About one hundred people—mostly architects and Seattle gentry—jammed into the back room of Spitfire in Belltown last night to devour bacon-wrapped prawns and munch on chips at the kickoff for Marty Kaplan's campaign for city council. Kaplan, an architect who serves on the city’s planning commission, spoke, too. But his speech, while delivered with a rousing cadence, stuck to stale talking points. As Kaplan has done again and again, he painted Licata as a Viaduct-hugging, business hating, Sonics-evicting curmudgeon.

“We have an incumbent who doesn’t look to the future,” Kaplan said. “My opponent is living in the ‘70s.” He adds, “He took pride in kicking the Seattle Sonics out of town.”

But getting Kaplan to explain what he does support—rather than who he opposes—takes some probing. He briefly assailed the business and occupation tax in his speech, but when asked afterward what he would do about it, Kaplan said, “I don’t want to talk about that right now.” He did, however, jump on the recent Mayor Greg Nickels bandwagon in seeking to repeal the “head tax,” which taxes businesses for each employee who doesn’t take public transit to work. “It’s a disincentive to small business,” he says. Kaplan also supports a tunnel instead of a viaduct, and pushing for more development in South Lake Union, as does Nickels. “We should invest in housing and jobs; where we should do that is South Lake Union. Where is Nick on this? He is absolutely against this,” he says. So while Kaplan is the anti-Licata, his positions sounds a lot like the mayor’s. And it’s unclear that the council needs a yes-man for the mayor.

Kaplan, despite running on a pro-business message, will have a tough row to hoe in this race. Licata won reelection with 77.68 percent of the vote in 2005. Licata has also out-raised Kaplan, by $76,870 to $42,385.

But the competition could challenge Licata to become a stronger council member. While he has been a stalwart champion of accountability and criminal-justice reform on the council, Licata has been on the lonely end of plenty eight-to-one votes in recent years.

And the campaign for Kaplan, meanwhile, could help him build name recognition and run for council in future years. But he'll first need to figure out what he's for (that doesn't sounds like a mayor's office press release). To his credit: Kaplan is smart and charismatic—qualities Seattle could use more of in its politicians.