In quick notes, it appears Mayor Greg Nickels (President of the U.S. Mayors Assoc.) may, post-primary, soon no longer be a Mayor. Granted, both choices that survived the primary are substantially less than ideal, but neither can help being a better option than Nickels.
The bone-headed Seattle Bag Tax (a .20/unit tax on paper and plastic bags, using retailers as enforcement agents in exchange for a percentage of the take) has been decisively shot down by Seattle voters - perhaps because it was simply a dumb idea, or perhaps because it was a really dumb idea to thrust upon the public in the face of a recession hotting up....
Finally, Susan Hutchison outpolled Dow Constantine (37% vs 28%) rather decisively in the Primary for County Executive here in King County - I'm guessing with those numbers, she'll take the General Election, and with any luck at all, that will be followed by a healthy shake-up down at County Central - much-needed in the face of massive deficits and a tradition of spendthrift governance...
I'm guessin' that the efforts to tar Ms Hutchison with the brush of being a (shudder) Closet Republican backfired...
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, D.W., they actually worked and she is not in the closet any longer. The votes she got are fom folks who either only recognized the name or liked the implications of her Republicanism. The fact that her numbers keep falling is testament to that.
ReplyDeleteMost of the rest of the candidates for the job were left leaning and will fall into Constantine's camp in the next couple months.
However, being a Repub, in or out of the closet, isn't going to be the striking point of Constantine's campaign. It will be that she was a talking head who has no experience running anything.
Personally, if I were a King County resident, that would be something I could vote FOR, as I believed the county has suffered from Sims' over management. But if she doesn't point out that fresh, non-micro-management is the only thing that will save King Co., she will lose, and probably by a large margin.