David Brewster, a founding member of Post Alley, has a long career in publishing, having founded Seattle Weekly, Sasquatch Books, and Crosscut.com. His civic ventures have been Town Hall Seattle and FolioSeattle.
As it turned out, the arrival of solutions, maps, and new leaders will be delayed and contested and far from certain. It will be a slow build, or maybe a slow fade.
Past mayors such as Greg Nickels, Ed Murray, and Jenny Durkan have tended to combine three vote- and donor-rich lanes: labor, urbanist greens and developers, and business. The failure of Mayor Durkan to hold that coalition together indicates the need for a new trifecta this time.
Covid has created many empty lots, vacant storefronts (about 20,000 in London by one count), and offices. So why not capitalize on these neglected spaces and spur new enterprises?
There's no Jim Ellis or Warren Magnuson or Establishment to craft big political deals, so some group needs to convene peace talks to see if some win-win proposals can be forged and presented for public debate.
Vance's office has long investigated Trumps for fraud. But there's a hitch. Vance, 66, is still undecided about running for a new term in 2021, has already drawn some opponents and has raised very little money for a reelection campaign. The betting is he won't seek a new term.
Local dailies have great range in topics but not a lot of national synergy. Chalkbeat, by contrast, has a single topic and is "national." In this sense it is much more attuned to thy way people consume news these days -- national standards, single topic.
Banks, Baby Bells, law firms, architects, Boeing, downtown property developers, media, financial firms, Safeco -- all now controlled by national owners, who apply standard formulas and bottom-line thinking. Seattle is a "province" again.
Nothing like a roaring recession to focus the mind on economic recovery, and to goad the Seattle-area business community to bestir itself. Let me cite the ways. And the obstacles.
(Big opportunity missed: Biden saying "Defund the Police" was a terrible slogan.) Biden's image campaign as healer also risked discounting by cynical voters of how well this hopey-feely thing would work out. (Yeah, sure!)
Hampson expresses a "high" degree of frustration with the District, and has drawn board president Zachary DeWolf and fellow member Brandon Hersey into her impatient camp.