• At an Ed-Murray-for-mayor press conference held the day before the general election, former city council member Peter Steinbrueck claimed that Seattle is suffering a public safety "crisis epidemic" of "crisis proportions" on Mayor Mike McGinn's watch. But that's absolutely false. The K3 police beat in which Steinbrueck stood, Pioneer Square, has seen a 24 percent drop in major crimes compared to this time last year. In the adjacent K2 beat, in the International District, those crimes have dropped 27 percent since this time last year. Violent crime is down by one-third in Belltown during McGinn's term in office. And citywide, crime is at a 35-year low. In the two beats downtown where crime is up this year, it's up far less than crime is down in other parts of downtown (one beat is up 16 percent and the other 1 percent). The net crime rate across downtown is down, down, down. Seems like Steinbrueck is more interested in fearmongering than facts.

• Proving that even the best of organizations can make poor choices (abort! Abort!), Planned Parenthood Votes Northwest—the state lobbying arm for the women's reproductive rights group—hired a private firm to call 25,000 voters in Seattle and spent more than $19,000 this year, encouraging people to vote for state senator Ed Murray for mayor. The problem? Mayor Mike McGinn also has a 100 percent pro-choice rating, and PP Votes NW has a track record of staying out of local races that don't involve an anti-choice candidate, rightly choosing instead to focus their time and energy tipping races in swing districts where a Democrat could help pass the Reproductive Parity Act and hold back GOP bills. While it's understandable that the organization wants to return favors to Murray, who backed them up in the state legislature, actively campaigning against a pro-choice candidate damages trust in the group and raises doubts about the wisdom of how it spends limited resources.

• Did you receive a phone call from America's filthiest sex advice columnist last week? The Stranger's Dan Savage recorded a robocall for Seattle City Council candidate Kshama Sawant that went out to thousands of Seattle voters. (So did Tim Harris, director of the homeless newspaper Real Change, and Washington State Labor Council vice president Nicole Grant.)

• Doubling down on her totally unsupported assertion that SeaTac's $15-an-hour minimum wage initiative would "devastate" immigrant-owned businesses, Seattle Times editorial columnist Sharon Pian Chan highlighted the plight of James Shin, the owner of the Quality Inn SeaTac, on November 1. If the initiative passes, Pian Chan insisted, Shin will have to declare bankruptcy: "He's done the math." Except Pian Chan hadn't done the math. With fewer than 30 employees, Shin's hotel would actually be exempt from the initiative's provisions. Oops. recommended