Seattle City Council position 6 candidates Nick Licata and Jessie Israel appeared on KUOW’s The Conversation this afternoon to essentially kick off the general election. Licata, the 12 year incumbent, won the primary with 56 percent of the vote to Israel’s 30 percent.

They mostly touched on budget and transportation issues in the 15 minute segment. Here are some highlights:

“We need to be much more aggressive in making sure that we’re making the investments we need.” – Israel on why she should be elected.

“We need to go through and really trim down our upper management in the city. We have too many people, I believe, who are making over $100,000.” – Licata on how to address the city’s budget shortfall.

“I don’t think any one politician can stop the project.” – Licata on the deep bore tunnel.

Obviously, they said a lot more than that. You can listen for yourself here. The Licata-Israel section starts around the 14:00 mark.

19 replies on “Licata, Israel Face off on the Radio”

  1. Anyone making over $100,000 from a public bureaucracy should have their justification analyzed with the highest scrutiny.

  4. Jessie has not a chance – she is charming, but, little focus.

    Licata has true progressive credential going back decades. In a era of much change, he is a shoo in.

  7. I suspect that Licata quote on income earners was taken out of context, and was an inarticulate way of making a point about taxes and not regulating incomes.

  8. For a “consistent progressive,” Nick Licata sure is consistently against transit (like streetcars and light rail) and against density (whenever it could impact a millionaire’s view).

    He may have been a progressive when he was elected – back when he advocated for term limits so he couldn’t run for a fourth term in 2009 (nice job getting that done by the way). Now that Seattle has progressed beyond him, Licata is one of the most consistently conservative voices on the council — forget surface/transit, even a tunnel is too liberal for Licata.

    This “consistent progressive” meme about Licata has got to end.

  10. #8.

    Since when does Liberal mean tearing up a city, overburdening it with taxes and creating a lot of wasteful unnecessary projects that no one will ever use?

    Oh yeah — it ALWAYS MEANT THAT.

    Here’s to you Teddy…you made it an art!

  13. Is spending money wisely a conservative position? Are the Republicans correct when they say that Dems are just tax and spend? Is building stadiums and streetcars for the rich and then privatizing our public parks a progressive approach to governance?

    Want to look at city salaries – go to lbloom.net.

    CCMs make about $100K. in 2007 there were about 190 that made over $100K not counting police, SCL and SPU.

    I suggest that those making over $75K should be looked at as many of those people are overpaid, even if their salary isn’t exceptionally high in absolute terms.

    For example, there are five StratAdvsr2 in Personnel that made over $90K in 2007. With that kind of staffing, we still had to pay $500K to analyze SDOT for personnel problems.

  15. Ms. talks too much – like a machine. Much of it is just impress the audience babble cover.

    Licata is NOT vulnerable. Not at all.

    This thread is a waste of speculation and quickly got boring..

  19. Jessie chose her race poorly. Nick Licata is widely known as the most progressive, most pro-transit, most pro-social-justice (by far), most financially responsible member of the city council. And he is the hardest-working, most responsive, most accessible member. When the voters were faced with a choice between Nick Licata and someone pretending to be Nick Licata, they chose the real deal.

    Jessie wants more 9-0 votes for the Chamber’s and Paul Allen’s pet projects. 8-1 isn’t good enough for her. It’s no wonder her campaign (which is over, for all intent and purposes) generated so little interest.

    The S.L.U.T. isn’t transit. It’s Paul Allen’s toy. (and another in a long list of reasons Nickles’ tenure as mayor is coming to an end)

    In closing I would like to think political consultant Cathy Allen (you may remember her as the one who inflicted Jim Compton on us) for putting her name at the top of Jessie’s endorsement list, and for speaking for Jessie at various fora. Once I saw who was pulling Jessie’s strings, I immediately knew who I was voting against. When I filled in the oval, I wasn’t voting against Jessie Israel. I was voting against Cathy Allen. And it felt really, really good.

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