Sticking with the Seattle Way

...On social issues, Nickels came across as a standard-issue social-services liberal...

...But of the two Democrats left in the race— big-government politico and King County Council veteran Greg Nickels, who promised the moon and a light-rail system, and conservative city attorney Mark Sidran, nicknamed Giuliani Junior by friend and foe, who insisted he would hold the line on spending and refused to rule out tax hikes, service cuts, or privatization of nonessential services—voters chose the big-spending Nickels...

...Most of his ads mocked his opponents rather than touting his strengths...

...The Pike Place Market, revitalized beginning in the early '70s, has been a symbol of the city's revival, but the large population of homeless people and drug abusers who float up and down Pike Street, neighboring the central business district and the Seattle Art Museum, receives less attention...

...ed Schell in the first round of the two-round, nonpartisan election, making him the first incumbent mayor to be so dumped in 64 years...

...He also received support from the business community, both major dailies, Governor Gary Locke, and ex-governors from both parties...

...Tim Eyman, a private citizen, pushed through Initiative 747— supported by every county in Washington State except King County— which limits property tax increases to one percent annually unless citizens vote for higher rates...

...He squeaked into office with just under 51 percent...

...To add to these woes, Seattle's cost of living continues to rise, even as the economy sours...

...The prospects are for a Seattle of endless process and no progress, and for a light-rail system that goes nowhere useful for many years to come...

...Next year Eyman plans to file his fourth anti-tax initiative in as many years, this one to roll back vehicle and boat taxes...

...City attorney Sidran worked to change this culture with ordinances and enforcement, while Nickels has offered more of the same big-government solutions whose chief effect so far has been to expand the public-sector workforce...

...The police inaction that allowed the WTO riots, and the brutal police response that they belatedly provoked, were followed by a Mardi Gras riot in which a young white man was murdered by blacks and several minority men were shot by white police officers, all later cleared in administrative and judicial trials...

...Sidran ran a negative campaign...

...They should have prompted Seattle to put its house in order before it falls into structural disarray...

...Nickels, ever one to emphasize procedure, boasted of his years spent fighting for rail and his seat on the Sound Transit Board (he chairs the Finance Committee), although the board has presided over huge cost overruns without so much as breaking ground for the rail system...

...The city prospered when business boomed, and now may follow the tech industry in its downward spiral...

...voters oustHarry Siegel is a writer and researcher living in Brooklyn...

...The disasters of the Schell administration, which had more to do with passive leadership than with deeper urban infirmities, were a wake-up call...

...He proposed few policies, but stressed that he would not increase spending or break ground on rail anytime soon...

...The "Seattle Way of Government" is passivity, reinforced both by an initiative process that citizens have used to limit government's power and by turf battles among overlapping jurisdictions in the city and King County...

...Boeing moved its corporate headquarters to Chicago earlier this year and announced plans to lay off 20,000 Seattle area workers even before the one-two punch of post-attack declines in airplane orders and the company's loss to Lockheed-Martin of the $200-billion Joint Strike Fighter contract from the Pentagon...

...What should be prime commercial real estate is dotted with check-cashing joints, a needle-exchange center, a storefront ministry, and the like...

...In their first-round photo finish, Sidran carried many more neighborhoods than Nickels, but by much smaller margins...

...But the intervening years have tarnished this once golden city...

...Both candidates ran on a single issue: an extremely expensive rail system, proposed to solve Seattle's rapidly worsening traffic problems...

...Sidran condemned the board's inefficiency and its plan for an initial 14-mile light-rail line connecting no important destinations, but failed to offer an alternative...

...If Nickels governs as he's promised, the city can look forward to a rolling disaster, with a growing debt and a sinking economy...

...Nickels, the consummate politician, had many get-out-the-vote operatives and even more promises...

...Virtually every Seattleite one speaks with seemed resigned to these remnants of the downtown of 30 years ago...

...The mayoral race, just ended after a prolonged vote count, shows that Seattleites haven't acknowledged these harsh new realities...

...BY HARRY SIEGEL Seattle FIVE YEARS AGO, Seattle was riding so high on its tech sector that Newsweek's cover announced: "Everyone else is moving there...

...The stretch is unpleasant by day and unsafe at night, and its residents render the Market's restrooms unusable...

...Should you...

...His voters were consistently less enthusiastic than Nickels's, and less likely to vote for Sidran in the future once the threat of a second Schell term was removed...

...Having been supported at the polls by service-sector workers, he seems certain to sponsor their agenda...

...His candidacy was assisted by the influx of affluent property owners during the boom years of the '90s, plus his own deep pockets and the public's desire for tough leadership in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks...

...In one debate, Nickels swore to hold budget increases to the rate of inflation, except for transportation, public safety, and neighborhoods—some 60 percent of the budget...

...Even if Nickels's spending plans hadn't been excessive, he'd still have faced extremely restricted means of raising revenue without cutting services...

...City attorney Sidran's crackdowns on the homeless, nightclubs, and unlicensed drivers ran against the mellow grain of Seattle politics, so much so that there are at least five hate websites devoted to him...

...Voters were left with a choice between continuing a documented failure or giving up on an enterprise essential to reducing traffic congestion and pollution...

...He has bragged that where other communities discouraged their homeless and mentally ill populaces, Seattle was committed to providing them services...

...The rapid decline of the internet economy, accelerated by the September 11 attacks, exposed Seattle's continued reliance on a few volatile market sectors...

...As if that weren't enough, Mayor Paul Schell, campaigning for reelection, was beaten about the head by a bullhorn-wielding black fringe candidate for mayor...

...Pending a better proposal, he said he would put the money into improving the inconvenient and underused buses...

...It almost happened, but the Seattle Way is the path of least resistance...

...He pulled a classic liberal stunt, holding conferences with black community leaders where he questioned whether Sidran could legitimately govern the whole city...

...Tourism is down, Internet layoffs occur daily, and venture capital investment has fallen...