This post has been updated to reflect the fact that Moxie Media worked on an independent expenditure campaign on behalf of then-mayoral candidate Ed Murray in 2013; it did not work directly for the Murray campaign.

1. Jenny Durkan was sworn in as the first female mayor of Seattle since the 1920s yesterday, and although much of the local press coverage has downplayed that aspect of her victory (in part, perhaps, because her general-election opponent, Cary Moon, was also a woman), I saw quite a few women wiping tears from their eyes and doing little victory dances when Durkan noted that it had been “Almost 92 years since we had a woman mayor,” adding, “if there were any easy solutions, Seattle would not have elected a woman mayor—again.” After Durkan’s speech—delivered with more dynamism than her predecessor Ed Murray, but otherwise pretty standard “let’s-get-to-work” fare—a woman I didn’t know grabbed me by the hand and said “Isn’t this great??” while another woman I do know wiped away tears and told me, “We’ve waited a long time for this.”

After her official swearing-in, by US District Court Judge Richard Jones, Durkan headed out to continue a series of swearing-in ceremonies around the city, where she signed two new executive orders. The first, aimed at helping low-income renters find housing or keep their existing housing, directs city departments to identify people eligible for utility discounts and other benefits and sign them up; create a proposal for a rent assistance program for people who are “severely cost-burdened” (meaning they pay more than half their income on rent and utilities); speed up housing placements from the lengthy Seattle Housing Authority waitlist; and streamline the process of signing up for multiple benefits by creating an “affordability portal.” The second executive order commits the city to evaluating the Race and Social Justice Initiative and making changes if necessary, and requires all department heads and mayoral staff to go through implicit bias training within Durkan’s first 100 days in office.

2. Yesterday, Moxie Media—the consulting firm that charged self-financed mayoral candidate Cary Moon more than $257,000 for its services—and Winpower Strategies, most recently the consultant for city council candidate Jon Grant and mayoral candidate Mike McGinn’s unsuccessful campaigns, announced that they were merging. “We’re excited to blend our teams into a bigger, stronger Moxie Media, providing our clients with all the strategic acumen and creative innovation we can leverage toward ensuring everyone has a voice in our democracy,” Moxie founder Lisa MacLean said in a statement. Winpower is run by John Wyble, a longtime local consultant who was part of Moxie from 2001 to 2009; in 2003, I described the firm’s client base as “moderate, Prius-driving Seattle environmentalists.” Since striking out on his own, Wyble’s client base has included people further out on the left of whatever the current Seattle spectrum happens to be, from firebrand former council member Nick Licata to Seattle Displacement Coalition co-founder David Bloom to Grant.

A look at Winpower’s local electoral record suggests this is not a merger of two equal partners—as does the fact that the firm will retain the Moxie name.  Wyble’s biggest win locally happened in 2009, when Mike McGinn beat Joe Mallahan in the mayor’s race, but since then, his Seattle clients have mostly failed to catch fire. Think Bobby Forch (2009 and 2011), Brian Carver (2013), Morgan Beach, Halei Watkins, and Tammy Morales (2015), and Jo(h)ns Grant, Creighton, and Persak this year. You don’t even have to look at his client list to know that Wyble’s political analysis has been off-base locally; just check out his blog, where he predicted in August that Durkan would not be the mayor, because all the “progressive” votes, combined, would hand the win to Moon. “The electorate has changed in Seattle and change is what the electorate wants. … When you add [up all the Moon, Farrell, Oliver, Hasegawa, and McGinn] votes and a more progressive electorate, it’s not hard to believe that the candidate who came in second in the primary has the best shot at winning the general,” Wyble wrote.

Durkan won with 56 percent of the vote.

Winpower’s client list does include a number of well-funded campaigns for incumbent state legislators (Steve Hobbs, Jeannie Darnielle, Nathan Schlicher) as well as Democratic challengers (Michelle Rylands, who lost to incumbent Phil Fortunato in her race for 31st District state senate; Lisa Wellman, who defeated incumbent Sen. Steve Litzow in the 41st). But state elections are only in even years, which means most consultants also have a local client base. For obvious reasons, serious candidates want consultants who can demonstrate that they win election, which is why the fortunes of Seattle consultants tend to rise and fall with their win-lose ratios. On this score, Moxie’s recent record is also mixed; their local clients in recent years have included Ahmed Abdi, who lost to Stephanie Bowman for Seattle Port Commission this year; Debora Juarez, elected to the Seattle City Council in 2015; Fred Felleman, who defeated Marion Yoshino for an open Port seat in 2015; and an independent expenditure campaign for Ed Murray, who beat Winpower’s client McGinn in 2013. (The IE paid for this controversial ad accusing McGinn of being soft on domestic violence.) They also worked on 2015’s Honest Elections campaign, which led to public financing of elections, better known as “democracy vouchers.”

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