Seattle Sun Newspaper - Vol. 7, Issue 10, October 2003

Copyright 2003 Seattle Sun. Please feel free to use the article below in your research. Be sure to cite the Seattle Sun as your source.

POLITICALLY SPEAKING:

Incumbents still standing despite

scolding in primary

By JAMES BUSH

Ouch! Yeow! That smarts!

That's the soundtrack for the Sept. 16 primary as Seattle's incumbent politicians (and this columnist's election predictions) took a frightful, although not yet fatal, whipping.

While this column's guesses on the anticipated survivors proved fairly accurate, the Seattle City Council incumbents' primary numbers were low, low, low. Remember the incumbent safety threshold of 46 percent of the primary vote we talked about last month? Four of four council incumbents on the ballot missed that mark, some by a mile.

Swimming in shark-infested waters, Heidi Wills was at least in sight of the beach with 43.5 percent of the vote to challenger David Della's 34 percent.

Jim Compton, whose punishment for his jaunt in Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's private jet was announced four days before the election, sank to a lowly 40 percent. (Former Council member John Manning edged two other challengers with 25 percent for the right to take on Compton in the November election.)

Margaret Pageler scored an unimpressive 39 percent to challenger Tom Rasmussen's 25.5 percent.

Judy Nicastro, everyone's choice at this year's most threatened incumbent, managed a reasonable 25 percent tally in a seven-way race. She also lucked out as post-election absentee ballot counts, as of the Seattle Sun's press time, dropped former Seattle Times columnist Jean Godden, her closest election-night challenger, to a minuscule 187-vote lead over Robert Rosencrantz, freezing Godden's transition to the final election campaign.

While all the incumbents enjoy reasonable leads, these low numbers are reason for concern across the board. While political observers disagree over how much the average voter knows about the candidates, most people know when they're voting against an incumbent and are therefore reasonably likely to repeat this action come November.

With all four incumbents teetering, expect to hear plenty more talk about the City Light meltdown (Wills, Pageler, and Compton comprise the Council Energy Committee) and those now-famous strip club donations (to Wills, Nicastro, and Compton).

In the toughest round of campaigning in recent memory, Della swatted Wills in the primary with a hilariously heavy-handed piece lampooning her City Light troubles and her early-term advocacy to ban performing circus animals at city-owned venues.

Expect Godden (or Rosencrantz) to pound Nicastro hard on the character issue and the maturity issue (aren't you glad this is an issues-oriented campaign?).

Assume that Compton's campaign will remind Seattle voters why Manning resigned his council seat after less than a year in office (hint: the ex-cop twice wore handcuffs).

Figure that more than one incumbent will have to dig deep in their bank account after their donors maxed out in the primary (the city's individual donation limit is just $650). Count on the most expensive Seattle City Council races in history. Oil the door on your mailbox now, before the flood of giant postcards begins.

This year's presentation of the incumbent follies isn't limited to the City Council races.

North End School Board incumbents Steve Brown and Nancy Waldman took a primary punch from challengers Darlene Flynn (who bested Brown 49 percent to 27 percent) and Brita Butler-Wall (who won a 54 percent to 40 percent fight over Waldman).

Barbara Schlag Peterson was the only incumbent to hold serve, with a 44.5 percent to 34.5 percent margin over challenger Sally Soriano.

With Irene Stewart mopping up two opponents in a West Seattle open seat race, a Soriano win in the final would install a whole new School Board majority.

Although these School Board candidates still have to run citywide in November (only residents of the geographic districts that board members represent vote in the primary), the shellacking issued to Brown and Waldman by the home folks should spell early retirement for both.

If all this anti-incumbent feeling wasn't enough, citizens will have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to change the election system for Seattle City Council members (actually, it's a once-in-a-decade opportunity, but who's counting?).

On Sept. 19, King County Superior Court judge Carol Schapira ordered that an initiative calling for all nine council members to be elected by geographic district be placed on the Nov. 4 final election ballot. Her ruling brushed aside a city challenge aimed at invalidating about 1,400 petition signatures on a legal technicality (thereby keeping the measure away from a potentially angry group of voters).

And, the district elections campaign even has a poster boy. Upstart Bob Ferguson ran a textbook doorbelling/sign waving campaign to edge County Council Chair Cynthia Sullivan in the North End's Second District (Northeast Seattle).

Ferguson, first profiled in this column in March, proved conclusively that council districts really can allow an underfunded challenger to beat a better-known incumbent through hard work and a disciplined campaign organization.

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The opinions expressed in this column are not necessarily those of the publishers.