With all the seat-swapping that's gone on during this year's election season (council challengers Casey Corr, Dwight Pelz, and Ăngel Bolaños all jumped races before the September primary), it's little wonder that some folks found themselves in the embarrassing position of endorsing more than one person in the same race. Some stood stubbornly by both endorsementsâJean Godden, for example, raced from Jan Drago's party to Corr's on election night, explaining as she ran out the door that she'd endorsed both opponents "because they're very nice people"âwhile others, like King County Executive Ron Sims, demurred. Earlier this year, Sims, who is black, endorsed both Richard McIver, the council's only black incumbent, and Pelz, who was then running against Richard Conlin. Until Tuesday morning, Sims remained at the top of Pelz's list of endorsers (www.dwightpelz.com), despite a call by McIver for Pelz to take Sims's name off the list. Adding to the confusion, a Sims staffer said Monday that the county exec "hadn't pulled [the Pelz] endorsement," but added that Sims stood by his endorsement of McIver.
With a final election tally of just 39 percent, McIver needs all the help he can get: Conventional wisdom has it that incumbents who go into the general election with less than 40 percent (hello, Margaret Pageler?) are in trouble.
There are two kinds of people who attend the mayor's budget speeches: those who want to be there (human-services advocates afraid of budget cuts; the man with the white beard who sits in the front row at every meeting) and those who have to be there (city hall employees; police officers who applaud on cue; me). This year, thanks largely to a humming economy that should make budget controversies rare, both groups were smaller than ever. In fact, a whiteboard outside council chambers advertising "overflow seating" in the downstairs Bertha Knight Landes Room proved superfluous, as seats in nearly every row went unfilled.
Out of the mayor's four "budget priorities" (really hard-hitting stuff, like "building strong families" and "creating opportunities for all") came a few new initiatives: a new tax exemption for small businesses, money for the downtown hygiene center, and funding for 15 new firefighters. Several of those new recruits would staff engines that currently have just three firefighters, increasing them to the national safety standard of fourâand, not coincidentally, eliminating the need for a ballot measure that would have forced the city to pay for four-man engines. On election night, a pack of polo-shirt-wearing firemen attending a party for Pelz told me the union had decided to drop its controversial ballot initiative, called Ready4Rescue, after working out a deal with the mayor's office to fund some new positions in the budget and as part of the union's contract negotiations with the city.
