On an inhospitable Thursday night, in the small, unflatteringly bright auditorium that ordinarily serves as the lunchroom for the 500 students of Olympic View Elementary School, a dozen candidates gathered last week to be interrogated, probed, and generally discomfited at the June meeting of the 46th District Democrats—the unofficial kickoff of the city's biennial election season.

We took a wrong turn on our way to Northeast Seattle (west, if you want to get technical about it), and by the time we got there, the four candidates in the most-talked-about city council race—for council incumbent Richard Conlin's seat—had already had their say. No matter: There were still plenty of noteworthy moments, including the sight of a fired-up Dwight Pelz blowing away his two more-lethargic opponents, Richard McIver and Robert Rosencrantz, with a fiery appeal to "partisan Democrats"; and a testy debate between Bob Ferguson and Carolyn Edmonds, incumbents who are running for the same seat on the newly redistricted county council.

Edmonds, who bounded onto the stage wearing a shiny emerald-colored blouse, spoke as if she'd been prepping for this battle all her life. Ferguson, in contrast, seemed mousy and uncertain, fumbling to regain his rhetorical footing after Edmonds's brash but confident responses. But when eternally on-point moderator Scott White asked the candidates whether they would run as Democrats if they failed to win their party's nomination, it was Edmonds who stumbled. "I have the votes to win, and I would win the nomination," she said. In comparison, Ferguson's response was a model of laconism: "I would not run as a Democrat," he said succinctly, deftly sidestepping the issue of whether he would run as an independent instead.

Ultimately, it may not matter. As of mid-June, Ferguson had fallen into an undeniable fundraising tailspin, bringing in just $2,400 to Edmonds's nearly $19,000—$1,350 of that from one Kevin Ferguson.

Paige Miller, a port commissioner who hitched her city council campaign to the port's $20 million plan to "save" the waterfront trolley by moving its endangered maintenance base to a site near the Amgen campus in Interbay, was upstaged Monday by King County Executive Ron Sims and Mayor Greg Nickels's announcement that they, too, had a plan to save the streetcar—only their plan, unlike Miller's, would cost just $9 million, would enable a trolley extension into the International District, and wouldn't require a trolley closure during viaduct construction.

A volunteer at Miller's campaign headquarters said Miller was "no longer the spokesperson" for the port's proposal. Others in Miller's race, including both Conlin and former Nickels spokesman Casey Corr, sounded downright gleeful to see the crotchety candidate get her comeuppance. But despite the fact that a plan with such obvious political benefits for Corr came straight out of Nickels's office, Corr claimed he had "no idea" that the mayor's plan was coming. By late afternoon, though, he had changed his tune, issuing a cloying press release gloating about his former boss's "innovative" proposal. ■