And the Candidates Are…
The city council spent the day interviewing 14 candidates for council position #9, and I spent the day watching them.
For the interviews, the council split up into two groups and spoke with candidates for 24 minutes each, asking predetermined questions sent to candidates by email earlier this week. One group met in council chambers; the other in a cramped conference room outside the mayor’s office on the seventh floor. Virtually no members of the public showed up to watch the interviews; the audience, such as it was, was made up almost exclusively of reporters and city staff. Unlike last week’s parade of wannabes, unknowns and also-rans, today’s aspirants were serious contenders, identified as “semifinalists” by the council on Tuesday.
What distinguished today’s candidates from one another, more than their political leanings (all are liberal Democrats), were their specific positions on issues from the Alaskan Way Viaduct to bus-rapid transit. I won’t try to summarize all their responses here; instead, I’ll highlight a few moments that grabbed my attention:
• Dolores Sibonga, a former city council member who says she won’t run for reelection if she gets the position (but didn’t rule out the possibility of running for another seat), said she supported “increased bus service” now that the monorail to Ballard and West Seattle is dead, but had little response to council members who pointed out that buses, unlike elevated or subway trains, get stuck in traffic. “I wasn’t altogether sold on the monorail because it… took people off buses,” Sibonga said. “Elevated transportation cuts light and air and access for people on the stret.”
• Venus Velazquez, a public-relations consultant who some say has been difficult to work with, seemed to rub some council members the wrong way when she answered pointed questions about how she would respond to minorities who oppose linking gay rights to civil rights by laughing uncomfortably and dodging. “The bus is big enough for all of us… When one group goes down the rest of us go down.” (Velazquez also had an annoying tendency to speak in corporate PR jargon, e.g. “building bridges,” “keep everyone moving up the economic ladder,” “all things being equal,” “finding win-win solutions,” “bringing everybody to the table,” etc.)
• Attorney Joann Francis took a tough stance on police accountability, supporting indemnification from officer lawsuits and access to unredacted officer complaints for Office of Police Accountability Review Board members. She did raise a few eyebrows, however, when she talked about her work as an attorney for First and Goal, the Paul Allen corporation that built and operates Seahawks Stadium. And she floundered a little when asked what cuts she would make in difficult budget times, stating the obvious “you listen to the public in terms of specific priorities and go to basic services that the government’s responsible for” without answering the question.
• Sally Clark, the Lifelong AIDS Alliance employee and former aide to ex-city council member Tina Podlodowski, came across as poised and well-versed in city issues, while Stella Chao seemed vague and unspecific, talking generally about “working collaboratively toward common goals” without identifying what those goals might be.
• Javier Valdez responded pointedly to Tom Rasmussen’s question about whether he would be an independent council member, given that he has worked for the last five years under the mayor as an employee of City Light: “You were the head of the mayor’s office for senior citizens [when you ran for office], council member Rasmussen, and I think you’ve really done your job remarkably well,” he said.
• Verlene Jones, a union organizer, elicited some puzzled looks when she referred to the Alaskan Way Viaduct as “one of the beauties of Seattle,” continuing effusively, “It’s very rare that you can call a freeway a beauty. I would hate to lose that beautiful vision I have every morning of our city that gets me going, gets me pumped, makes me happy to be here.”
• Sharon Maeda, alone among all the candidates, expressed interest in a proposal to tear down the Alaskan Way Viaduct and replace its capacity with improvements to surface streets downtown, noting that while she was living at Harbor Steps, across from the viaduct, “I would occasionally see little pieces of concrete falling off it.”
On Monday, January 23, the council will announce its list of six finalists. They’ll interview those finalists throughout the week, and will likely choose a new council member on Thursday. Peter Steinbrueck tried unsuccessfully on Tuesday to convince his colleagues to hold a public hearing on the three top contenders, but his effort failed, and no public hearing is planned.
For more on the top 14 contenders, see the council’s web site.
Excellent work!