Let’s say you haven’t been paying attention. To your credit, this
mayor’s race isn’t phenomenally sexy. There is a former SuperSonics
player with name recognition, a deer-in-the-headlights look at debates,
and almost no good answers about anything. There is a Seattle City
Council member who slurs her words even while speaking slowly and who,
even though she has enjoyed that very prominent role leading city
government for 16 years, introduces her campaign at public debates with
lines like “We need change!” and “I believe Seattle needs new
leadership.” There is a wealthy T-Mobile executive who touts, as
qualifications to be mayor, new lines of T-Mobile businesses he’s
“ideated” and bringing coworkers together to “ideate” solutions.
There’s the guy we have now (George W. Bush levels of popularity). And
there are three people who, all respect to them, don’t stand a
snowball’s chance in hell.

And there’s this guy named Mike McGinn. Only two candidates are
going to make it through the primary to the general
election—you’ll be getting your primary ballot in the mail this
week—and by almost every metric he’s an underdog. The two
SurveyUSA polls conducted this summer put McGinn in fourth or fifth
place, along with the T-Mobile executive, Joe Mallahan. (But Mallahan’s
numbers are sure to jump: He’s soaking local airwaves this week with a
commercial comparing himself to a cup of coffee—get it? They’re
both called Joe?) McGinn doesn’t have the name recognition that other
candidates do, but he’s the city’s only chance for an awesome mayor’s
race. Our only chance for a showdown of ideas. Our only chance for an
actual debate. Despite his unpopularity, Mayor Greg Nickels has a good
shot at getting through the primary (he has name recognition and
accomplishments like light rail to point to), and everyone else in the
race is basically, on substantive issues, in lockstep with Nickels.
Except McGinn.

He’s the only one who disagrees about big issues, like the tunnel to
replace the viaduct, which he points out has a price tag equal to every
property levy we’re paying now combined. He’s the only one who calls
out bullshit nonissues as being bullshit nonissues (like the head tax,
which requires businesses to pay $25 for each employee who usually
drives solo to work to pay for transportation projects). He’s got the
strongest environmental record. He used to practice business and
employment law. He’s mayor-shaped. He’s got the strongest civic resume
among the candidates who’ve never held elected office (founded the
nonprofit Seattle Great City Initiative, chaired the local Sierra
Club).

And he’s opposed Mayor Nickels on issues before and won. In 2007, at
the Sierra Club, he led the fight against the ballot initiative that bundled light-rail funding with highway funding, arguing that if
voters rejected the measure, the light-rail component would come on
back to the ballot the next year. (Nickels disagreed but voters didn’t:
Even though the measure had been polling at 57 percent, the campaign
against it worked, and the following year funding for light rail
returned on its own and passed by a wide margin.) And in 2008, while
running Great City, he chaired the campaign for the parks-improvement
levy, which won at the polls, again in spite of opposition from
Nickels, who was focusing on economic development, like the Pike Place
Market levy. “It’s okay in politics for people to disagree. That’s the
point,” McGinn says.

He lives in Greenwood, and his campaign is headquartered in two tiny
rooms on Aurora Avenue North—cars whizzing by, home-cooked meals
on the table for volunteers, handmade T-shirts, no campaign manager.
“We have a campaign tweetergerist,” McGinn tells me on a recent Monday
evening at campaign headquarters. “We do. She’s really good. I made up
that word.” Though no one in the campaign takes it too seriously,
McGinn for Mayor is blowing other campaigns out of the water on
Facebook and Twitter. After I ask a couple volunteers how much better
they’re doing on Facebook, a round of banter erupts about the other
campaigns’ social-media stats. Eventually McGinn puts an end to it,
saying, “This is not normally how we spend our time.”

Normally they spend their time working the phones. A core of
dedicated volunteers oversees that effort. There are almost 300
volunteers total. Outside in the hallway, a bunch of them sit on the
floor or on folding chairs, making calls to likely primary voters.
According to one of the most dedicated volunteers, Derek Farmer, 30, a
former intelligence officer in the navy who’s going UW law school in
the fall, “We’ve contacted 4,700 people, so that’s 8,500 or 9,000
voters”—figuring there are roughly two people per household. “And
our positive response rate to our message is about 46 percent. We may
have earned ourselves 4 to 5 percent just off the phone banks.”

Farmer is one of the “jobless skool-kids.” On June 29, a commenter
named “Jan Supporter” on the politics blog HorsesAss referred to McGinn
volunteers as “a bunch of jobless skool-kids roaming the blogs for
him.” It’s been a point of pride for McGinn’s core volunteers ever
since. High on one wall in the office is a piece of paper for every
major endorsement McGinn has won—the 34th District Democrats (a
dual endorsement with Nickels, a victory for McGinn in Nickels’s home
district), the 36th District and 37th District Democrats (dual
endorsements with Mallahan), the Metropolitan Democratic Club (dual
endorsement with Mallahan), and the Sierra Club (sole endorsement,
though that’s to be expected). Next to all the rest: a piece of yellow
lined notebook paper with the words “The Jobless Skool-Kids” written in
block letters and covered in autographs.

Ainsley Close, another of the jobless skool-kids—she’s got the
summer off from grad school in environmental studies and has agreed to
defer enrollment if McGinn makes it through the primary—points to
it, smiling. “It was pretty awesome. We’re like, yeah, we’ll take
that.” She adds, “Be sure to spell it with a k.”

None of the jobless skool-kids (in their 20s and 30s, mostly) seem daunted by their candidate’s underdog status—at least they don’t when reporters ask. Farmer says, “Nobody’s polling. Nobody’s polling this race. So no one knows what’s going on.” He questions the methodology of the SurveyUSA polls, saying, as far as he understands, that respondents were asked if they vote in the primary, and if they said yes, their answer counted—a less accurate picture of primary voters than calling only voters who actually voted in the last primary. (SurveyUSA hasn’t responded to a request for comment yet.)

But it has been difficult getting people to care about the
mayor’s race, Elliott Day, a fellow jobless skool-kid, concedes. “A lot
of my friends—even I had a difficult time getting them
interested. It’s the summer. It’s an earlier primary than ever. And,
this is just my theory, but maybe people are electioned out after last
year.”

At a volunteer-appreciation party at McGinn’s house in Greenwood on
Saturday, July 25, I ask him, for the hundredth time, if he’s going to
make it through the primary. “We’re going to make it, we’re going to
make it,” he says, his face all optimism. “We’ve dialed 5,000 homes
already. That’s a lot of personal phone calls compared to other
campaigns.” His dining-room table is piled with T-shirt-making stencils
and paint. One of the shirts is the Guinness logo slightly modified
(white letters, gold harp, black background). “Isn’t that great?” he
says, laughing. “That’s working. That’s working.” recommended

This story has been updated since its original publication.

Christopher Frizzelle was The Stranger's print editor, and first joined the staff in 2003. He was the editor-in-chief from 2007 to 2016, and edited the story by Eli Sanders that won a 2012 Pulitzer...

31 replies on “He’s Our Only Chance for an Actual Debate”

  1. If we get through the primary and it is Greg Nickels versus Gregory Nickels I’m going to puke. There are real challenges facing the city, the economy, the environment and everyone else seems to think that this is a vanity contest. Bravo to McGinn for caring enough for Seattle to talk about these issues.

  2. Frizzelle really nailed it with the title of this article and descriptions of the mayoral candidates. We need a real debate about where we are as a city and what our priorities should be moving forward.

    We aren’t going to get that debate from any of the other challengers – we’ll just get more of the same.

  3. What a great article. I totally agree – McGinn is so much more qualified than his opponents, it’s not even funny. Drago is the only one who can compete on policy, but, as Christopher says, she has that slurring issue and usually makes no sense. She also has few groundbreaking ideas. Mallahan? Zero policy chops, and the whole “community organizer” thing based on being an Obama delegate is a complete farce. It’d be a real shame to come out of the primary with a Nickels vs. Drago/Mallahan scenario. Go McGinn!

  4. McGinn is willing to both listen to the ideas of others and fight for what he believes in when it comes time to push things forward. That would be a breath of fresh air for stagnant Seattle politics

  8. Yay for a man whose proposal to replace the viaduct (expanding I-5, ha!) would cost 10x the stupid tunnel. And he doesn’t even answer direct questions so what makes you you think he can stimulate real debate?

  11. The campaign needs your help – your time, your money, your voice to your friends that Mike’s for real and needs your votes. Primary ballots are coming soon – I know it’s bloody hot, but time to get involved!

  12. Nickels has raised 10 times the money as McGinn. You can’t have a debate if one voice isn’t heard, so “chances” are pretty slim we’ll hear much from McGinn. Why is McGinn having such a hard time raising money?

  14. Greg Nickels is going to eat your children! Then he’s going to die and rot and stink up the entire tri-county area with his putrid fumes poisoning the air and water, killing all the land and sea creatures. Then, his vapors will rise and coagulate over the sky and block out the sun forever leaving nothing in the Seattle area left alive. Somebody stop him! Take away his power! Will the ugliness never end!

  15. We don’t need a debate about a tunnel v. no tunnel. It’s been 20 years since this debate has started. McGinn represents more of the gridlock the city’s been in for the better part of 3 decades. We need a leader who is centrist and will listen to all sides to determine the best solutions for our city. It’s not Mike McGinn. It’s not Joe Mallahan.

    Greg Nickels will not win. I don’t know why we are worrying about him.

  16. McGinn is the only candidate that has the vision to lead Seattle towards a truely sustainable future. Vote for Mike McGinn!

  17. Who, oh WHO, will get the Stranger’s endorsement today? Shocker: McGinn! This group of ‘reporters’ is about as biased as it gets. With Erica gone it’s extra-obvious.

    And why would you do endorsements the same day you are interviewing candidates? That seems a little unfair that you’d have to rush to finish their write-ups while the others have time to soak in.

    But I’m guessing the write-up on the soon-to-be-released McGinn endorsement is polished and ready!

  18. He already had my vote, but due to the quote “He’s mayor-shaped.” My support has increased 10 times, Why would we vote for a candidate that wasn’t mayor Shaped!

  19. Oh my oh my, why do I read comments? Ok, here we go:

    @8: First of all, where the hell are you getting your information re: 10x the cost? The last unofficial cost estimate I saw was about $1.6 billion. Oh, and here’s yer goddamn straight answers http://www.friendsofseattle.org/2009-vot…

    @15: 20 years? The Nisqually Earthquake was in 2001. Still, I take your point that we’ve been stupidly letting the Viaduct stand for 8 years while it’s been structurally unsound. That said, we shouldn’t let ourselves be so desperate for a solution that we take any old one, even one that will hurt us more in the long run.

    @15, 17: Um. You do realize that endorsing *any* candidate is a biased action, right? You’re just pissed their bias doesn’t line up with yours.

  20. @19 The 1989 earthquake in California that leveled the Embarcadero was a similar viaduct on similarly unstable ground. The 1995 Kobe quake destroyed its viaduct. The debate has been occurring for longer than the Nisqually Quake. We can’t keep arguing sides just because you don’t like the outcome. It reminds me of current conflicts in the middle east and other parts of the world that cannot move forward from their positions. Governing is about compromise, leadership, and creating a mutually agreeable vision.

    McGinn does not have concrete proposals for what he would do to solve any of our problems – youth violence, homelessness, low morale within city departments, road repair, including what to do with the Viaduct, how much it would could, and what would be the impact. He says we could use the money from the tunnel to pay for these thing. If we don’t use the $3.3B the state and federal gov’t have allocated to the viaduct, we CANNOT use it for other things (like housing homeless, repairing roads, etc…). We can only change that by changing the current funding laws.

    The Stranger just wants someone to go toe-to-toe with the mayor on their environmental records – to make the mayor look stupid (I don’t think he needs much help btw). Heading the Sierra Club is nice but the city has many other issues. Passionate citizens should champion these causes. The leader of a city needs to understand and work on solving many more issues. He also has never managed a budget more than a hundred thousand dollars. I could go on.

  21. I would vote for McGinn if he wasn’t running a retarded campaign that is so fucking Seattle, I am currently puking. An entire campaign based on arguing against the tunnel? Holy crap. I couldn’t agree more with #15, this town is driving me fucking batty.

  22. @21 word. Not to worry though, given McGinn’s poll numbers, 9 out of 10 of his supporters have posted on this blog–nothing to see here.

  26. Having lived most of my life in Boston, I understand the frustration of Seattlites when it comes to decision-making. It frustrates me, too. But there are two related problems that are even worse and more frustrating:

    1) You people get so angry about the lack of a decision, that any decision will do. It doesn’t matter if it’s the right one, it just matters that there’s a decision. That’s a piss-poor way to manage anything.

    2) You people are so goddamn afraid of change that you don’t have the moral courage to fire the leaders *responsible* for the lack of decision in the first place. In doing so, you reward failure. Both Nickels and Drago have pushed for the tunnel despite what WSDOT and SDOT came up with, and despite what the voters inherently supported when we summarily rejected both another raised viaduct and – wait for it – a tunnel: surface/transit with I-5 improvements. That solution is the greenest, cheapest, and most sustainable for the region. Every single transit/environmental authority in the region is in complete and total agreement on this issue (with the exception of the bullshit Livable Seattle Movement).

    So go ahead. Vote for Nickels or Drago, and get 4 more years of our leaders not listening to us (there was that poll that came out in January that said something like 78% of Seattlites don’t think their elected officials care about what they think – forgive me, I can’t find it at the moment). Or you could vote for Donaldson or Mallahan who, while clearly passionate about the office, have no policy chops whatsoever.

    And if you do . . . well, nothing will change. Maybe you’re alright with that. I’m not. Sure, McGinn is a bit of a gamble, but he’s got plenty of common sense, and I’m gonna put my chips down with him.

  28. McGinn does have a perspective against the tunnel. I don’t agree with it. But it’s different from Nickels. A plus.

    But after that I don’t think he has a plan. If he wants to stir debate, have him release some other issue statements above and beyond the tunnel to make me think he has ideas.

  29. McGinn’s priorities include having the mayor engage in repairing our failing school system–as the Obama administration advocates–as has worked in NYC and many other cities around the country–he is not just about the tunnel.

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