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imperfect knowledge
My ballot for the primary election includes a mark for Kate Martin, one of the dark horses in the field of nine running in the primary election for Mayor of Seattle. I have written to the effect that taking part in elections is an exercise in futility, but casting a ballot requires me (at least) to be able to provide some rationale for the selection, lest I be charged with making my selection based on telegenics or equally base rationale.
Like most actions in this world, casting a vote is necessarily taken in the knowledge of imperfect knowledge of the candidates and all the possible issues that may arise during the course of a term in office. Each mark we make represents some more or less subjective balance of interpretation of candidate statements and news reports, recognizing that each is limited to the few topics each think to be "important" to the electorate. As someone whose votes have been on the "winning" side substantially less than 5% of the time (my admittedly imperfect estimate), I think it is pretty clear I am not one whose views are well captured by the kinds of questions and statements that are normally reported during an election.
For any given office, it is usually easier for me to rule people out of contention based on their positions on one issue or another. For example, I previously expressed reservations about a few of the other candidates, based on their lack of understanding regarding the plight of people on the lower end of the employment spectrum1. This caused me to rule out the incumbent Mike McGinn and what seem like his three most favored opponents: Ed Murray, Bruce Harrell, and Peter Steinbrueck., as well as one more likely considered a dark horse candidate - Charlie Staadecker. There might be more important concerns in a local election than condemning marginal workers to permanent unemployment, but this was enough to strike those five off the list.
The other candidates are pretty clearly not establishment types, each with particular views they want to get across, or independent streaks that they think will either make them immune to (relatively) big city politics or somehow better able to thread the needle of special interest wheedling for favors.
The first type of non-establishment candidate clearly includes the person of Mary Martin ("factory worker", not to be confused with the other Martin, designated as "planner"). Her statement is spiked with outrage over how establishment Democrats and Republicans have sold us out to privilege represented by "too big to fail" Wall Street bankers. I can sympathize with that sentiment, but I think she has completely missed out on the root causes for those issues - that being the crony capitalism that is the natural bedfellow to unlimited government. Instead, she would shoot the golden goose that has brought to a huge population material wealth that was unreachable to kings of a century past.
Of the other type, Joey Gray has a list of 18 points she hopes will get her through partisan bickering and political grandstanding, and I confess to just being turned off by what looks like fence straddling on the topic of the Viet Nam War by Doug McQuaid.
So that left Kate Martin. Her candidate statement isn't much more informative than the others, but did strike a couple resonant chords: shared prosperity based on being socially liberal and fiscally conservative. I think there's a recipe in those ingredients, but it all depends on what else is in the shopping cart.
1. I won't repeat those concerns here, other than to note that Goodspaceguy, perennial local candidate this time running for King County Executive, discussed this issue in his candidate statement, a somewhat prescient decision considering that those booklets probably went to print well before the question of minimum wages arose in the Seattle primary discussion.