Joe Mallahan, the T-Mobile executive who's running for mayor, is asked if he has any accomplishments in public policy with regard to the environment, crime, or the arts.

TO JOE MALLAHAN: Joe, you refer to the city all the time as being like a business. The city is not a business. It’s not a corporation. What are you talking about?
MALLAHAN: I have never said that city government is like a business. What I’ve said is that my management skills, I think, are directly applicable to fixing what’s wrong in city government. There’s no question city government is a big, complex animal. Bunch of different stakeholders, bunch of different functions of city government. What I have tried to tell people is that my management style is open and accountable.

By "stakeholders" you mean citizens? I don’t understand your terminology.
MALLAHAN: Sure. Stakeholders are certainly the residents of Seattle, the employees of Seattle, unions, quite frankly Olympia, King County, all different stakeholders in the success of Seattle, along with business owners. So, what I mean is there’s a number of competing interests. In the corporate world, it’s a little bit more insulated. You've got the customer and you’ve got the stockholder essentially, right? That's not to say there aren’t political situations inside of a large company, right? A big company actually has a lot of politics, and I have succeeded politically in those sort of environments because again, I have very high integrity, people know that when I’m speaking I am being very frank and honest, and I hold myself accountable as a leader. I'm open and accountable. When I launch a big project, I bring people in from every department, and I say hey, here’s what we’re trying to get done, here’s the vision that a small group of us built, what’s your opinion. And every stakeholder in that environment will say, 'Well here’s three objectives I’m trying to meet, can we do those in this project as well?' or 'Here’s two big risks, Joe, you hadn't thought about.' And what I found out from my community organizing skills that I developed in another part of my career, listening very closely and feeding back to people what they’ve said, and then making a decision and coming back and saying, 'Hey, you know what? You wanted Objectives A through C? I can't get done A and B, but I can get C done, and I understand your concern about A and B, but this decision's not meeting that goal, we'll come back and try to get it done on the next project.'

I'm wondering if you can point to anything in your biography that is an accomplishment with regard to public policy in the environment, in crime, or in the arts. One of each would be really helpful. It’s something that I can’t find in your biography—those three categories. The environment, crime/public safety, and the arts.
MALLAHAN: Well I think in Chicago, I, for those of you who don’t know, I went to University of Chicago for an MBA in finance, which by the way is the home of Reaganomics. I intentionally went to that school to hone my liberal perspective and confirm my suspicions that most conservative economics are poppycock to use a politically correct term. But after graduating there, my first couple jobs were actually in Chicago, and I had an opportunity, while I was running a company, to get very involved in community organizing with the Industrial Areas Foundation, which is a Saul Alinsky group that actually trained Barack Obama. I didn't work with Barack Obama, different time frame. But there I was very involved with organizing neighborhoods to stand up to City Hall and deliver basic services like police protection. The environment, you know, I was born and raised on the Puget Sound, my mom and dad used to plan our vacations around the tides. And that's so that they could feed their nine children from the bounty of the Puget Sound. Quite honestly, other than making donations to environmental groups, that hasn't been the thing I've focused on. Since coming back to Seattle nine years ago, I've been primarily focused on issues around children at risk, I suppose you could pitch that as a crime initiative, but that was really children focused. So you had to say crime, environment and you had one other.

The arts.
MALLAHAN: I strongly believe that supporting the arts is a public responsibility. I'm a relative patron of the arts, I'm an artist myself, but I haven't actively supported the arts financially or through my…

What kind of art do you make?
MALLAHAN: Mostly painting, acrylic painting. I've done monotypes and other stuff like that.

Can I ask you in what ways you're a patron? Where do you go? What museums or theaters?
MALLAHAN: SAM, Concerts at the Park.

Are you a member at SAM?
MALLAHAN: I’m not sure I am at the moment. I was at, who'd they have in town, Edward Hopper. I went to Edward Hopper, that was the last time I was in SAM. But I'm a consumer is perhaps a better term than patron. Yeah, if patron means donor, I’ve, other than purchasing tickets—that's what I meant to say.

As someone in the office said after the meeting, "So, the one thing he's done for the environment is he's eaten it."

Previously in mayoral endorsement transcripts: Part 1, part 2.