored by 43rd District Rep. Ed Murray, Council Members Jan Drago and Richard Conlin, and local powerhouse consultant Christian Sinderman) are not yet reflected in Clark's fundraising totals. (Her upcoming birthday party/fundraiser will be sponsored in part by one of the contenders for the appointment that Clark won, Columbia City activist/realtor Darryl Smith.)

What political observers are starting to wonder is: How come no one is running against Clark? With less than a year under her belt, you might expect Clark to be the most politically vulnerable member of the council. (Regular council elections, in which Clark will also have to participate if she's reelected, are in 2007.) However, none of the candidates who sought appointment to the seat Clark won (previously held by former newscaster Jim Compton) have expressed an interest in running, and many of the top contenders, all of them minority women, are widely viewed as stronger candidates for appointment than election. Unless someone steps up with a strong record in local politics, money, and powerful friends on the council or elsewhere, Clark may have the council's safest seat.

barnett@thestranger.com