To an extent we haven't seen in at least a generation, nobody - really, nobody - knows what to expect from Seattle's new mayor.
To be sure, much of this is not Mayor-Elect Mike McGinn's fault. During his campaign, he was far more specific about his vision for Seattle's future than his opponent, Joe Mallahan, whose vision was mostly obliquely signaled through his money and his choice of insider advisors. McGinn, on the other hand, ran the best grass-roots campaign Seattle has seen in years, and he clearly had the pulse of many Seattle voters on hot-button issues like the downtown tunnel.
But running a campaign is very different from governing a large, fractious city, as McGinn already tacitly acknowledged when he backed down on his pledge to stop the tunnel - in the face of the united opposition of the governor, state Legislature and all nine Seattle City Council members. That acknowledgement of reality (or betrayal, depending on your viewpoint) probably won him the election, by reassuring just enough people of McGinn's capacity for flexibility to provide his narrow margin of victory.
LACK OF POLITICAL EXPERIENCE
In both his own campaign and last year's ballot measure to expand light rail (which he helped lead), McGinn has shown tactical adroitness. But the fact remains that McGinn has never run anything larger than those campaigns. He's never had a permanent job running anything larger than the local chapter of the Sierra Club. How that experience, or lack of it, translates into being the boss of a city of more than 10,000 employees and a $72 million budget shortfall in 2010 is anyone's guess.
The last several mayors have had long public lives preceding their first successful mayoral runs. Greg Nickels was a Metropolitan King County Council member. Paul Schell was a wealthy downtown developer who'd run for mayor 20 years previous. Norm Rice moved up from Seattle City Council.
With McGinn, all we have to go by are his choices of advisors and issues during his campaign. And that doesn't necessarily translate, as any student of discarded local campaign promises (c.f. Greg Nickels' "Seattle Way") can tell you.
FACING DIFFERENT REALITIES
So what do we know from McGinn's campaign? Well, despite McGinn's outsider cred -and the Democratic Party and union leaders that gravitated from Nickels to Mallahan after the August primary are definitely now on the outside looking in - some of the policies most associated with Nickels' tenure won't change. McGinn is every bit as enthusiastic as Nickels about endless tax credits, tax breaks and "incentives" (i.e., gifts) for the sorts of new, higher-end real estate construction that have transformed many Seattle neighborhoods this decade. (In boom times, such largesse is needed so developers will build in Seattle; in a recession, such largesse is needed so, um, developers will build in Seattle. It's funny how that works.)
McGinn's zeal on the issue - the word "zeal" here is chosen carefully - comes from the same source as his determination to bicycle everywhere: his laudable concern over global warming, and car culture's contributions to our planet's slow roasting.
But as with other issues on which the candidate McGinn made much hay (some of which, such as his repeated calls for the city to take over Seattle schools, smacked of either naivety or demagoguery), the chief executive McGinn will face very different realities. People like and rely on their cars - a lot.
The biggest problem facing Seattle's schools is a lack of money, regardless of who's spending it. (And, as a general rule, people who know something about schools are more likely to spend it wisely than people who know nothing about schools.)
And the needs for things like public safety and social services don't go away simply because there's a budget shortfall. Balancing such competing needs is the essence of governing. It takes finesse and empathy, not zeal.
THE LEARNING CURVE
Any new mayor faces a huge learning curve. McGinn will make mistakes - it's inevitable, and Seattleites should show some patience while he does. The key will be McGinn's ability to learn from them, and to work with reality (as in his pivot on the tunnel) when it doesn't conform to his idealism. The biggest danger from the zealous is certitude - and after Greg Nickels, Seattle has had enough certitude to last quite a while.
Moreover, McGinn, as "the outsider," also doesn't have enough allies for a whole lot of certitude. Seattle City Council president Richard Conlin is a fellow environmentalist; new councilmember Mike O'Brien accompanies McGinn from the Sierra Club - that's about it. To the extent McGinn derives any sort of voter mandate from his narrow victory, it's not likely to be respected by either City Council or the city's well-entrenched bureaucracies.
It's a cliché that all politics are local, but the corollary is that all local politics are personal. As anyone who ever survived middle school can attest, the new kid in class is always the least popular and is certain to be tested - quickly.
In a city where every elected official is a business-friendly liberal Democrat with social-service credentials, such petty personal frictions usually define success and failure.
Geov Parrish is cofounder of Eat the State![[In-content Ad]]
