From the Sep 3 – Sep 10, 2003 issue

Pullout

John Manning

Seattle City Council Position 9

We really don't want to endorse John Manning, a one-time city council member who had to resign after a domestic-violence arrest. The former cop says his anger problems are behind him, and we want to believe him--for the sake of his second wife, if for no other reason. But we know he has no shot of winning, and we don't particularly want to see him on the council.

We just can't bring ourselves to endorse Jim Compton, the incumbent in this race. Basically, Compton is the most predictable and unimaginative status-quo voter on the council. He voted against Nicastro's renters' rights reform package in '01, rubber-stamped Sound Transit (despite his '99 campaign rhetoric to be a light-rail watchdog--please, Jim!), and ushered through Vulcan's agenda in South Lake Union (he sponsored the gleeful rubber-stamp resolution after getting free airplane rides to Portland Trailblazers games and winning roughly $13,560 in Vulcan-related contributions this year). More important, as the critical chair of the public safety committee, he's been maddeningly conservative: setting up a racial-profiling task force that was closed to the public, for instance, and taking two years to usher through a lame plan on racial profiling.

The other folks in this race--çngel Bolaños and Susan Harmon--are, to be blunt, boobs. Bolaños is an angry lefty who tries to sound like Nick Licata on a tear but winds up sounding more like Che Guevara on crystal meth. Harmon is, well, off. Trying to take this inarticulate oddball seriously was perhaps the hardest work we did during our interviews. Well, actually not reaching across the table and slapping the shit out of Kollin Min was harder--but only a tiny bit.

What really pisses us off about having to toss away our endorsement on Manning is that we would've been happy to endorse, say, two of the four "progressives" running against Judy Nicastro or Heidi Wills. Instead of setting their sights on Nicastro or Wills, both reliable progressive votes, the progressives running against them should've taken on conservatives like Compton or Pageler. But Nicastro and Wills are believed to be vulnerable, while Compton and Pageler are not. So "progressives" like Jean Godden and Darryl Smith, and faux-progressives like Kollin Min and David Della, set their sights on Judy and Heidi. If their progressive challengers defeat Nicastro and Wills, what do we get? Nothing--the balance of power on the council is unchanged, tilting toward the conservatives. For this reason alone folks should vote against Godden, Smith, Della, and Min. They call themselves left-leaning "progressives," but all four are running races that make them look like self-serving opportunists.