Seattle Press on Line - Mayoral candidates on district elections

Mayoral candidates on district elections

Sep 13, 2001 -- Seattle Press: Where do you stand on City Council elections by district, rather than at large?

Charlie Chong: I supported district elections in 1995. I believe all nine council members should be elected by districts, with no at-large seats. The at-large seats, when proposed, are to appease the downtown power elite—many of whom don't even live in Seattle.

Max Englerius: While I haven't reviewed in detail the pros and cons of restricting candidates to run for or from a particular district, I can understand how we wouldn't want a slew of officials residing in a particular district [and] improving only their own districts, at the expense of other districts. On the other hand, I'm not sure that we should want to impose too-rigid limitations that could preempt good people from throughout the City from running for office. Perhaps the compromise is that only two people of a particular district could [serve on] the council at a time. But even that could disqualify good people from attending the Council.
At this point, I would prefer to undertake a thorough analysis on this question before committing to a particular stance on this issue.

Bob Hegamin: I totally support the concept. In 1987, I prepared and submitted just such a charter amendment for district elections. It failed to collect enough signatures.

Richard Lee: Yes, I support Seattle City Council elections by district, in fact, in my Video Voters’ Guide statement I say that if downtown doesn’t get wise to what the neighborhoods want, then the many neighborhoods of Seattle should seriously consider secession like Shoreline did a few years ago. There are some legal technicalities, but the somewhat anti-Seattle state legislature could obviously be of some help. Basically, the classic answer to all constituent concerns in Seattle seems to be, “Hey, there are only about 12 of us running this whole city! And so who has time for your concerns?!” With district city council seats or secession, localities are broken down into much more reasonable “little cities” of 50,000 or so. And then you get better government, not the imperial Rome routine we hear so much of now from the corporation we know as the City of Seattle.

Greg Nickels: I support City Council elections by district. As a county councilman, I am elected by district. this increases accountability for both the public and elected officials.

Paul Schell: The people of Seattle voted no on this in 1995 and I support their decision. Since I’ve been Mayor I’ve developed a constructive relationship with the current City Council and we’ve worked together on critical issues such as quadrupling funding for transportation needs, increasing housing production for low- and middle-income people, tripling funds to support improvements in our neighborhoods, and developing environmental policies that have become national models. Together we’ve developed policies to strengthen relationships between our police and the communities they serve, and doubled our funding to help homeless people gain stability and employment. These efforts have served all the people of Seattle.
While disagreement and compromise are a natural part of healthy government, I believe our current City Council system offers an effective body of separately elected representatives to respond to the needs of all Seattle citizens.

Mark Sidran: I have an open mind on the issue. Reasonable arguments can be made on both sides, but I’m not convinced there’s any particular advantage to moving from our current system to one of election by district.
Entrenched incumbency does not seem to have been a problem in recent years. Other than a lack of a conservative voice on the City Council, diversity does not seem to be a problem nor does the “Downtown Establishment” seem to dominate Council races. District systems present their own problems such as “balkanization” and incumbency entrenchment in their own right. Witness how rare the turnover of incumbents in King County, state legislative or congressional district elections.
I think the greater problem is not our governance structure, but the nature of politics today. Many qualified candidates are deterred by some of the negatives of modern politics and many of those negatives would seem to be present in both at-large and district systems.

Reader Comments

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Bob	Jun 04, 2003	seattle	metro mechanic
I would like to sign the district election petition, in a quick search on district elections, I was un-able to locate anywhere to go to sign up, or get involved and help. I would do this. I'm not a deyed in the wool political activist myself, so I'm not really sure where to start. Would it be a conflict of interest for you guys to publish contacts regarding the district elections? It would be helpfull to know anyway, Even if in a reply to this E-mail.