McGinn announces new bid for mayor

Former Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn announced Monday morning that he will once again run to lead the city's executive branch.

A political consultant to McGinn announced his candidacy to press outlets at 8:30 a.m., and McGinn and his family made an official announcement outside his home in Greenwood at 10:30 a.m.

McGinn served as Seattle's mayor from 2010 to 2013, when he lost to current Mayor Ed Murray, with 47 percent of the vote to Murray's 52. 

Now it would seem, with a lawsuit alleging Murray coerced a minor into sex and no sign he'll step down, McGinn has found an opening for a rematch.

Asked about Murray's recent scandal, McGinn declined to comment, noting that he would rather be asked about the legacy of his previous term.

"I think I can do a better job than Ed," he said.

A neighborhood activist and former state chair for the Sierra Club, McGinn used his term as mayor to allocate more money for bike and pedestrian projects, while he simultaneously reduced allocations for roads and other city services. He introduced a number of expanded fee and tax funding measures, such as a 2011 proposition to raise car tab fees by $60 (which lost on election night), and the $115 million Seattle Public Schools Families and Education Levy (which won over voters that same year).

McGinn's positions on transportation funding and personal love of bicycles earned him the nickname "McSchwinn" from conservative critics like Dori Monson.

On policing, he criticized highly public incidents of excessive force, but resisted the 2012 reform plan brought down by the U.S. Justice Department. However, once the federal consent decree was in place, he used an executive order to create the city's Community Police Commission, which the City Council may soon make permanent. He also set aside funding to hire a limited number of new officers, but argued that the number wasn't the important figure.

"I think we keep measuring in terms of officers," he said Monday. "But I think the real answer is [whether] you have officers in the place they are needed."

He also told reporters he supported increased density in the city, and used his own neighborhood as an example.

"I see a big single-family home going up around here, and I think to myself, we could house three families on that space," McGinn said.