LET THE GAMES BEGIN
Early City Council Candidates Take Their Marks

This November, FIve of SEATTLE'S nine city council seats — positions 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9 — are up for grabs . Making for some ludicrous maneuvering, all the positions are "at large." City guidelines describe eligible candidates this way: "He" must be a citizen of the U.S., and must be registered to vote in Seattle. The following 13 power-mad freaks — He's and She's alike — have put their hats in the ring. (The deadline for declaring candidacy is July 30.) In addition to looking at the candidate's election finance reports, we asked each candidate to boil their campaign down to a bumper sticker, and as part of our expert psychographic profiling techniques, we asked each candidate what magazine(s) they subscribe to. (If the candidates couldn't be reached by press time, we excluded the bumper sticker and magazine subscription categories, except in the case of Charlie Chong, where we felt compelled to fill in the blanks.)

Charlie Chong
Running for Position 7.
(Tina Podlodowski's open seat)
Bio: The 73-year-old former federal bureaucrat turned neighborhood activist is a folk hero in West Seattle. A former mayoral contender, he's a right wing/left wing populist who accomplished little during his short stint on the city council, weighing in on the losing side of numerous 8-1 votes.
Money Raised: $17,880/Spent $1,525.72.
Noteworthy Donor: $400 from Richard Smith, owner of the Five Point, a Seattle Center neighborhood bar that bugs nearby condo neighbors.
Campaign Bumper Sticker: "We were over at a friend's house, and they were talking about housing issues, which are important, but there are more critical issues; snow plows, or salmon, maybe, which is an important issue. Fish are important. Seattle is a diverse community, and I celebrate diversity, but I want to be clear that neighborhoods are the backbone of the city."
Magazine Subscription: Jack and Jill.

Cheryl "It Takes a City" Chow
Running for Position 1.
(Sue Donaldson's open seat)
Bio: Undistinguished school principal turned undistinguished politician, age 53. During her tenure on the city council, Chow quietly sided with the Nordstrom family, the Mariners lobby, and Sidran. Chow's campaign kick-off was hosted by former Seattle mayor-turned-slumlord Wes Uhlman, where $16,000 was raised.
Money Raised: $23,957/Spent $10,150.
Noteworthy Donor: $400 from Joel Horn, real estate developer (think new Amazon digs in Beacon Hill) and um, citizen activist (think advocate for the Seattle Commons initiative).
Campaign Bumper Sticker: "Cheryl Chow will connect children and families with city support and programs."
Magazine Subscription: Newsweek, Girl Scout Totem Council, Glamour, and Modern Maturity.

Curt Firestone
Running for Position 5.
(incumbent Margaret Pageler)
Bio: Firestone's lefty activist credentials include co-founder of the Seattle Progressive Coalition, organizer of the Seattle Green Party, and past V.P. of the Washington State Rainbow Coalition. At a community meeting last winter on Capitol Hill, he was the only landlord to speak in favor of rent control.
Money Raised: $20,048.07/Spent $2,956.70.
Noteworthy Donor: $100 from Nic Warmenhoven, an unofficial organizer of the monthly anarchist Critical Mass bike rides.
Campaign Bumper Sticker: I will be highly accessible and visible to the community, and I will be an advocate for the residents who live and work here, and I should be and will be held accountable to them for my actions. (Hope he's got a big bumper on his '99 Subaru station wagon.)
Magazine Subscription: The Nation, The Progressive, and Boating.

Alec Fisken
No position declared.
Bio: Fisken, 51, is a former investment banker for Prudential Bache Capital Funding. He's also a former publisher; he recently sold a small trade publication called Marine Digest. In the 1970s, he published a weekly called the Seattle Sun.
Money Raised: $25,000/Spent $4,900.
Noteworthy Donor: Fisken appears to be the downtown development community candidate of choice. Contributions include $400 from former Downtown Seattle Association Chair Judith Runstad, $400 from Nordstrom development consultant John Finke, and $400 from Gogerty Stark Marriott, Inc.
Campaign Bumper Sticker: "I can't get it in a bumper sticker exactly, but I think the key is that Seattle can do a lot more to make it possible for citizens to move around comfortably, inexpensively, and reliably without a car. Maybe people don't have to own a car."
Magazine Subscription: The New Yorker.

Lenora Jones
No position declared.
Bio: Mystery candidate Lenora Jones ran an unsuccessful campaign for position 3 in 1997, when the Seattle Times gave her the following endorsement: "insufficient information to rate."
Money Raised: $0/Spent $0.
Noteworthy Donor: none, apparently.

Dawn Mason
Running for Position 9.
(Martha Choe's open seat)
Bio: Mason, 54, served two terms as a Washington state legislator between 1995-98. The southeast Seattle resident has early endorsements from the Firefighters Union Local 27, the Seattle Police Management Association, and the Seattle Progressive Coalition. Mason's run against Adam Kline last fall was a blood bath with serious racial overtones. She lost, but proved she can run a tough campaign.
Money Raised: $24,179/Spent $10,311.95
Noteworthy Donor: $400 from Local 17, the city engineers' union.
Campaign Bumper sticker: "Dawn Mason Listens, Hears, and Responds."
Magazine Subscription: Emerge and Essence. "Are you," she asks, "familiar with those magazines?"

Douglas Mays
No position declared.
Bio: Mays, 41, tells us he's a Scorpio, a single parent of a 9-year-old daughter, and tried out for the Cincinnati Bengals when he was 16. He also tells us he "started going nuts by age 19," and got into music management in his 20s.
Money Raised: $0/Spent $187 (music management, huh?).
Noteworthy Donor: "I'm one of those guys who comes out of nowhere, and 'Kapow!' " Campaign Bumper Sticker: "Basically my whole issue with the city right now is that the city has to play major league ball. Step up to the plate. The city is playing really small-time ball, but this city is in the big leagues with Boeing and Microsoft. Seattleites are trying to find themselves again. Oh, here's a good bumper sticker from a promo sheet I did — "Helping Seattle Realize Itself."
Magazine Subscription: "I was getting Mad magazine."

Judy Nicastro
Running for Position 7.
(Tina Podlodowski's open seat)
Bio: Rent-control activist Nicastro is a 33-year-old graduate of the UW law school. She works for Boeing, and rents an apartment in Wallingford. She proved she can organize a grassroots group and pack a public hearing last winter, when she began Local Housing Needs Local Laws, drawing over 200 people to a rent-control forum on Capitol Hill. Money Raised: $4,961/Spent $1,667.
Noteworthy Donor: $100 from city council candidate Heidi Wills, no position declared. Campaign Bumper Sticker: "Affordable Housing and Renters' Rights."
Magazine Subscription: Marie Claire ("I try to stay up on fashion") and Men's Journal ("because I want to understand men").

Daniel Norton
Has not officially declared a position, but is telling people he's running for Position 1. Bio: Norton, a 51-year-old Greenwood resident and community college speech professor, was the chair of the King County Democrats for two years. A soft-spoken progressive, he lined up against Nordstrom with Nick Licata and Peter Steinbrueck, in opposition to reopening Pine Street through Westlake Park in the early '90s.
Money Raised: $10,000/Spent $3,385.
Noteworthy Donor: $100 from Position 3 City Councilmember Peter Steinbrueck.
Campaign Bumper Sticker: "I'm the Pragmatic Progressive." To achieve this paradox, he acknowledges, he would have backed away from amending the parks ban just like his pragmatic friend Steinbrueck did.
Magazine Subscription: Parent.

Margaret Pageler
Running for Position 5 (incumbent).
Bio: She's been on the council since '91. Pageler made friends with Mark Sidran early, shepherding through the sidewalks ban and supporting other "civility" ordinances. She claims to be the council's environmentalist, but her stubborn resistance to a no-logging plan in the Cedar River Watershed says otherwise.
Money Raised: $36,848.76/Spent $16,402.33.
Noteworthy Donor: $400 from Gogerty Stark Marriott, Inc.

Peter Steinbrueck
Running for Position 3 (incumbent).
Bio: Steinbrueck's papa was an architect who squared off against real estate developer Paul Schell. Young Peter, now 41, is an architect too. He won his position on the council by a landslide in '97. He voted for Burma sanctions and against the car impound law, but he wobbled around on the parks ban.
Money Raised: $23,000/Spent $392.
Noteworthy Donor: $100 from City Councilmember Nick "Please Vote with Me More" Licata.
Campaign Bumper Sticker: "Save Seattle! ...from Itself."
Magazine Subscription: Atlantic Monthly, Smithsonian, Family (a gift to his wife for Mother's Day), and Architecture.

Thomas Crosby Whittemore
No position declared, but leaning toward 7.
Bio: Whittemore, 48, is a neighborhood activist in Ballard, fighting for a Ballard municipal center and a transit station. He's been the Ballard District Council President for the past two years, and he's co-chair of the East Ballard Association. He works as a freelance political cartoonist, and used to appear in The Seattle Times and the Seattle Weekly.
Money Raised: $0/Spent $0.
Noteworthy Donor: none yet.
Campaign Bumper Sticker: "Involving Citizens — Re-creating Government." Not bad.
Magazine Subscription: Art News.

Heidi Wills
No position declared.
Bio: Wills is a special assistant to King County exec Ron Sims, where she has worked on civil rights and salmon issues. She was also a legislative aide and chief of staff for King County Councilmember Cynthia Sullivan, where she worked on growth management and labor issues. Most importantly, she was the fundraising director for the King County Democratic Central Committee in the early '90s. It seems to have paid off....
Money Raised: $34,000/Spent $0.
Noteworthy Donor: $400 from Starbucks exec Howard Behar.

Josh Feit, Erica Hall, and Ben Jacklet contributed to this report.