As Eli wrote earlier, there was a mayoral candidates forum on arts and culture last night at Town Hall. It was not a good night for the arts, or for any of the mayoral candidates. Here are my thoughts:
• State Senator Ed Murray came across as petulant and combative. I can understand Murray wanting to make a clear division between himself and Mayor Mike McGinn, but he needs to find a way to do that where he doesn't sound offended all the time. Murray's body language was also off-putting: At one point in the debate, all the candidates took questions from a panel of cultural leaders who were seated to their right. Every other candidate addressed their answers forward to the audience, but Murray turned in his seat to address the panel, which made it look like he was turning his back on McGinn.
• But McGinn didn't do a stellar job, either. I've seen him speak at a number of cultural events, and one of his greatest strengths as mayor is his ability to speak with great conviction about the importance of Seattle's arts scene. So I went into the forum last night with high expectations for McGinn. He didn't meet them. While McGinn gets points for not sinking to Murray's level—he correctly ignored most of the senator's potshots—he was on the defensive and not as inspiring as he should've been.
• City Council Member Bruce Harrell, in fact, was the most mayoral candidate on the stage. He spoke convincingly about the importance of Seattle's arts as a way to bridge cultural divides. He clumsily attempted several times to turn a talk about arts into a discussion about his ability to inspire "collaboration" as a mayor, but his criticisms of McGinn didn't feel as grumpy and small as Murray's. Still, even though he sounded mayoral, Harrell was possibly the least substantive candidate up there. There was very little detail beneath his broad strokes.
• Former City Council Member Peter Steinbrueck had the most vocal support in Town Hall last night, but his platform, to me, sounds like he wants to create a Seattle where the 90's never happened.
• The best point of the night was made by Charlie Staadecker, who said that if you conglomerated all the arts into one business, it would be the sixth biggest employer in the Puget Sound region, after Boeing and Amazon and Microsoft but before Nordstrom and Costco. That was the kind of clear, striking imagery that every other candidate failed to use to illustrate their points.
• I have very little to say about the Martins. Mary Martin couldn't shut up about how great Cuba is. Kate Martin's plan for what to do with KeyArena—"I do think the acoustics are really special at the Key," she said, suggesting that we turn it into a dedicated world-class concert hall called "The Queen Anne"—was completely divorced from reality.
• As the host, Steve Scher was abysmal. He continually spoke of how little time there was in the forum, and then he spent the first 15 minutes of the forum blathering on about nothing and fiddling with his iPad to find the right sound to play to signify that a candidate had come to the end of their allotted time. His questions were airy, and his moderation was negligible when it wasn't clumsy. The most horrifying moment of the night for me came when Scher revealed that he was teaching a class on interviewing at the UW. To those students, I send this message: Whatever Scher tells you, do the opposite.
