…MEDIA REFUSE TO CONCEDE: Our Guy, mayoral candidate Greg Nickels, continues to have a substantial lead with only the late absentee votes yet to be counted. The local daily papers and TV stations, still unanimously loyal to Nickels’s opponent Mark Sidran, still insist the race is “too close to call,” and are full of thinly-disguised pep-rally calls for a Sidran comeback.
KOMO, f’rinstance, began its 11 p.m. newscast last night with a lingering live spot from Sidran’s campaign party, with only a brief subsequent visit to Nickels HQ.
I believe Nickels can indeed pull off a victory, based on the trends in the returns. The first votes announced last night were the early absentees, who traditionally lean rightward and gave Sidran an early lead. Then came the results of in-person votes from the polling stations, where Nickels led big.
In the contest’s last weeks, the traditional Seattle Democratic machine did its grassroots work–canvassing, phoning, planting signs, shaking hands, kissing babies. Sidran, meanwhile, continued to rely on TV ads, media stunts, and newspaper puff pieces aimed squarely at the only castes he considered important–white, upscale baby boomers and the big-business/real-estate fraternities.
My theory about the results of this strategic difference: Everyone who was going to vote for Sidran decided to vote for him early in the campaign. It’s the Nickels voters who had to be drawn from the woodwork, the shadows, the population segments not easily reached by (or oblivious to) corporate-media exhortations.
Thusly, Sidran’s lead in the early absentees may indeed not foreshadow a Sidran lead in the late absentees (to be counted on Friday). Nickels may very well pull this off.
If Nickels does pull it off, it could be a major shock-o-rooney to our demographically-obsessed media, who’ve come to ignore the very existence of anyone in Seattle who’s not a white, upscale baby boomer. Indeed, it might be seen as a plebescite, not only on Sidran’s war-on-the-poor policies as city attorney but on the whole demographic cleansing that’s gone on here over the past decade. Sidran allowed himself to become an icon for the gentrifications, the evictions, the massive rent hikes, the squeezing out of working families.
Nickels, in turn, represents not just traditional Seattle politics but a traditional Seattle way of life, a community spirit endangered by the trampling SUV tire tracks of the big money.
Of course, a Nickels victory wouldn’t, by itself, reverse the prevailing trends. But it would at least mean a lot of us are prepared to challenge them.
In other election news, our intrepid team was at the post-election party for Our Other Guy, city council challenger Grant Cogswell. Cogswell (challenging incumbent Richard McIver) and Curt Firestone (challenging incumbent Jan Drago) both mounted hard-hitting, effective campaigns that didn’t smear their opponents but called forthrightly for a change from the incumbents’ developer-coddling policies. Both challengers are narrowly behind with the late absentees awaiting. If either pulls out a victory, it would tip the Seattle City Council’s balance of power toward a progressive bloc that could trash the hated Teen Dance Ordinance, get the monorail project back on track, and at least make any needed recessionary city budget cuts a little more equitable.
In other-other election news, Colorado voters turned down the most ambitious North American monorail proposal to date, which would take residents and tourists from Denver to Vail with comfort and without tire chains.
(This article’s permanent link.)
