Mayoral Candidate Joe Mallahan's Politics

Joe Mallahan is running for Mayor of Seattle.

The former T-Mobile executive was the business-backed candidate a number of year ago in a race involving Mayor Greg Nickels, Mike McGinn, and himself. Mallahan and McGinn pushed Nickles out in the primary. McGinn went on to win the general by a small margin, becoming the only progressive Mayor we’ve had in any recent memory. (Full disclosure, McGinn endorsed me when I ran for office and we share similar priorities.)

Mallahan is back and many are wondering whether he can pull off a second upset.

Interestingly, he insists he was miscast as a centrist last time, and he is certainly campaigning in a way that doesn’t look terribly centrist. As such, there is some debate in insider circles as to what political “lane” Mallahan is in.

Seattle has so many!

Just for fun, I count seven off the top of my head. They are:

1. MAGA Republicans like Ann Davison, candidates like Andrea Suarez, or youtube grifters like Jonathan Choe

2. Paul-Ryan’s-budget-magic-is-real-conservatives-but-pride-flags-are-cool-so-we-call-ourselves-centrists like Sara Nelson, Rob Saka, Maritza Rivera, the Chamber, and the Seattle Times Editorial board

3. Dems sitting between #2’s “centrists” and actual moderates - in this case think Bruce Harrell, Cathy Moore, and, Joy Hollingworth

4. Truly mainstream or moderate Dems like Dow Constantine, Claudia Balducci or Dan Strauss

5. Progressive Dems like Alexis Mercedes-Rinck, Girmay Zahilay, Teresa Mosqueda, George Baron and, least interesting of all - me! =)

6. Democratic Socialists like Shaun Scott

7. Trotskyites like Kshama Sawant

I’d say at 80% of the population is somewhere between 2 and 6.

(I expect I’m gonna get some feedback on this list, and yes, some of these folks fit in multiple categories. For example, The Seattle Times is reactionary on taxes for the rich, uninformed and Malthusian (or Thanosian?) when it comes to housing and migration to Seattle, but surprisingly decent on the topic of education.)

Mallahan too crosses some lines. Is he a maverick, or is just finding his policy footing?

On his site, he embraces some strong stances - pushing for police accountability, to restore the $100M in funding cuts from affordable housing, and for up-zoning to increase housing affordability. But he has avoided talking about where the money for his proposals would come from, and he was the Chamber’s guy when he ran over a decade ago. Mallahan retorts, however, that that the Chamber’s PAC supporting him took over his public profile and made him look more conservative than he actually was.

His history of donations is, on balance, pretty progressive. He gave $2000 to the fight for Marriage equality in 2012, and has donated to Dow Constantine. He has also donated to Progressive heroes like Rep Nicole Macri and Judge Pooja Vaddadi, and formidable progressive candidates like Melissa Taylor and Michael Maddux. The one major exception is a donation to Tim Burgess in 2011. But the balance of his giving pretty strongly aligns with Stranger-backed candidates.

Like Walt Whitman, and frankly, most voters, Joe probably just contains multitudes. While I gave Katie Wilson my vouchers, I am quite certain Mallahan would be a huge improvement over the serially disappointing incumbent.

And props to him for pulling no punches when it comes to Harrell. As I mentioned last week, Mallahan put up a site highlighting Bruce’s problem with women and his protection of abusers.

This is great. The public needs to know about this Mayor’s many shortcomings, because the press rarely reminds us when they talk about him. Perhaps Mallahan can fill in some of the gap left by those establishment folks who don’t want to upset the famously grudge-holding Mayor.