Seattle Skating Rink: The Finale
The Mayor of Seattle is now the soon to be former Mayor of Seattle – in large part due to his miserable performance in dealing with last year’s snow storm that turned Seattle into a skating rink.
Mr. Nickels, a Democrat and the current president of the United States Conference of Mayors, has led a national effort to have cities reduce their carbon emissions. He was also an early supporter of Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy in a city where Mr. Obama won decisively.
Yet while the mayor’s profile rose across the country, he was never as popular at home, and he often frustrated voters, particularly in the last year.
The city’s poor response to a record snowstorm in December left many residents stranded on unplowed streets and angry with the mayor’s initial lack of contrition. Then in January, Mr. Nickels joined state leaders in approving a $4.2 billion project to replace an aging elevated highway downtown, known as the Alaskan Way Viaduct, with a four-lane, two-level tunnel. The decision came after Seattle residents had rejected a version of the tunnel in a 2007 advisory vote. For many voters it reinforced impressions that the mayor had a domineering style contrary to the city’s deliberative political nature.
Given the utterly disastrous response of Nickels’ administration to the snowstorm (posted about here), I would caution that this election result is most likely a result of local issues. In other words, don’t read this as a result of Nickels’ support of Obama. I rather suspect most folks in Seattle voted him out because he was inept and he did not listen to them.
(THAT lesson might well apply nationally, however.)
The “winners” of the preliminary primary election don’t look all that great – at least from what little is said about them.
Just closing the loop on an old post here. I’m not all that interested in Seattle, frankly, having spent a month there one week on business.
By Bleepless, August 22, 2009 @ 8:22 pm
One of the two candidates who outpolled Nickels is a greenie who opposes the tunnel for several reasons, but not the decisive one: it would pass through landfill which was added to increase the amount of dry land there. When — not if — the big earthquake happens, that area will liquify. There will be nothing left of the tunnel.