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.
Those who aspire to cabinet posts don't just sit by the phone. It takes an active and expensive campaign to be in the running, and so far Inslee does not appear to be raising money for this effort or working the phones.
Overall, I read the election as overwhelmed voters ratifying the American system of checks and balances. Get rid of Trump, but keep the GOP Senate and the Supreme Court.
One example of a benefit: Less commuting, since downtown offices are less needed. A related gain: less deification of density. Urbanism will spread from the hub to the satellite towns, redefining and spreading the attractions of humane density.
The Seattle Repertory Theater (as the name recalls) once deployed a repertory method. It commenced in 1963, right after the Seattle World's Fair, when the repertory idea was the hot idea for regional, non-commercial theater.
The splitting up of functions and blurring of responsibility stems from the days of Progressivism and Populism, where the only way to counter the railroads' conquest of the Legislature was to fracture power. Once there is this proliferation of offices and semi-responsibility, it becomes very difficult to remove the crabgrass.
He never could say what he'd do in the next term, so busy was he in finding enemies and boasting. No empathy, as usual. Crazy attacks. The moderator saved him from going on and on, but the frothing personality was there to behold.
In Portland, at least, there are early warnings to incumbents. Embattled, "embaffled" Mayor Ted Wheeler had seemed a shoo-in, but months of nightly demonstrations and violence that he seems powerless to end have now put Wheeler in a tie with his challenger,
The police unions would fight back furiously, counting on rural legislators in state houses, alarmed homeowners, and Congressional tough-on-crime lawmakers to protect their sweet deals.
The Mayor is now tempted by a political strategy of letting the council go around the bend, drawing a firm line of difference (particularly over the Navigation teams), and then watching the council get blamed as backlash sets in.