"Nice and tight."
—Joe Mallahan on the closeness of the seats to one another behind the dais at the City Club's primary election debate last night. This prompted a weird running gag about Mallahan's "closeness" to Jan Drago, and then Mallahan made a joke about no-chance-in-hell candidate Normal Sigler, who was sitting at the end of the table and is a matchmaker by profession: "First I just want to say Norman Sigler brought Jan and I together."

"I believe Seattle needs new leadership. It is time to hit the reset button."
—Jan Drago, first words out of her mouth. As if she's not aware that she has been on the Seattle City Council—that has had a very prominent role in Seattle leadership—for 16 years. Before you assume she was just misspeaking, at the Friends of Seattle debate a couple weeks ago, she started out by saying, "We need change!" Um, Jan?

"Thank you. James Donaldson. Candidate for mayor."
—First words out of James Donaldson's mouth, but he was the last of the six candidates to make an opening statement. And all of them are candidates for mayor. And it was a debate for the mayor's race. He said "candidate for mayor" several times, every time with a deer-in-headlights expression. Was weird.

"I came here and started my own small business. Haagen-Dazs ice cream shit business."
—Jan Drago, giving her biography. She corrected herself: "small business." Not really sure how you mean to say "small" and stumble onto "shit," but it definitely happened.

"Ideate."
—Joe Mallahan's favorite word. He talked about T-Mobile businesses he's "ideated" and how when he's been confronted with problems he's brought people together to "ideate" a solution.

"And I believe we can achieve that within a genervation."
—Jan Drago once again misspeaking. Funny thing about when Drago misspeaks: It's not like she's talking so fast that the words come out wrong. Quite the opposite. She talks really, really slowly. And overarticulates. And still the words come out wrong. And her s's slide all over the place. The only way to describe it: It sounds like a very drunk person talking. "And I believe. We can achieve that. Within a genervation." Then as she sat down she spilled her glass of water everywhere, including onto Mallahan.

"Glory days are gone, huh?"
—Joe Mallahan to James Donaldson, the former SuperSonic, on Donaldson's answer to a hold-up-a-yes-or-no-sign question about whether tax revenues should go to improve Key Arena. He held up a NO. Everyone else in the race held up a YES.

"I don't think that's an appropriate thing to do in a panel like this."
—Mike McGinn, after moderator Ross Reynolds asked everyone (another hold-up-a-yes-or-no-sign question) "Should Grace Cunican be fired?" Cunican is the director of the Seattle Department of Transportation. Everyone responded very quickly, as if with glee. Even though the answers differed (Nickels held up a NO), the question itself seemed strange, lacking any complexity, a binary public humiliation of a person not in the room. McGinn refrained from answering, which went over well. "That's a really tacky question," someone a couple rows behind me said audibly.

"We should all work together to create a city that has never been seen in the history of the world."
—Norman Sigler, being crazy. He said it emphatically, and it was his closing statement.

"Seattle is not a broken city. Seattle is a city that people want to live in."
—Mayor Greg Nickels, in his closing statement.