At the Saturday evening, August 17, monorail campaign kickoff party, I hustled over to ask City Council Member Jan Drago what the heck she was smoking. No, I wasn't getting in her face about some wacky anti-monorail move she'd just orchestrated. Quite the contrary: Drago, to the crowd's cheering approval, had just delivered the evening's most rousing speech. I'll say that again: JAN DRAGO--sharing the stage with progressive City Council Member Nick "Monorail" Licata, cab-driver-turned-monorail-visionary Dick Falkenbury, Rise Above It All founder Peter Sherwin, Stranger (a.k.a. "Monorail Mouthpiece") editor Dan Savage, and an annoying Austin Powers impersonator--delivered the best damn pro-monorail speech of the night.

And just five days earlier JAN DRAGO cast a vote to repeal the Teen Dance Ordinance!!

So, I ask again: What's Drago smoking? As a longtime villain in these pages, an ally of council Scrooge Margaret Pageler, and a barricade against progressive causes (like, for instance, building the monorail and repealing the TDO), Drago sure had a startling week.

Her monorail speech was downright rowdy: Pointing out that Sound Transit had "imploded," that Metro was shortchanging Seattle on bus service hours, and that she was "fed up" with the legislature for blowing it on transportation, Drago stood center stage at Town Hall in a fancy white dress (she had just come from a private reception in South Lake Union) and said the monorail was Seattle's only hope. "Seattle has to control its own destiny," she boomed after Licata introduced her to over 150 startled monorail activists. "The only way to get transportation is through monorail."

Drago went on by pledging to take "whatever role I can." She pointed out that the business community needed to be on board, and she could help secure that support.

Drago had already played a decisive role in shoring up council support for the monorail, joining Licata, Judy Nicastro, and Heidi Wills (who was the only other council member to show up on Saturday night) to prevent the council from placing an alternate monorail initiative--read "decoy"--on November's ballot.

As for the TDO, the Vera Project set Drago straight on Pageler's repeal-sabotaging misinformation campaign. "I thought kids would be mixing at Pioneer Square clubs," Drago says, "but that was scare tactics." Looking at the bottom line, Drago, 62, determined: "I had more access to entertainment growing up in East Lansing, Michigan, than kids in Seattle today."

Is Drago's old ally, Pageler, mad at Drago for trashing the TDO and joining the monorail cause? Yeah, but Drago could care less. Hanging out over beers and cigarettes at the Geneva restaurant with monorail leader Sherwin after the kickoff party, she merely shrugged and said, "Margaret was already mad at me."

josh@thestranger.com