First Congressional District voters don't know how lucky they are. No really, they don't.

Tonight, five of the six declared Democrats (plus one intrepid Republican) showed up at Seattle City Hall for a Metropolitan Democratic Club candidate forum, and I'm guessing most 1st CD Dems would have been pretty pleased with the choices before them. That is, if there were any 1st CD Dems in the audience. Of course, no part of Seattle is in the new 1st CD, but the roomful of 7th and 9th CD Dems came away pretty impressed with field, which included Democrats Darcy Burner, Suzan DelBene, Roger Goodman, Darshan Rauniyar, and Laura Ruderman, plus Republican James Watkins.

I'll follow up with a more detailed report tomorrow after I've gotten some sleep and met a more pressing deadline, but apart from the fact that all of the candidates should be pleased with their performances tonight, I want to make one quick observation about the apparent early dynamics of this race.

If DelBene, due to her centrist tendencies and personal wealth is the favorite in the race, you wouldn't know it by the way that Goodman and Ruderman seemed to use their closing statements to draw a contrast between themselves and Burner. Both focused on their experience in government, and both emphasized their ability to work across the aisle and across partisan lines. Even DelBene warned against the sort of "hyper-partisanship" for which Burner is sometimes criticized.

Perhaps they've seen polling data that I haven't, or perhaps I'm reading something into it that wasn't there, but it sure looked like the other Dems were positioning themselves against Burner.