This afternoon in the Seattle Times, Emily Heffter has a piece that is—well—wrong. It concludes that an article published today in The Stranger terrorizing all nine mayoral candidates somehow revealed our newspaper intends to endorse Mayor Mike McGinn. For the record, The Stranger is 100 percent undecided in the mayor’s race right now.
But Heffter—who I’ve lauded as a good reporter in the past—contends The Stranger showed its hand because we have “praise” for McGinn while we “heap criticism” on Murray. “Any remaining doubt about who The Stranger newspaper would back in this year’s crowded mayor’s race is probably settled,” Heffter writes. Again, this isn’t true.
First, we ribbed everyone. Everyone. We said Peter Steinbrueck’s vision for Seattle was the “mid-1970s,” for Christ’s sake. We said Joey Gray’s best shot as winning was “massive voter fraud” and that Bruce Harrell will probably “die in Bellevue.” We also had a knock on McGinn, based on his substantive policy failures (light rail, police accountability, the arena); that is, we called out his failure to fulfill the tenets of his campaign and obligations of his job. That’s a big knock. We also said his weakness is “hot wings.” For Murray, we noted his accomplishments in Olympia, but our criticisms were arguably more trivial. Such as his recent comment about this being “the ugliest campaign Seattle has ever seen.” You could say we were harsher on Murray or harsher on McGinn. (We were trying to be equal-opportunity dicks!) And for the record, we’ve also been blistering about McGinn’s handling of the police department for the last three years. We’ll be sitting down with mayoral candidates next week and issuing our endorsements on July 17. Until then, reading too much into the “unhelpful guide” to the mayor’s race we published today is a mistake.
So I’ll be as straight with you as a faggot can be: The Stranger could endorse any candidate in the race (okay, not Joey Gray). But seriously: It’s up for grabs. Anyone who tells you differently has a dog in the fight. And the Seattle Times has a dog in the fight. That paper has been campaigning against Mike McGinn for four years straight.