There’s an undeniable difference between Seattle’s two candidates
for mayor: One is an idiot. Mike McGinn, whose face we put on the cover
of The Stranger recently, is not the idiot. McGinn is an
attorney who comes to the ballot with a résumé thick with
civic accomplishments: chairing the Sierra Club, founding a nonprofit
called Great City that has successfully advocated for neighborhood
improvements and more affordable housing, heading up a levy to fund
neighborhood parks, and fighting to increase transit service and
improve sidewalks. This is the sort of civic engagement you would
expect from someone running for mayor.
While McGinn has been engaged in the life of the city, T-Mobile
executive Joe Mallahan (who plunked down $200,000 of his own money to
launch his campaign) has disregarded it. For example, while McGinn was
running a campaign in the fall of 2007 to defeat a “roads and transit”
ballot measure (he argued it would come back without the roads and with
more of the transit, and he was right), Mallahan didn’t vote at all,
records from King County Elections show. In fact, Mallahan—the
man asking for your vote—hasn’t voted in 10 elections
since 2001. He didn’t vote in the primary elections of 2001 or 2005
(when the rest of us were voting for mayor). And in 2003, he didn’t
vote in the primary or the general election, when voters decided
five city council races and four school board races.
“Most people who vote—and especially in off-year
elections—pride themselves on being involved in civic life and
paying attention and learning about candidates before they vote,” says
Christian Sinderman, a local political consultant. “If someone hasn’t
taken the time to study the issues or vote, the dialogue becomes, ‘How
can you become so angry about these issues if you didn’t participate in
past issues? Why run for office if you haven’t even voted in the
past?'”
Despite repeated requests, Mallahan did not return calls for
comment. His spokeswoman, Charla Neuman, said she was unsure how many
elections he had missed, adding, “He is like 98 percent of Seattle
voters who do not have perfect voting records… Do not mistake that as
a lack of commitment to democracy.”
The rest of Mallahan’s record, upon inspection, has more holes than
cheese. Four examples:
He doesn’t know what makes the city tick. A good candidate
for mayor should be obsessed with how decisions are made, who is
affected, and what happens next. Asked for any examples of Mallahan’s
civic leadership, Neuman replied, “Can I give you private sector
and civic leadership?” She repeated a story Mallahan told in his
TV ads about T-Mobile helping victims of Hurricane Gustav continue
using their cell phones. “Most people underestimate the technological
difficulties in trying to turn on [wireless] services or add service
for people who would otherwise be without,” she said. And civic
service? “Can I have someone else who is more directly involved call
you?” Neuman said. No one from the Mallahan campaign called back. His
website says that Mallahan is one of the organizers of the Wallingford
Wurst Festival, a sausage fair. But there’s nothing related to
neighborhood organizing and nothing resembling political
involvement.
He hasn’t done his homework. Mallahan distributed campaign
fliers claiming that Mayor Greg Nickels had disbanded the gang unit
when, in fact, the gang unit shrank to six officers but remained
intact. In an endorsement meeting with The Stranger, Mallahan
was unfamiliar with the 2007 bar crackdown Operation Sobering
Thought—involving the mayor’s office, the Seattle Police
Department, and the City Attorney’s Office—which was reported
extensively by every newspaper in the city for nearly a year. The
Seattle Times reported in July that Mallahan, while attending a
forum at Mt. Zion Baptist Church, couldn’t name a single neighborhood
organization in the Central District or Capitol Hill. And when Mallahan
met with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in May, he was asked,
“What’s your position on KeyArena and the stadium taxes?” Mallahan said
he wants to find a tenant for KeyArena, but added, “I’m not familiar
with the stadium tax, to be honest with you.”
His private-sector experience was not at a progressive
company. Mallahan is asking voters to measure his qualifications on
his career at T-Mobile. But that’s not a company that reflects
Seattle’s values. In July, a memo surfaced from T-Mobile’s
human-resources division that outlined ways for executives to bust
potential labor unions, including reminding staff that T-Mobile rules
“prohibit all third parties, including union organizers, from
soliciting or distributing materials on T-Mobile premises.” (Sinderman,
the political consultant, points out, “Seattle has a long history as a
union town. And in a struggling economy, more and more people are
interested in organized labor.”) T-Mobile’s record also doesn’t jibe
with Seattle’s general support of gay rights. The Human Rights Campaign
gave the Bellevue-based company the lowest ratings in Washington State
in its Corporate Equality Index in 2008, and it was the lowest-ranked
telecommunications company in the survey nationally. “The fact that
T-Mobile is so low on the list will be news to him,” spokeswoman
Neuman said last month.
He hasn’t done anything for the environment (except eat it). During The Stranger‘s endorsement interview, we asked Mallahan
if he’s done anything—just one thing—for the environment.
Mallahan answered that he went fishing as a kid. “My mom and dad used
to plan our vacations around the tides. And that’s so that they could
feed their nine children from the bounty of the Puget Sound,” he said.
That was the only thing he could think of.
Any single example of Mallahan’s lack of qualifications would seem
like a reasonable mistake, a gap of knowledge, or an indicator that
Mallahan is an ordinary guy who has focused on some issues but not on
others. But collectively, this is a portrait of someone who didn’t give
a damn about the city until he saw a top vacancy at City Hall, then
essentially paid his way into the general election. We’d have to be
idiots to think that Seattle’s next mayor should be someone who has
demonstrated no interest in how the city runs—and Mallahan would
have to be an idiot to think we wouldn’t figure that out. 
Jason at 27,
your roads and transit paragraph is off base. the only serious maintennace pieces in the 2007 measure were a regional share for the SR-520 project and the replacement of the south park bridge. the bulk of the roads projects in terms of funds were expansion of unpriced limited access highways. McGinn and the Sierra Club bucked the establishment, opposed the RTID piece as unfair and contributing to global warming and sprawl, and asserted that ST2 could return on its own, as it did in 2008.
@45 – I bet some reporters would love to talk to you about Joe’s “effective management” style. You’re right, no one’s even looking behind the curtain. Just because Joe keeps saying he’s an effective manager doesn’t make it so (WMDs anyone?). I strongly suggest that you talk to a reporter (avoid the Stranger, they already hate him) and let the public know the truth about this arrogant, egotistical, clown of a candidate.
It’s so refreshing to read such unbiased and dispassionate coverage of our local politics. Thanks Dom – you’re a model journalist! Real cutting edge how the Stranger donated it’s operation to the McGinn campaign.
Joe Mallahan now has the endorsement of the prestigious and powerful Seatte Police Officers Guild!!! Those 8 Chiefs should be shivering in their Birkenstocks!!!!!!
I always trust the seattle times.
Well, about issues that have to do with the Eastside.
But not about Seattle.
McGinn = Trying to stop the waterfront tunnel that has already been decided upon, and more endless years of the Seattle Way, getting nothing done.
Mallahan = An executive who doesn’t know what the hell is going on.
Which is worse? Because this is all about the lesser of two evils. A competent guy with a deeply flawed agenda versus a political neophyte with a nice and vague agenda.
@52, you’re just wrong. Go back and read the measure and look how much safety & improvements for roads & bridges was slotted in there. Yes, there was money to connect some highways. That wasn’t the primary focus as a lot of those “new lanes” were expansion of HOV lanes or for re-aligning the HOV lanes (as on I-90) and to add park & ride lots (good for both highways and mass transit). Some of those improvements would have helped with chokepoints and dramatically increased safety for drivers.
They worked for years to come up with a good long-term plan & then screwed up by placing it on the 2007 ballot. It probably would have passed on the November 2008 ballot given the higher overall voter turnout. A better information campaign to fight the lies about what was being funded would have helped, too.
Conventional wisdom was always wrong, as it often is. McGinn was fighting a strawman campaign as it’s clear a transit-only package would have passed at any time. I give him no credit for fighting the establishment when he now wants to be a gadfly within the establishment. McGinn is for more process and burnishment of his own ego.
The stranger = Fox news? More like Drudge Report. Sounds fair to me. Same blovious, attention-whore article titles. Instead of calling people idiots, why don’t we aspire to some adult conversation in our political sphere? Is that such a challange?
What happened with this piece of crap article? Was Dan distracted by the mirror in Hollywood, trying to get a permanent gig on Hollywood Squares?
There’s hardly any reporting here — just a hatchet swinging down on Mallahan.
Go to your room.
would you vote for him?
Wow…you guys really had to word-craft that blurb as to hide the glaring parallels to your beloved BHO.
@57 Thank you for bringing up the tunnel and McGinn’s commitment to “more endless years of the the Seattle Way, getting nothing done.” That issue alone makes me not want to vote for McGinn since at this point the viaduct is a serious safety hazard. Isn’t it more responsible to work toward getting it replaced than to whine petulantly about how we’re going about how it is being done incorrectly?
Dominic – THANK YOU! Finally a reporter who is piecing together the story on JBUB (a nickname given to him by his old boss…that is short for Joe Bubba – a good ole boy). He is an idiot – having worked with him for 7 years I can tell you first hand this guy is bad news. A deep pocket opportunist with political stars in his eyes. One thing I will say for Joe, he is consistent. He consistently makes poor decisions, drinks his own kool-aide, berates and belittles peers and employees, and brown noses to keep his job. The largest team he ran had 20 staff, he has only had a budget of $3m or so and has no idea what it means to roll up your sleeves and get the job done.
McGinn wants to eliminate the viaduct AND the tunnel and fix by eliminating some downtown exits and adding an extra I-5 lane and expanding surface streets. I’m not sure the latter half is a good idea environmentally.
To McGinn’s credit, I see a lot of people who bitch and gripe that he’s an “evnirongelical” nutcase, and I’ve never been satisfied this HIS positions (versus the Sierra Club) are extreme. Aside from attendance at meetings, I haven’t seen really anyone offer a valid criticism that his work as an activist or environmentalist is damaging to his candidacy and would be more so for the city of Seattle.
It’d be great if just one of our newspapers — The Seattle Times, Stranger, Seattle Weekly, etc — would actually start writing about the ideas and policies of this race. I’m so tired of this shit. We don’t have a single fucking newspaper that dives deep into the policies and proposals of both candidates, why voters should think about these issues, what they’ll mean, the sacrifice involved for the public.
I feel like the media, as always, is doing a huge disservice to us all.
Now that we’ve read an article called “Joe Mallahan is an Idiot,” I’d like the Stranger to personally take the time to really write pieces on these candidates on the areas I mentioned above. We’re a better city than this.
@64 I don’t understand why Mallahan’s coworkers, past and present, feel that their only outlet is the comment threads. Why don’t you talk to a reporter (at a serious newspaper/blog) and get this story out? Mallahan is running on his executive experience and performance, but nobody seems interested in actually reporting on this.
The comments here (mostly) are really a tribute to the intelligence of The Stranger’s readers. They see a shitty attack article with no substance for the substance-lacking shit that it is!
(sigh)
The obvious thing that came to mind while reading the article was:
“Okay, fair enough. And what was McGinn’s voting record over those same 10 years?”
All the article needed was that one sentence. Something simple along the lines of, “During that same period McGinn voted in ___ out of ___ local elections,” would have done it. (Although at the least, one `graph would’ve been preferred.)
No matter where you come down on the debate (I voted for McGinn, btw) you have to at least expect that little bit of equanimity to be present. That alone is so obvious, I figured, that it surely would be pointed out in the first few comments, right?
But… no.
Maybe a few further down… and…
and… er…
Nope.
67 comments later and the obvious still remains elusive here.
(SIGH)
This article is rehashing of attacks on Mallahan from the slog/primary coverage and useless invective. Please take the criticisms of this article in previous comments #15, #22, #27, et al to heart. In fact, I’m QFT’ing Jason @ 27:
“You could have written this at any point in the next two months prior to the general election, *after* waiting for some calls back and real quotes.”
Seriously, why not fill this week’s edition with comics or fiction, and run a serious article next week. You can do better than this.
Being a senior leader at a corporation is NOTHING like leading a major city. Kudos to Jim for his service at T-Mobile, but I wouldn’t trust most executives I’ve worked with at some of Seattle’s biggest companies – T-Mobile, Microsoft and Starbucks included – to run city government with a civic resume this thin. It’s just not the same and it concerns me that the mass public doesn’t have the context to realize that. Comparing Joe’s experience at T-Mobile to holding the office of city mayor is like comparing apples and oranges.
OK Mallahan is an idiot. And McGinn is moron. End of story.
Okay–you sold me on McGinn. I hope he wins (I don’t live in King County).
Mallahan truly does sound like an idiot.
More honestly, I hope, of the two candidtates, that McGinn wins over Mallahan. He sounds like the lesser of th etwo evils, although I’m not in a position to cast a vote.
How do we find out McGinn’s voting record, or the assfuck who wrote this article?
Hmmmm….lawyer or businessman? I’ll take the businessman every time. Lawyers produce nothing useful.
I luuuuv the Seattle Way. Can we vote on the same thing over and over again, guaranteeing that absolutely nothing of substance gets done?
Why stop at revisiting the tunnel decision? Can we vote on the monorail again–and again, and again? If McGinn gets elected, can we hold a re-vote for mayor every month until every corner of Seattle feels like they won?
Oh please, can we wallow in masturbatory politics? It goes well with the maturbatory prose of this article.
Mallahan is just scary. Wow, he has no interest for the city at all. Scary how money is taking hostage of democracy. McGinn sounds great. I’m sure Nickels will endorse him. Nickels while being a jerk doesn’t make him unqualified for mayor. I think he was very effective as on most things as mayor. However being a total jerk is better than being an idiot which Mallahan is.
If The Stranger doesn’t like him that’s all I need to know-
HE GETS MY VOTE…
“T-Mobile is not a progressive company.”
Ummm…then why was McGinn their lawyer? See report via Publicola:
http://publicola.net/?p=11631
Wouldn’t that jump out of the Obvious Can if you were a reporter writing a story on this against Mallahan?
Can we just ship Mayor Daley from Chicago so he can put the fear of God in all these “captains of industry” and “ecogelicals” in this city? I’ve spent my whole life in Chicago and, though it’s not perfect, the political machine and the “Chicago Way” got shit done for the citizens, political corruption notwithstanding. Maybe it’s time that we dump the airy-fairy Kumbyah, hand holders that permeates the political climate here and get someone who isn’t afraid to get a bloody nose and bloody some noses to for the good of the city.
@79, I don’t think McGinn picked T-Mobile as somebody to work for. I believe him when he says to Publicola that he just did some limited research and drafting. Remember, he was just a junior partner at Stokes. That usually means you still do what the senior partners tell you to, just at an hourly rate that costs a little more to the client.
When you don’t give a SHIT enough about the political process to vote, why the HELL should I elect you as Mayor!!! (p.s. I have voted in every election since I was 18 and I’m 52 now. do the math)
Seriously though, keep this namecalling shit out of Seattle. Get your head out of your ass and back in gear and assault our potential leaders on issues. We don’t expect or want Fox News style journalism here, even if it does grab eyeballs.
For all you out there talking about how McGinn wants to do away with the “safe” tunnel to replace the Viaduct…do you know that:
1. Seattle will be held for cost overruns. Sine that sea wall will need to be replaced with the tunnel to keep the integrity of the development, that means Seattle taxpayers WILL have massive overruns to pay for.
2. The tunnel will be built in a landfill area. Do you know how unsafe that is right there? The downtown is sinking a couple of inches a year and you want a 4 billion $$$$ tunnel in that? What it means is an engineering enterprise that will cost more money.
3. As is the tunnel will have a couple of lanes less than what the Viaduct has now, and will have no downtown exists. This will help traffic how? I hope I don’t live or work anywhere NEAR where that traffic will exit off the tunnel from.
4. How can you justify putting Seattle on the line financially with this tunnel for decades (I haven’t even spoken of the safety checks that will need to be conducted often) when we cannot pay for schools, lowering property taxes, etc.
McGinn may have been speaking up one issue, but that one issue has a lot of damned consequences.
Holy SHIT, Batman!! I’m with a bunch of bloggers here: #15 nailed it!
My name is McGinn, and I approved this message.
dominic or whoever is absolutely right. obama and lincoln didn’t have much experience in politics either when they ran for office, and they are/were the biggest idiots ever.
this reminds me of mr. smith goes to washington. sometimes well-intentioned idealism and a solid work ethic can accomplish a lot of good. mallahan should have been given a fair shake in this article. doesn’t matter now, so oh well.
There are still a lot of open questions about Mallahan, but I am sad to see such a tasteless hatchet job come form the Stranger. Much of this information was already published in the Times.
F this S, I’m voting for McCain…
Get Real:
What are you talking about? This is the average reporting from this wing of The tranger. Holden is a bias hack who can only mock and hate what he does not agree with or understand. He is a pothead in his spare time who uses the Internet as a juke box for sex. What do you expect? Find better sources for your political information.
I don’t care about what Holden does in his private life. I just hate to see a good liberal publication undermine its own credibility by publishing ad hominem attack ads.
I agree – McGinn is no answer either. Recently I spoke with someone who tried to nail McGinn on how he feels about Ref 71 and he would not answer – point of fact he has attended several town meetings and McGinn will not even acknowledge him. I firmly believe we need to come together and support Senator Ed Murray as a write-in candidate for mayor and help impede R 71. I also support building a tunnel to replace the Alaskan Wy Viaduct.
Holden’s private life does influence his work.
For example:
If Dominic Holden were a Bible thumping Christian Conservative would it matter about his private life? Most the read The Stranger would say, yes.
What if he were a child molester or a radical believer in the prophet Mohammad? Most folks with an IQ above 90 would concur his private life influences his judgment.
In opinion pieces such as Dominic produces, of course it matters what is in his private life; it influences Holden, it weights in his writing. From what I have observed from reading his work, Holden has just two modes. Dominic is either in favor of his subject and praises it’s virtues or condemns his subject beyond any recognition of objectivity.
This may work selling ad space at The Stranger, but it reduces the publications value as a useful source of anything but factual reporting and liners for birdcages. After all, lining a birdcage with The Stranger’s political analysis these days would be redundant…
Watch the venom spew from Dominic Holden now that Referendum 71 has enough signatures to be placed on the ballot…
McGinn was the Seattle spokesman for the execrable Groundswell Sierra hate campaign in 2004.
He is not qualified for any public office, nor is anyone else who was in any way associated with Groundswell. Vote for Mollahan!
Never forgive, never forget.
After working with Mallahan for the last 3 years I can say with a high degree of certainty he is a 5 star idiot.
I agree with 97. Joe Mallahan is a freaking jerk with a big mouth.
Once you have worked with Joe, you no longer fear going to hell.
The Stranger is lost a lot of credibility for me on their endorsements this year. Both candidates are similar, neither are top notch but you treat McGinn as if he were only to write “F3ck Joe Mallahan”. Don’t say that about anyone running for mayor…you’re not running for mayor, why show a potential future leader that disrespect? BC it gets people to pick up the Stranger.
You are little more than concert reviews anymore.
Yet another testament to Mallahan’s inability to manage and lead….what was that he said during the campaign about being a great executive and finding efficiencies in his business? mallahan 51,776 votes, $666,000 raised + 110,000 Debt = $776000 or $14.99 per vote
mcginn 52,238 votes, $194 ,000 raised + $37,000 Debt = $231,000 or $4.42. Mallahan’s exorbitant campaign spending is a clear indication of the budget issues we will see if he makes it to the Mayors office. Now I understand why T-Mobile is in such trouble – poor fiscal decision making Joe! McGinn is a much smarter leader who achieved better results with far less expenditure. DO MORE WITH LESS!!!! Exactly how I want my tax money spent. GO MIKE!