Seattle Sun Newspaper - Vol. 7, Issue 4, April 2003

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POLITICALLY SPEAKING:

Zarker sharked: Time for Nickels to shelve tough guy act?

By JAMES BUSH

Everyone out of the City Hall pool -- Mayor Greg Nickels has jumped the shark.

"Jumping The Shark" is the title of Jon Hein's book pinpointing the moment when favorite TV shows lose their focus and begin the inevitable downhill slide. (More precisely, it refers to the "Happy Days" episode when Fonzie took a trip to Hollywood, donned water skis and jumped over a shark, a sure sign the show was no longer the story of an average group of 1950s teenagers.)

The City Council's recent 6-3 vote against reconfirmation of Seattle City Light Superintendent Gary Zarker represents just such a pivotal moment in the Nickels Administration's first term.

Call it Dumping The Zark.

While the mayor considers Zarker's ouster a political slap at his administration, there were solid reasons to send the City Light chief packing. The electric utility has hiked its rates 58 percent over the last three years. During that same period, City Light has seen rapidly mounting debt and suffered a steadily declining bond rating. Granted, Zarker can't be blamed for the 2000-01 Western Power Crisis, but his tenure created the conditions that allowed the situation to spin out of control.

As superintendent, Zarker was slow to institute City Council-mandated reforms. The council instructed City Light to analyze the financial risks of buying electricity on the open market as far back as November 1999. The task was never completed. In late 2000, even as the council was approving the first Power Crisis-related rate increase, it again demanded the risk analysis. A six-month deadline was imposed; City Light took a year to comply. During this two-year period of management inactivity, City Light's coffers were drained by huge increases in the open market price of electricity.

Given his record, whether Zarker deserved reconfirmation was certainly a topic for legitimate debate. So why did Nickels turn the superintendent's reconfirmation into a take-no-prisoners confrontation with the City Council?

Here's the most convincing theory: That's all he knows how to do. Elected to the King County Council by outworking and out-organizing an entrenched Democratic incumbent in Paul Schell, Nickels has always seen politics as a lobbying effort. This approach worked in the 2001 mayor's race, with Nickels' voter contact-based campaign trumping rival Mark Sidran's massive TV advertising blitz.

But Zarker's March 7 Day of Reckoning represented the inevitable collision between Nickels' post-election I'm-the-boss act and political reality. Here's the reality: The boss is two votes short of a City Council majority.

The upcoming City Council elections are unlikely to tip the scales in Nickels' favor. The mayor would love to see first-termer Judy Nicastro go down to defeat, but her race is loading up with candidates and a crowd on the primary ballot almost always benefits the incumbent. Also, Nickels hasn't yet shown the ability to control his over-the-top political instincts. If the Nickels gang puts too much effort into aiding Nicastro's opponents, the move could easily backfire and give Judy another four-year term.

Incumbents Heidi Wills and Margaret Pageler are the next most vulnerable incumbents, in part because of their support for Zarker (name-recognition powerhouses Peter Steinbrueck and Jim Compton are unlikely to garner serious opposition). Nickels has little to gain from helping to unseat either Wills or Pageler.

Ironically, Nickels has a lot in common with former Mayor Paul Schell. Both men touted themselves as negotiators on the campaign trail but neither showed any interest in maintaining relationships with individual City Council members once in office. Likewise, neither man has enough of a political machine to recruit election opponents for their critics on the council.

Nickels angry act is starting to wear on the media. Seattle Times editorial cartoonist Eric Devericks has long depicted the mayor as a wannabe king in crown and ermine robe; Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist Robert L. Jamieson, Jr., mockingly dubbed the mayor "Baby Huey" for his whiny public response to the Zarker vote.

Many observers attribute the Nickels Administration's take-no-prisoners style to Deputy Mayor Tim "The Shark" Ceis, who's probably steamed that he's just now grabbing a mention in this shark-themed column. After letting tough-guy Ceis become the administration's major spokesman during his first year in office, Nickels would be wise to stick this shark back in his pen. Ceis, who managed to lose his cool several times during a Northgate briefing to the Maple Leaf Community Council, does his best work in City Hall.

To mount a comeback, Mayor Nickels desperately needs a more likable public spokesman. Maybe the mayor should resurrect the nice-guy persona that helped him get elected in the first place. b