Veteran city council member Margaret Pageler is struggling to stay afloat in an anti-incumbent undertow that's widely blamed on council youngsters Judy Nicastro and Heidi Wills. But judging from Pageler's poor performance in the primary--39 percent, compared to Wills' 43 percent--and a record that has alienated mainstream environmentalists and Democrats, 12-year incumbent Pageler has herself to blame if she fails in November to win back the nearly two-thirds of voters who didn't support her seven weeks earlier.

"It's impossible for her to run as an outsider," says Christian Sinderman, a consultant whose candidate, Tom Rasmussen, hopes to unseat Pageler in November. "The 'anti-incumbent sentiment' is generated as much by her as by her colleagues."

Pageler--a petite, mop-headed woman given to wearing jaunty scarves and a thin slash of bright-red lipstick--is an anachronism on today's liberal city council. In 1991, when Pageler ran as an outsider champion for neighborhoods who opposed run-amok '80s-style downtown development, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer called her the "most liberal" challenger in her field. Today, Pageler is widely seen as the most conservative member of a predominantly left-leaning council.

Pageler's position on the council's political spectrum isn't the only thing that has changed. Her supporters--who once included five local Democratic districts and the Washington Conservation Voters, among other mainstream organizations--have dwindled to a handful of real-estate and business interests and the Seattle Times. In fact, nearly every Democratic and mainstream labor and environmental organization, from the King County Labor Council to the Sierra Club, has endorsed newcomer Rasmussen.

Pageler says her close association with former city attorney Mark Sidran's law-and-order agenda helped alienate her onetime base. "Some of the Democratic districts will never support anyone who supported the civility laws," she says. "I'll never pass that litmus test." Similarly, Pageler lost the support of at least one Democratic organization--the 43rd District Democrats--because of her role as chair (from 1995 to 1999) of the council committee that oversaw the troubled Seattle City Light. Current energy committee chair Heidi Wills, locked in a tense reelection race of her own, has been lambasted for her role in City Light's rate increases--but it was Pageler who authorized selling Seattle's share of the dirty, coal-fired Centralia generating plant without locking in fixed-price power, exposing City Light rate- payers to the volatile energy market. Likewise, Pageler was the one who signed off on former City Light superintendent Gary Zarker's push to move to the free market and away from regulated Bonneville Power Administration energy in the mid-'90s. Despite all this, Pageler declares the City Light issue "moot" now that the agency's short-term debt is nearly paid, and says that "neither Heidi nor I are to blame for the criminal conduct of Enron or the negligence of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission."

Rasmussen says another reason voters have lost faith in Pageler is that they see her as "checked out" and unresponsive. At forums, Rasmussen has taken pains to point out that Pageler applied for a job as head of the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce--a story The Stranger broke in February 2002--while she was serving on the city council. But Pageler, who has become increasingly defensive about her job search, says she's committed to serving a full four-year term: "Why the hell would I go through this again?" she laughs. Pageler has also amped up her campaign to reflect the genuine threat Rasmussen represents: "When the campaign started back in April we were running it out of my house, and now we have phones and an actual campaign office," she says. "We're running it much more like my first campaign."

Would Rasmussen be an improvement over the pro-business Pageler? The even-keeled 56-year-old head of the Mayor's Office for Senior Citizens won't make the most exciting council member, but he's more liberal than Pageler by a mile. Unlike Pageler, he supports raising the price of parking, opposes the car-impound ordinance, and--like the council's leftiest member, Nick Licata--supports creating safe-injection sites for intravenous drug users. "I consider myself far more progressive than Margaret," Rasmussen says. That may be true. Whether he can win will depend on whether he manages to convince voters that it's Pageler--not Wills or Nicastro--who deserves to go out with the anti- incumbent tide.

barnett@thestranger.com