Wondering Why There Weren’t Any Monorail Parties?

It’s because monorail board incumbents Cindi Laws and Cleve Stockmeyer were at what one monorail supporter at Jan Drago’s party called “the monorail board meeting from hell.” (Monorail opponent Henry Aronson, at Richard McIver’s party, had a different take: He described the meeting as “great.”) The board, under pressure to come up with a measure for the November ballot to circumvent the up-or-down monorail referendum on the monorail Mayor Nickels proposed last week, reportedly bickered and threw out tons of random ideas but ultimately failed to come up with a solution. The board had better get its act together fast: They’re supposed to come up with a proposal by tomorrow.

The night’s last batch of results are in. We said earlier that we weren’t staying up for them, but we did. Here are the highlights in the city of Seattle races:

* Al Runte now has 21.92% of the vote while Nickels has 55.95%

* Richard Conlin (49.90%) is still beating Paige Miller (35.81%)

* Jan Drago (42.27%) is still stomping on Casey Corr (24.64%)

* Richard McIver (37.61%) now leads Dwight Pelz (33.03%), with Robert Rosencrantz coming in last with (29.19%).

Erica C. Barnett says:

At 8:15, with the first results showing Robert Rosencrantz defeating Dwight Pelz, I predicted Pelz would pull ahead and move on to the general election. However, my SECB comrade back at the Stranger office wrote, “we here at the office can read the results, and at the moment, Pelz is in last place.” I win.

More analysis from the drunky-drunks at the Mirabeau room:

Newell Says your Sims thing is bullshit too….he got 70% of the DEMOCRAT vote, not a huge victory for an incumbent in his own party…

Here’s a photo of Peter Sherwin from earlier tonight, boasting that the write-ins for the Monorail Board Position 8 race were probably all him, based on our recommendation that people choose him over the actual candidates.

(As of 10:47, there were 1,030 write-ins for Position 8 — the Goldberg/Laws/Lippman race. The other monorail board race counted just 218 write-ins. Go John A. Sherwin!)

In a race we haven’t been reporting on, King County Executive Ron Sims took 70% tonight — looks like a third term for the smiling incumbent.

Erica C. Barnett parses the Monorail Board results this way:

The Seattle Monorail Project Board, should it continue to exist, will probably have at least one new member in January — monorail opponent Beth Goldberg, who’s currently polling at 47 percent. (Loose-cannon incumbent Cindi Laws lost the race when she made anti-Semitic comments to a King County Labor Council endorsement panel a month ago.) The other monorail board incumbent, Cleve Stockmeyer, was running well behind anti-monorail challenger Jim Nobles (who had 40.5 percent) with 34.5 percent; but that number was somewhat deceptive, because Stockmeyer’s other primary foe, Dick Falkenbury, ate up some of the pro-monorail vote. Come November, Falkenbury’s votes will likely go to Stockmeyer.

Bouncer: Who’s the incumbent?
Party Crasher: It’s McIver.
Bouncer: MacGyver?
Tipsy bystander: No, not MacGyver — not the guy who could make a bomb out of an alarm clock and some aspirin.
Bouncer: Hell, I’d vote for him over any of these clowns.

Erica C. Barnett says:

Here’s my prediction for the Weekly’s post-election analysis tomorrow:

Continue reading "10:35 p.m. — A Prediction" »

David Meinert reports:

We’re at least still awake, not like the Rosencrantz party. Hopefully Pelz is coming by to teach us how to drink.

He’s squeaking into second place. But Pelz and his campaign manager, Nigel Herbig, wanted to celebrate behind protective glass before they clued in the rowdy crowd at Doc Maynard’s.

Amy Jenniges watched as the Rosencrantz people obsessively checked this computer for the 10 p.m. results, and then winced as she watched them find out that Rosencrantz had fallen to third place, not good enough to get through the primary. “Oh man, I’m getting killed,” Rosencrantz said when he saw the numbers — and then after talking to his political consultant on the phone, quickly added a positive gloss, saying there are still votes to count.

The third batch of results are in (and this is the last batch that we’ll report tonight, because of our looming deadline). Here are the highlights in the city of Seattle races:

* Al Runte now has 22.07% of the vote while Nickels has 55.66%

* Richard Conlin (48.36%) is still beating Paige Miller (36.62%)

* Jan Drago (42.87%) is still stomping on Casey Corr (24.42%)

* Richard McIver (37.41%) is now handily beating Robert Rosencrantz (29.93%), and in a big reversal of fortune, Rosencrantz is now LOSING to Dwight Pelz (32.50%)

Amy Jenniges reports that Robert Rosencratnz’s party at the Miller Community Center is starting to clear out — mostly because it’s past everyone’s bedtime.

With Rosencrantz virtually tied with Pelz, the phrase of the moment there is, “It’s getting tight.” But with no alcohol in sight (Rosencrantz doesn’t drink), it’s hard to loosen up. Question of the moment: Will they all be wishing they had a drink after the next round of numbers comes out?

Greg’s numbers suck too—and where’s my money, Greg?—especially considering that his opponents aren’t qualified to tumble out of a clown car, much less run the city. Greg is essentially running unopposed, and he hasn’t broken 55%. Greg oughta be racking up numbers in the high sixties or low seventies. Clearly the neighborhoods are angrier at Greg than he or we thought—and angrier, in my opinion, than they have a right to be. Monorail supporters like me are angry too, which is why my vote today went to Christal Wood. Now I wish I had voted for Al Runte, who, if the numbers keep breaking his way (he’s racked up 22%!), will be facing a wounded Greg “Gridlockâ€� Nickels in November.

Party Crasher has made his way to the Nickels bash at Ocean City in the International District, where he braved egg rolls sure to give him a coronary and found a subdued crowd scratching their heads at Al Runte’s strong showing.

Party Crasher, ever willing to stir shit up, asked a Nickels aide where Dan Savage’s $300 donation was. (Savage demanded it be returned after Nickels pulled the plug on the monorail this week.) The Nickels aide told him it was in the mail, and then begged: “Will you please not ask the mayor that question now.”

The numbers aren’t good for the incumbent city council members. Drago, Conlin, and McIver are leading, but they’re all under 50%—way under, in Richard McIver’s case.

I’m sure the challengers are already saying this to the TV reporters, but when you total up the votes against Drago, Conlin, and McIver, you’re looking at 57% against Drago, 55% against Conlin, and a staggering 63% against McIver. These are huge numbers—in Seattle, where we elect our city council at large, not by districts, name recognition is everything. So incumbents usually sail to comfortable victories. They still might—well, Drago and Conlin might; McIver might not make it to the general election. But all three are going to be running scared.

Erica C. Barnett maintains that the next drop of numbers is going to bring Pelz into second place in his race, and so does Pelz, but we here at the office can read the results, and at the moment, Pelz is in last place.

Pelz’s advice to the crowd at his party: “If you’re here to stay, try to drink yourself into oblivion.”

The second batch of results are in. Here are the highlights in the city of Seattle races:

* Al Runte now has 22.40% of the vote (again, I say: ?!?!) while Nickels has 54.65

* Richard Conlin (44.94%) is still beating Paige Miller (38.31%)

* Jan Drago (42.96%) is still stomping on Casey Corr (24.77%)

* Richard McIver (36.80%) is still edging past Robert Rosencrantz (31.77%) who is now TIED with Dwight Pelz (31.35%)

India Bodien drew the short straw and ended up down in Rainier Valley at the New Freeway Hall, where Socialist city council candidate Linda Averill is entertaining her supporters with a banjo player, an Indian buffet, Champagne, and, standing nearby, a somber man in a shirt reading: “Be silent, consume, and die.”

Josh Feit reports that earlier tonight, at Jan Drago’s party, he ran into Patrick Kylen, a member of the team that hopes to build the monorail.

Josh: I’m heading over to Casey Corr’s soon…
Kylen: Tell him *#&% you for me.
Josh: Why?
Kylen: His monorail position is bullshit. (And apparently Corr hasn’t returned a $300 donation that Kylen has demanded to have back.)

Amy Jenniges saw only one measly plate of food at Corr’s party. Here it is:

Amy Jenniges reports from Casey Corr’s party at T.S. McHugh’s that there are 21 beers on tap and a whole bunch of teenagers in the crowd. “Dullsville,” she says. Dan Savage, however, says: “Sounds like my kind of party!”

Meanwhile, an image we never thought we’d see. Casey Corr and Josh Feit, making nice:

Party Crasher made the mistake of beginning his night at the Municipal League bash, where the “bouncer” at the door told him, “The party was here, but now it’s gone.”

However, there was not much evidence that a party was ever there to begin with. Four people were standing in a fluorescent-lit room, and one of them, a chirpy intern, was shaking a vase in which a quarter could be heard rattling around. “We made $1.25 this year,” she announced. Then, after digging through the broken pretzels and empty Heineken bottles on the table, she found a penny, and raised the grand total to $1.26.

Word in the room was that the Municipal Leaguers tried to watch the first results on TV, but couldn’t get their TV to warm up in time.

Not long after this camera-phone picture was taken, Councilwoman Jean Godden (right) was seen heading straight from Council President Jan Drago’s “victory” party to the “victory” party of Drago’s opponent, Casey Corr. “I endorsed them both because they’re very good people,” Godden said.

The first results are in. Here are the highlights in the city of Seattle races:

* Al “Breathing Down Nickels’ Neck” Runte has 22.5% of the vote?!? (Nickels has 54.37%)

* Richard Conlin (43.57%) is beating Paige Miller (39.06%)

* Jan Drago (43.25%) is stomping on Casey Corr (25.39%)

* Richard McIver (36.49%) is edging past Robert Rosencrantz (32.83%) who is edging past Dwight Pelz (30.62%)

Here is the site you’ll want to bookmark and obsessively check, just like us!

The King County election results page… is right here.

Here we see the Stranger Election Control Board, at Two Bells Tavern in Belltown, beginning primary night the only way they know how.

Josh Feit: Merlot
Erica C. Barnett: Chardonnay
Party Crasher: Guinness
Amy Jenniges: Chardonnay
India Bodien: Designated Driver

The latest returns, the worst of the finger-food, the best-dressed candidates, the drunken kisses in the hallways… We’re going to slog it all, bringing you primary night in Seattle through the gimlet-eyed views of the Stranger Election Control Board.

Continue reading "TONIGHT! Live-Slogging the Primary" »

If you want to watch the election results tonight, but you’re freaked out by all the professional political types, check out the groovy setup at the Mirabeau Room in Queen Anne (529 Queen Anne Ave N).

They’re setting up two big TVs, and there will be a laptop for real-time results. There’ll also be lots to drink, and mostly normal people who are into local politics, but not tooooo into local politics.

For the rest of you weirdoes, political junkies, classical music, march of the wooden soldiers, all you protest kids: We’ll see you at the candidate parties. The Stranger Election Control Board is starting out at the Two Bells Tavern at Fourth Avenue and Bell Street.

Party addresses listed in link:

Continue reading "Primary Night Parties" »

Nouvelle Vague apply a suave bossa-nova sheen to several new-wave and punk chestnuts on their self-titled debut album (they also play tonight at Chop Suey, if you’re in the Seattle area).

It’s a pleasant shocker to hear these Frenchmen (and various chanteuses) tease out the sentimental ache and alluring melodies buried beneath these songs’ spiky exteriors. Particularly incongruous yet charming are Nouvelle Vague’s renditions of the Clash’s “Guns of Brixton” and Dead Kennedys’ “Too Drunk to Fuck.” Aging poonks and their younger acolytes may scream “blasphemy,” but, hey, these artists gave permission to have their songs reinterpreted. Ultimately, Nouvelle Vague shed interesting new light on tunes that have grown overly familiar over the last quarter century (especially Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart”). I, for one, “Just Can’t Get Enough.”

HorsesAss.org seconded our Linda Averill endorsement today. (And he doesn’t seem to like Corr much either.) Here’s what he had to say:

City Council, Position 4: Linda Averill

Fuck The Stranger! I mean really… fuck them! I was so absolutely sure that I would be the only person to the right of Trotsky’s ghost endorsing Linda Averill… and then those cirrhotic fuckers at The Stranger steal my thunder. Well fuck them.

Why Averill? Well mostly I just wanted to piss off my righty trolls by endorsing the only Freedom Socialist Party candidate on the ballot. And… well… The Stranger actually makes some good points in her defense. (But fuck them anyway.) But if you really can’t bring yourself to vote for Averill, I’d just like to remind you that Casey Corr was once an editorial writer for the Times. Need I say more?

It’s day five of captivity for the $300 I gave Greg Nickels. I’ve asked for the money back because it was obtained under false pretenses. I donated it to Greg’s re-election campaign because he supported the monorail project.

C’mon, Greg. When your boy Casey Corr morphed overnight into an anti-monorail hack, Natasha Jones, spokesperson for the Seattle Monorail Project, demanded that Corr return the $100 she had contributed to his campaign. Corr returned the money immediately.

I would like to think that the Nickels campaign is as efficient and ethical as the Corr campaign—or at least has a similar capacity for shame. It’s basically the same staff at both campaigns, so what’s taking so long?

For years—decades, maybe centuries—Capitol Hill’s Volunteer Park has been the perceived epicenter of furtive man-on-man action in the Pacific Northwest.

But according to a KING 5 news report, Volunteer Park’s title may soon be swiped by Redmond’s Marymoor Park, where authorities are cracking down on the growing number of men reported to be soliciting sex on the park grounds.

Full story—complete with creepy allegations of adult men offering to buy sexual favors from 15-year-old boys in the men’s room—here.

So I don’t know when it happened, but according to this post on Seattlest, Seattle Public Library cardholders now have access to the Oxford English Dictionary. (The post is actually about eBooks, but whatever.) The OED! I’ll tell you how excited this makes me: I put the link on my bookmarks bar instead of the menu. And now you can too.

Emblazoned on the T-shirt of a young woman walking in Capitol Hill today:

PLEASE DON’T INTERRUPT ME WHILE I’M IGNORING YOU

I just took a call from a perplexed voter, who wanted to follow our advice to write in Peter Sherwin for the monorail board. But our cheat sheet lists “John A. Sherwin.”

Here’s the deal: For a write-in to be counted, you have to fill in the person’s name, as it’s officially listed on their own voter registration. (We learned that back when we encouraged folks to write in Nick Licata—er, Nicholas J. Licata—for mayor.)

We called Peter, made him dig out his registration card (while refusing to tell him why), and asked him what his official name is. It’s John A. Sherwin.

This just in: Seattle Zombie Walk 2005. It’s possibly the weirdest event ever.

Halloween is coming…and I’m looking for creative people who want to stagger, lope, and crawl in Seattle Zombie Walk 2005. This entails amassing a horde of people, dressed as zombies, to walk the streets of Seattle.

Why?

Because it’s darn creepy, and I think the idea of zombie is a good vehicle for social commentary. I was inspired by the movie “Shawn of the Dead” and think it is hilarious to slowly become aware of neighbors as Zombies.

Continue reading "The idea of zombie is a good vehicle for social commentary" »

After you vote, that is?

If you’re looking for hot election-night party action (and who isn’t, really?), you can find all the juicy details below.

Not all parties are listed here; we’ll update the list as we get new information.

Continue reading "Whatcha Doing Tonight?" »

If there’s one thing that might make me better than most people it’s the simple fact that I consistently read the best (and hardest) books in the world. The present great book that I’m reading—and one which has the distinction of curing me of a Hegel Fever that lasted six hot months—is by French sociologist (an unfair designation, but necessary for this brief entry) Bruno Latour and has the startling title We Have Never Been Modern. Written in 1991, and translated into English by Catherine Porter in 1993, the book attempts to do several things, one of which is to establish a kind of anthropology of Western culture (I will not go into this). The book scintillates with ideas, and while reading one of its formative chapters (“1989: The Year of Miracles”) very early this morning, I came across a passage that spoke directly to our post-Katrina age. Prophetic Latour argues that after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the imagined triumph of capitalism was “short-lived” for this reason:

“In Paris, London and Amsterdam, this same glorious year 1989 witness[ed] the first conferences on the global state of the planet: for some observers [the conferences] symboliz[ed] the end of capitalism and its vain hopes of unlimited conquest and total dominion over nature. By seeking to reorient man’s exploitation of man toward an exploitation of nature by man, capitalism magnified both beyond measure. The repressed returns, and with a vengeance: the multitudes that were supposed to be saved from death fall back into poverty by the hundred millions; nature, over which we were supposed to gain absolute mastery, dominates us in an equally global fashion, and threatens us all. It is a strange dialectic that turns slave into man’s owner and master, and that suddenly informs us that we have invented ecocides as well as large-scale famine.”

Yes, Hegel returns with a bang at the end of this passage, but what is important (and concerns us) is the word “ecocides,” which is precisely what Bush can be accused of committing in New Orleans. Humanity’s next big step is to make a criminal law against this 21st century form of mass murder.

Several galleries around town (including Western Bridge) recently received this letter from Vital Five’s Greg Lundgren. Read it and laugh.

Molly Ivins, one of the best political columnists around, writes about how Bush’s cronies are benefiting in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and how they are still trying to stick it to the little guy. Here is an excerpt, the whole article is below:

Many a time in the past six years I have bit my tongue so I wouldn’t annoy people with the always obnoxious observation, “I told you so.” But, dammit it all to hell, I did tell you, and I’ve been telling you since 1994, and I am so sick of this man and everything he represents — all the sleazy, smug, self-righteous graft and corruption and “Christian” moralizing and cynicism and tax cuts for all his smug, rich buddies.

Continue reading "Molly Ivins Tells It" »

I voted, did you? Get on it!

While I’ve been demanding to know why Gov. Christine Gregoire won’t come out strong—or even come out specifically, or at all!—against I-912, David Goldstein over at horsesass.org is asking a similar question about Dino Rossi. Here’s one of Goldstein’s recent Rossi rants:

“Where’s Rossi?â€� Day 6 by Goldy, 09/19/2005, 9:58 AM I keep searching for clues as to “Where’s Rossi?â€� on Initiative 912… but according to Andrew Garber in this morning’s Seattle Times, Dino is clueless:

The campaign, in its polling, found that former Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi could have a significant impact on how people vote if he endorsed or opposed I-912. Rossi said recently he has no position.

No position? Gimme a break. This is a guy who wants to be governor, and he has no position on an initiative that will determine the ability of the state to start addressing its massive transportation infrastructure needs? He has no position on a transportation package that passed both houses of the Legislature with a bipartisan majority, and which is strongly backed by his longtime patrons in the business community? He has no position on an initiative that has been sold by its backers as revenge for Rossi’s loss at the polls and in the courts?

Actually, what he told Garber was that he was not going to take a position, not that he didn’t actually have one, and I really have trouble believing that my friends in the MSM will let Rossi get away with this prevarication. I-912 rode Rossi’s election contest trial onto the ballot, and if he wants to be taken seriously in WA politics, he has an obligation to take a public stance, one way or the other.

In a companion piece, Ralph Thomas raises the ominous question of “Who’ll be to blame if viaduct, 520 bridge collapse?”

Politicians, clerics and ethicists agree we have a moral obligation to fix infrastructure such as highways and levees that we know pose a risk to the public.

But where does that obligation lie?

Well, if I-912 passes due to Rossi’s silence, and the resulting delays result in a catastrophic collapse, I know one person I’m going blame: Dino Rossi.

It’s definitely worth going to Goldstein’s site to follow his Rossi watch from Day 1.