This is not David Bloom or Sally Bagshaw. It’s Mike O’Brien, who’s also got game.
I went to last week’s City Council candidate forum at Olympic View Elementary in North Seattle to get a handle on the pack of 15 people running in the four different races—to try and separate the wheat from the chaff.
Although, before I start, here’s a requisite gripe: It’s totally stupid that we don’t have districts in Seattle where different council members would represent different interests. Nope, instead we’ve got 9 at-large seats—9 mini-mayors with no real constituency and so, no real accountability.
Rather than having people run from the neighborhoods where they live, people run for the at-large seat that their political consultant tells them to run for; i.e. NOT the seat where the consultant is also working for the incumbent. (I think consultants run de facto protection rackets for incumbents this way). Challengers also don’t run for a seat where their political consultant is working for another challenger for the same seat.
Oh, Democracy.
For the more basic reason why we need districts, read the Federalist Papers.
Okay. Back to last Thursday night’s forum. If you don’t want to read this whole thing (the boring details are below the fold), the short answer is this: Church Council leader David Bloom and K.C. Prosecutor’s Office star Sally Bagshaw (running in the same race, and from opposite ends of the political spectrum) are the two strongest candidates in this year’s pack.
Bloom and Bagshaw also have a different support base. Bloom’s biggest bloc of contributors (67% of his contributions) come from donors giving between $100 and $399. His second biggest batch of supporters, 13% of his donations, are from donors giving $99 or less. Big donors, giving $600 or more, make up the smallest portion of his donor base, 4%. Bloom has raised $35,000.
By contrast, the over-$600 crowd are Bagshaw’s second biggest bloc at 24% of her contributors. (Her biggest bloc, 47%, are mid-level donors, giving between $100 and $399). Small donors are her smallest bloc—donors giving $99 or less make up just 6% of her supporters. Bagshaw has raised $67,00.
Here are the details from the forum, straight from my notebook:
After she was asked to name some fixes for our schools, I gave Sally Bagshaw’s answer a star (not because I necessarily agreed with her, but more because she had something to say—something I hadn’t heard on the campaign trail in Seattle before). Bagshaw, who’s running for Jan Drago’s open seat against low-income advocate David Bloom and greenhorn bleeding heart Dorsol Plants, said she wanted to put police officers in schools—so that they would become trusted figures among youth and help nip trouble in the bud.
Again, I’m not sure if it’s a great idea. But Bagshaw, former head of the King County Prosecutor’s Civil Division, was convinced and had me thinking about it.
She didn’t mention any other ideas (she was asked for two), but the City Council has limited influence over the schools, and rather than giving a crowd-pleasing b.s. answer about passing an income tax to fund schools or something (as candidate Rusty Williams did), Bagshaw stuck to reality.
I gave David Bloom a star for his forceful answer when asked how the region could make good on the 10-year plan to end homelessness. Bloom had two specific answers. First, as opposed to his opponent, Bagshaw (who simply said we had to pass this year’s housing levy), Bloom got into the thick of the current debate at City Hall and said the levy had to be $167 million rather than $145 million. These are the kinds of specific policy questions council members have to vote on, and it was refreshing to see a candidate take a stand.
He also said developments over 6 to 8 units should be required to provide low-income housing. Again, not sure I agree, but Bloom gets points for being straight forward about his agenda and being specific.
Another star for Bagshaw. (And this is a repeat of something I mentioned in an earlier post on the forum, so I’ll be brief.) When tackling the same question about homelessness, Bagshaw was explicit about rejiggering zoning regulations to accommodate mother-in-law apartments to bring “more people into the neighborhoods.”
This is hardly a revolutionary idea—it’s something candidates have been saying for years. But it was ballsy of Bagshaw to say so in the single-family-zoned 46th.
Dorsol Plants, a young idealistic candidate who works at the Downtown Adult Services Center for homeless people, almost got some points in my notebook when he fielded the same question by saying the City had to do more to solve homelessness issues at the front end of the problem—that is: Get at the causes. “Yes, we have to pass the levy,” he said, “but…”
However, he didn’t follow it up with any concrete suggestions.
Robert Rosencrantz, running (again) … this time for Richard McIver’s open seat, had the same problem as Plants: He reframed a question, but then failed to provide an answer. And in his instance, the reframing trick wasn’t insightful (like Plants), it was pandering. So, I’ll give Rosencrantz a minus.
Asked to lay out his plan for transit oriented development, Rosencrantz said TOD was good, but first you had to “return power to the neighborhoods” so that they were in control. That way, he said, we’d be “making sure there was a positive in it for the neighborhood.”
Is he kidding? The reason the TOD bill failed in the legislature this year—despite the fact that it was designed to save affordable housing in transit hub neighborhoods—is because the neighborhoods got up in arms about it. That scared the Mayor’s office, and TOD died.
Rosencrantz’s answer isn’t about empowering the neighborhoods, it’s about preserving the status quo.
Jordan Royer, also running for McIver’s open seat, had the opposite answer. He said the way to get moving on smart development started at City Hall by “breaking down the silos” between departments to get rid of all the red tape.
And another star for David Bloom. Again, Bloom got specific. A huge topic in the 46th (North Seattle) was the lack of sidewalks. Rather than just saying the City had to do something about that, Bloom pointed to current city policies—”disproportionate investment in South Lake Union” … “the most expensive option for the Viaduct” and called for “a change in priorities.”
Sure, “change in priorities” is trite rhetoric, but Bloom’s rap is dialed into a consistent message that gives voters a precise idea of what he’s about. Most candidates give you a hodge podge of feel good sound bites without any connection to an overarching value system. Bloom, a longtime low-income housing activist (and leader) with the Church Council of Greater Seattle, comes to the floor with his ducks in a row.
I already gave Sierra Club candidate Mike O’Brien a gold star for “The Best Answer of the Night.” But since it was, in fact, the best answer of the night, I’ll hype it again here. When asked if they supported developer impact fees on large multi-family housing projects to fund schools (a leading question in touchy, single-family-oriented North Seattle), O’Brien refused to play to the crowd, and emphatically said “No,” explaining that impact fees would drive up the cost of housing, which he said was the root cause of Seattle’s woes, including the disparity issues within our schools. Great answer.
Not much else worth noting: Architect Martin Kaplan (running against Nick Licata) stumbled a few times, cutting himself off and stopping abruptly when asked for environmental priorities (he had one—protecting Seattle’s tree canopy—and said: “Okay … God … I’ll stop there”); Bobby Forch, running in the packed race for McIver’s race, gave a couple loopy Tina Fey monologues; and incumbent Nick Licata showed up late, praised evil Mayor Nickels’ work on green building standards, and contrary to everybody else, who said—to nods and cheers—that building a muni wifi system was a waste of money, he said it was actually good idea. And he still got massive cheers. Dude can do whatever he wants.
So, wheat from the chaff? (And I’m only talking about non-incumbents.)
I’d have to say: Bloom, Bagshaw, O’Brien, and Royer seem ready for prime time.
I also came away from the forum impressed with King County Parks Department employee Jessie Israel, who’s running against Nick Licata. Looking at my notes, though, I’m not exactly sure why. She also hit the “police officers in schools” rap and she has an air of confidence, but I’m not seeing too much noteworthy stuff on her in my steno pad.
I did stop by her fundraiser last night at the Spitfire. Not so crowded. She was eloquent about Green development and while saying she voted for her opponent, Licata, in the past, she asked me to name a single thing he’d done (not shot down, but had done) in his 10 years on Council.
After I mentioned a “shot down” (the Sonics bailout—which 70 percent of the city’s voters agreed with him on), the first thing that came to my mind was putting more cops on the streets and, yin yang, strengthening citizens’ police oversight abilities. (I still hope she changes seats.)
As for those, who didn’t rate a mention here (good or bad): Perhaps they had an off night or perhaps it’s best I didn’t say anything at all.
