Mayoral candidate Mike McGinn plans to put
his pedal where his mouth is if he wins this November—at least
according to a tale making its way through the ranks of the Seattle
Police Department.
The story goes like this: McGinn struck up a conversation with one
of the police officers assigned to the mayor’s security detail at a
campaign event during the primary. According to Seattle Police
Officers’ Guild president Rich O’Neill—who heard about the
exchange directly from the officer, who declined to discuss the
incident with The Stranger—McGinn told the officer that
when he was mayor, there would “be some big changes” around the office.
“That’ll be gone,” McGinn told the officer, pointing to the Toyota
Highlander SUV used by Mayor Greg Nickels. “When I’m mayor, my security
detail will bike with me.”
The officer gave McGinn examples of some of the mayor’s distant
meeting destinations, including the Boeing facility in Everett, the
legislature in Olympia, and Sea-Tac Airport, and told him it wouldn’t
be possible for him to bike everywhere.
McGinn disputes O’Neill’s account of the exchange—“It’s possible that I may have cracked a joke” to the officer, McGinn says—but he notes that he plans to “bike as much as possible” if elected. McGinn currently uses a Giant Lite electric bicycle to ride to campaign events and meetings around the city.
We looked at a day selected at random from Mayor Nickels’s schedule
to see if it would even be possible for a mayor to get around on a
bicycle.
On May 21, Mayor Nickels made his first stop of the day at a
transportation seminar at the Sheraton Hotel at 8:15 a.m., about 6
miles from McGinn’s Greenwood home. By 9:00 a.m., Nickels was back in
his office at City Hall (.5 mile). At 10:00 a.m., Nickels was at the
Neighborhood Business District Awards at the Columbia City Theater,
which would require McGinn to ride 5 miles along Rainier Avenue South,
a harrowing route for cyclists in Seattle. By 11:30 a.m., Nickels was
back at the Bell Harbor meeting facility on the waterfront (5.2 miles)
for a meeting on the climate. After a leisurely hour at a lunchtime
rally, Mayor Nickels returned to City Hall (1.2 miles) to meet with
British ambassador Sir Nigel Sheinwald. Whew. Nickels then headed up
the steep slopes of Capitol Hill to Seattle Central Community College
(1 mile) for a Sound Transit walking tour, then to a Sound Transit
corridor cleanup in the International District (3 miles). By 4:30 p.m.,
Nickels had logged more than 20 miles, but his day wasn’t over yet. The
mayor still had former SPD chief Gil Kerlikowske’s going-away party at
the Westin to attend (2.7 miles), a Washington Restaurant Association
event at Wild Ginger (.3 mile), and the Seattle International Film
Festival fourth annual Mayor’s Awards at the Paramount Theatre (.5
mile). All told, in one day, a Mayor McGinn would have logged more than
25 miles on his bike and burned about 1,700 calories.
So could McGinn become Seattle’s first two-wheeled mayor?
“It’s a bizarre idea,” one former bike cop told The Stranger,
but “it’s feasible.” 
This article has been updated since its original publication.
Remember, McGinn rolls on an electric-assist bike. He wouldn’t burn anywhere near 1,700 calories over that mileage. If he has the City buy electric-assists for his security and entourage they might be able to get to all those spots in a day without pausing to shower.
It shows the guy does not have a clear idea of what the job entails. Security detail on a bicycle? WOW!
@2 Do you even know if this is true? It’s based on what one officer reported to another officer, who then reported it to Jonah.
You have to exclude the Columbia City ride, because McGinn would take Link there–that eliminates nearly 10 miles.
Maybe he’ll ride a fixie with no helmet and do us all a favor and get a Darwin Award.
I ride an ebike on a daily commute. It adds about 50% to my travel time, but keeps me out of traffic (which makes me nuts) and is a pleasant alternative to car travel. I am able to commute like this because the extra half hour I use for my daily round trip is something I’ve planned for in my day.
Suggesting that a mayor of a major city can be equally productive while dedicating a sizable portion of his day to transport shows just how unrealistic Mike McGinn is.
What a poser.
Tim Hill did this (sometimes) when he was county exec. Check out how that worked…
I’ve never seen a cyclist as fat as Mike McGinn.
The Mike McGinn rutine!
8am jump on bike and get the blood flowing to work
9am lock bike up and unlock tool shed at work and remove the bull whip, Numchucks, Katana and brass knuckles!
10am after streching and breath exercises issue the daily warning that inferior performance by city employees will be dealt with extreme violence.
10:15am to 4:15pm whip and beat city employees regardless of their performance.
4:15pm to 5pm pose for smiley face propaganda pictures with babies and drink beer.
5pm have the police clear a path to make a ride on a bike drunk home safely.
Good day at work! City is happy!
Oh good, mindful of his limitations, he’ll probably stay in his office and do work instead of taking time for photo ops! And we can get these folks in whatever pandering neighborhood association to come to City Hall so they can use our shiny new conference rooms.
Why are you people so nasty? I just don’t understand, if he drove a car he would be a liar and a hypocrite, but because he would try to continue his bike commute you attack him with mean and petty insults. What is wrong with you? This whole story is pathetic.
Yeah, crap story. I guess the writer couldn’t find any interesting angles on the real issues so he wrote this fecal story based on hearsay. It was most likely just a quip from McGinn, but now idiots are going to repeat it again and again per the usual ignorant public discourse.
@9 – JB & CN:
Cut it out. Way off base.
Stay focused on the positive, pay attention to your strategery, and be gracious on the internets. Keep the ludes handy if you have to, but don’t make shit up. Nasty isn’t working.
McGinn? Malahan? Hutchinson? Constantine? While Gregoire (SP?) fiddles…we is fucked!
But what if he actually did it? Just imagine. The nattering class would eat their words and McGinn would be a freaking god.
I bet if enough people talk trash and piss him off he will fracking do it just to be a bad ass motherfucker.
Really, you guys are a bit much. You know what you want and you write the hit pieces to fit.
You deserve a certain respect for sophistication, but I wouldn’t mind a little compunction. Do you have to assassinate McGuinn for such a minor issue? Really, I’d be embarrassed to have written something like this, and I’ve got a mouth on me.
You might as well face it: your preferred candidate has no publicly discernible virtues for which you can boost her/him, so this is what you got. The Constantine article made more sense. Try again.
25 miles is a piece of cake, I’ve hit that just running errands while putting in a full 8 hour workday, and by the way I am fatter than McGinn and I don’t have electric assist.
The thing I really like about a bicycling mayor is that the mayor would actually see the city. It is much easier to notice the condition of the city and to talk to regular people on a bike than in a car.