The Case for Mike McGinn: Part 3

To be honest, I’m slightly chagrined to find myself writing the
third installment of this Perpetual Adoration of Saint Michael. The
Stranger has thrown so much unqualified weight behind the man,
it’s starting to get a little boring. The contrarian in me had hoped to
come out swinging for Joe Mallahan just to break the tedium.

Nevertheless, here I am, endorsing Captain Beardo’s culture
platform, because—it cannot be denied—it beats Captain Cell
Phone’s.

Neither candidate had shown a deep interest in arts and culture
prior to the election, but there’s no shame in that. As writer Jonathan
Raban pointed out in an e-mail: “Given their lack of experience on more
conventional mayoral issues, that’s probably a good thing. One wouldn’t
want to see either of them ducking early out of city hall for a night
at the opera, or whiling away a weekend over Anna
Karenina.”

We don’t need an art critic for mayor. We need a mayor who
understands two foundational facts: (1) Culture—music, theater,
film, literature, art—is a constituency that generates billions
of dollars in sales, tens of thousands of jobs, and over a billion
dollars in tax revenue; and (2) culture is not an add-on—it is
fundamental to the city’s intellectual, aesthetic, and financial
health.

Arts funding isn’t a handout that disappears into a black hole of
elitist erudition. It’s a practical investment with high returns. In
2005, Seattle’s Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs had a budget of
$2.57 million—minus money for public art, which would bring the
figure closer to $4 million—and local arts organizations, with
the help of OACA, returned $12.3 million in local government revenue.
That’s not counting state revenue or dollars that went to private
businesses (lumber for sets, bar and restaurant revenue, hotel rooms
for the people who came to see Der Ring, etc.). At worst, the
city tripled its investment; at best, it quintupled it.

And that’s definitely not counting the ways in which
Seattle’s reputation as a city of music, theater, literature, and
visual art attracts expansive thinkers and innovative businesses that
want to be where the action is.

Both of the candidates seem to recognize these two facts, more or
less. (McGinn more, Mallahan less—see a breakdown of their
culture platforms in the sidebar.) But the candidates’ relationship to
the culture constituency isn’t just white papers. It’s attitude,
willingness to meet and listen to the experts, openness to learning
about issues we don’t expect them to have already mastered.

How’s that going? “McGinn immediately reached out to the music
community,” said nightlife entrepreneur Dave Meinert. “Mallahan took
longer. And McGinn has far more specific meat in his cultural
policy.”

Carlo Scandiuzzi, the innovative executive director for ACT Theatre,
agrees: “McGinn saw culture was important and came out with a white
paper first. Then Mallahan followed up. McGinn has indicated he’s
wanting art to be a bigger part of the dialogue, and that’s more
important than getting money. To get $65,000 from the city is 1 percent
of our budget. But it’s the sense of energy, of civic
pride—that’s what counts.”

Mallahan has been generally unresponsive to the city’s culture
constituency. Last week, he bailed at the last minute on a music and
nightlife debate at the Experience Music Project. His campaign offered
no reason other than a vague “scheduling conflict,” leaving McGinn to
turn the event into an impromptu town hall. (Mallahan is the candidate
spending money on a fancy campaign staff, and they can’t even keep his
schedule straight? That bodes ill for his running the city.)

And after multiple calls and e-mails to his campaign, Mallahan
couldn’t be reached for a phone interview regarding his culture
platform. The best I could do was an interview with Mallahan’s most
prestigious arts-and-culture supporter, Jane Zalutsky, the chair of the
board at Seattle Repertory Theatre. Her assessment: “Joe has a culture
platform, but first and foremost, it’s a question of a strong
economy—if our economy is thriving, our arts economy will thrive,
too.” So let me get this straight: Mallahan’s culture plan is
trickle-down Reaganomics? “The first and foremost thing on
everyone’s mind is the economy,” Zalutsky repeated.

That is a patently dumb-ass way to think about promoting a city’s
culture. Any economic recovery program should include arts and
culture in its kaleidoscope of initiatives, not push it offstage. What
precedes (and promotes) spiking property values in run-down
neighborhoods? Art and culture. What coaxes people into a vacant
downtown at night? Theaters, music, museums, restaurants. Culture isn’t
an afterthought to stimulating a city—it’s a prime mover.

When I called McGinn, he was bubbling over with ideas. He proposed
appointing artists to zoning and other committees to watch for
opportunities other people might not see. He proposed bringing in
artists to enliven neglected public parks and other moribund public
spaces (we discussed SuttonBeresCuller’s Mini Mart City Park).
He talked about public-
art initiatives in New York and Portland.
He discussed ways of bringing culture into conversations about public
transportation and neighborhood renewal. He talked about the specifics
of his culture and nightlife platforms as opposed to Mallahan’s
generalities: “We wanted to be specific and not just Oh, art and
nightlife is good so let’s take care of it. It’s how we create
policy: We were very intentional in inviting a broad-based group and
listening to them and responding specifically to what we heard.”

In short, McGinn has specific, compelling plans about further
integrating art and culture into the fabric of the city and its
economic recovery—not shoving it to the back of the line to wait
for its bowl of gruel.