And lo', the moldy fortune cookie sez: There is political "reasoning" here unrelated to winning the mayoral race.

Now we're talking! A pragmatic candidate the "establishment" can work with but who also has unimpeachable green credentials. Where do I sign up?

I look at Jenny Durkan, and I see a distinguished career as a lawyer, but I don't see a political career where she had to take a stand on issues or pay her political dues. And just based on that Slog post on her announcing, I didn't see any positions on any issues. I'll be charitable to the reporter here, not the candidate.

@2 As far as I can tell, no one at the Stranger has actually communicated with Durkan or Farrell, which may explain the lack of policy positions. Please don't make any decisions based on what you read in the Stranger. The days of the Stranger reporting on local news are long gone; nowadays this publication mostly just aggregates stories from other local media sources, and generating web traffic seems to be the primary goal of the editorial staff.

hbb @3, fair enough. I'll give the candidate the benefit of the doubt here and wait to hear where Durkan stands on the issues. That said, even if she proves to be just as solid on the issues as Farrell is, Farrell has spent years walking the walk; she has a career as an activist and a politician that gives a credibility to her stands that Durkan could only aspire to.

(And this is not to say that Durkan hasn't made perfectly admirable career choices. A lot of us make perfectly admirable career choices. Just, not all of us are running for mayor of Seattle, thought it might seem like it.)

Seattle has been lucky to have Rep. Farrell in Olympia, and I think her skills would translate well to mayoralty. She's smart, visionary, and doesn't let her idealism get in the way of results. Although the legislature is often hostile to transit, Rep. Farrell has squeezed the best possible outcomes out of recent transportation measures (even the criticized car tab vote - she got the bill structured to cut park-and-rides first, and light-rail last). She's an unexpected candidate, but the frontrunner for me.

Count me in with Jessyn. I've always thought very highly of her.

@3: My favorite is when they aggregate their own aggregations into a daily post and label it "news."

@7 feel free to leave forever

Anyone but McGinn.

I'd be sorry to lose Farrell in the Legislature, but Seattle would be very lucky to have her as Mayor. She's the best of all the (current) candidates.

I want to hear a specific proposal on housing. What does “we need to go bigger and bolder and faster" mean?

If it means major upzones, I'm all for it. If it means increasing the MHA fees to a level that will inhibit development, then I'm against.

I'm leaning towards McGinn so far because he is a known quantity and is urbanist. If Farrell can come up with a concrete proposal to end the housing shortage, I'm listening.

I'm curious to hear how we can accelerate rail to Ballard and West Seattle when she voted to cut ST3 funding...

@12, because the alternative was giving the state GOP and a few backward Dems like that other mayoral candidate Bob Hasegawa an opening to go after Sound Transit on the car-tabs formula. But I guess by your standards, Barack Obama betrayed us by not delivering single-payer health care.

Sounds like the Seattle mayoral race is the contest between Durkan and Ferrell.
May the best candidate for Seattle--and Washington State--win.

As a sitting state legislator, she's forbidden by law from raising campaign funds while the Legislature is in session -- which this year could run into July, right up to the Aug. 1 primary election. Sen. Bob Hasagawa has the same problem. The only workaround is to resign their seats in the Legislature, which I suspect neither will do.

What a set of choppers!

More of the same.

@11 I like your thinking. I'm in the same boat; leaning McGinn, but would like to know more about Farrell.