Hey HO!

Nickels conceded, and come January is gone. Now the task in Seattle is: "Which is worse, Mallahan or McGinn?"

Meanwhile, various sorts of "we can't possibly let a non-politician be Mayor" sorts are running abot crying out gloom'n'doom and trying to draft State Sen. Ed Murray as a write-in candidate, heaven forfend.

Ed, if by some remote chance you are reading this, our shared community specifically and the broader community generally, doesn't need a reprise of that debacle known as Portland Mayor Sam Adams.

Any personal flaws, fictional or otherwise, aside - the city is up to its eyeballs in debt, and the stall tactics are beginning to fail. The LGBT community doesn't need you in place to catch the blame, and share it with the community by association. You don't need the stinking dead albatross of the office of Mayor of Seattle strung about your neck and ending your political career.

Whoever is elected Mayor will be singing their political swan song from the moment they raise their right hand and are sworn in. They will be faced from that first moment forward with a city 60 million in debt, with a litigously dysfunctional street department (SDOT), a police department for eight years with a more political than policing agenda, seriously decrepit and mismanaged roads, and a Fire Department with facilities constructed to political standards.

Ed, you don't want to be Ground Zero when all that comes home to roost. Neither does anyone rational.

Let Mallahan have it - of the available choices, he seems most reality-oriented. And besides, he'll be lucky to make it through a single term. The next Mayor, after the last 8-16 years of increasingly clumsy mismanagement and cronyism (affordable in boom times), is in such deep stuff you'd be well-served to stand clear and pick up the pieces after.