Jan Drago is looking at possible mayor's race
The scrappy City Council member doesn't want to retire after all. She gives some hints of what a mayoral challenge might look like and how she could broaden her pro-business base.
"I never, ever said I was retiring," says Seattle City Councilmember Jan Drago, who is retiring from her City Council seat this year, but apparently still longs for staying in the thick of the action. Among the options she says she's exploring, though "I've just begun to think about it," is challenging Mayor Greg Nickels this fall.
Drago, who is 68, put her hat in the ring for the president of the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce, which is expected to announce its choice as early as today. (Drago didn't make the final round of interviews.) She says the possibility of heading the Chamber made clear to her that "I could get energized, excited about a new challenge." Soon, she says, "rumors were flying about my future," including running for a Port of Seattle commissioner, working for the Gates Foundation, or Vulcan (Paul Allen's real estate development company), or running for Mayor. She declined to eliminate any of those four possibilities.
On the Mayor's race, Drago gave some intriguing hints. Noting Mayor Nickels' continued low popularity ratings in polls as recent as April, she predicted that "he will not avoid a serious challenge" at least one more serious than current candidates Mike McGinn, running from the green left of Nickels, and James Donaldson, running as a pro-business candidate, are likely to generate.
Drago also talked about how her relations with former City Councilmember Peter Steinbrueck, once testy, have become far more cordial. That suggests the possibility of a kind of fusion candidacy. Drago's base would be downtown business (she was key in orchestrating the deep-bore tunnel option for the Viaduct, for instance), women, and assorted pro-business voters. Steinbrueck, who last week bowed out of a Mayor's race in favor of a year at Harvard's Graduate School of Design, appeals to neighborhood activists (likely to be very wary of Drago), advocates for the poor and the homeless, historic preservationists, and the green/sustainability coalition.
Just speculating here, but it would be interesting to see if a kind of left-right coalition could be assembled, thus pushing Nickels from both flanks. Since a Mayor doesn't have a running mate, it's not easy to see how such a coalition would have institutional foundations, aside from endorsements beyond Drago's normal base. At any rate, Drago would clearly need to send convincing signals of a wider appeal. She would also be making a very late start, short on money and organization, and is not the most articulate candidate in town. Her strengths: experience, scrappiness, years of showing up at political events almost every evening, a prominent position in the "Old Girls Network" of powerful women in business and government, and skill at pulling together votes and coalitions.
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Comments:
Posted Wed, Apr 22, 8:08 a.m. inappropriate
Here's another option: Drago could run for mayor of Bremerton and Cary Bozeman, the areas's roving mayor (Bellevue and Bremerton) could run for mayor of Seattle. They could support each other. Bozeman has many ideas for fixing Seattle (see April 18, Seattle Times), and Drago could bring her passion for streetcars to Bremerton which clearly needs more transportation alternatives.
Posted Wed, Apr 22, 10:25 a.m. inappropriate
"Women" is a constituency? Is "men" a constituency? Good heavens, Brewster. If Drago said that (and I doubt it), she's farther behind the times than we thought. If you put it that way, you should stop writing.
Posted Wed, Apr 22, 11:50 a.m. inappropriate
Go for it, Jan. Then we can really examine how ethical you were as the Transportation Chair. It seems you and Nickels will do anything to please SDOT and special interests (a.k.a. Paul Allen).
Posted Wed, Apr 22, 12:09 p.m. inappropriate
I do like the off-leash parks she got done, the ones that aren't mud pits and that aren't covered in gravel that hurts dogs' feet, at least--but I like the unfenced, grassy, park-integrated dog areas in Portland's parks better.
She also has strong credentials in women's rights, racial and ethnic minority civil rights, and LGBT rights, but pretty much any electable Seattle mayoral candidate will be strong on those, so I don't see her distinguishing herself in that field.
She's too much an advocate for corporate interests in the South Lake Union area, however, and I find her unresponsive to serious neighborhood safety and pedestrian issues like sidewalk funding, etc. That's where she stands out as inadequate.
Also, I can't think of anyone less charismatic. Other than Nickels. Half of people's tepid dissatisfaction with Nickels is that he lacks charisma and can't inspire, and he doesn't use the media effectively at all.
Posted Wed, Apr 22, 1:32 p.m. inappropriate
Nice scoop, David.
Posted Wed, Apr 22, 4:05 p.m. inappropriate
I happen to know for a fact that Jan is giving this serious consideration. I'm not going to lie and say I'm overly fond of Ms. Drago, quite the contrary, however we have a mayor who is becoming more and more wannabe Daley, and less and less Seattle.
The fact is, however, that Ms. Drago has been part of the problem, along with the other relics of the Council, allowing Cszar Nickles to steamroll the Council and legislate from the executive office. Now he is avoiding public meetings laws, and is blatantly making this great City less than it could be.
If Ms. Drago chooses to run, I will be eager to hear what she has to say about the issues our City faces, especially in these tough economic times.
Posted Wed, Apr 22, 10:25 p.m. inappropriate
If Drago, Nickels and any other incumbant flaks appear on the ballot for anything we should utilize the confusing by design "trick ballot" that Drago and Tim Ceis cooked up for the viaduct referendum a few years ago. That way we can vote "NO" to all the retreads and enjoy the honest, unbiased leadership of a few new, fresh candidates. And this vote wouldn't cost the tax payers an extra million dollars.
Posted Thu, Apr 23, 2:06 p.m. inappropriate
Here's a comment sent to the editor from Terry Parkhurst:
Dear Editor:
The idea of Jan Drago as mayor would be laughable if it was not so pathetic. The issue is not that she is, like the current mayor, so enamoured of Paul Allen that she violated all spirit of ethics, when she hosted a get-together to encourage a yes vote on the so-called SLUT (South Lake Union Trolley). More can be made of the fact that she is intellectually lazy and maybe just so much so as to be no more qualified for mayor than Christal Wood or any other numerous pretenders to the throne. She is certainly no Al Runte, the noted local historian, and one time mayorial candidate, who can be seen weighing in on national parks in the new Ken Burns special on same.
In January of 2003, when then City Councilmember Judy Nicastro began a series of worthy efforts to expose the curious bit of corporate socialism known as "third party billing" of utilities to renters, Ms. Drago made light of the "wonkish" nature of it all. Apparently, making more than $100,000 a year, with a paid staff, is just not enough to make the long time council fixture willing to pour through the charts and words that (now retired) SPU (Seattle Public Utilities) manager Bernie O'Malley had assembled for her and the other councilmembers.
It makes one pause when thought is given to how much work she would - or would not - put into trying to be a mayor.
Of course, there is probably one person who'd like to see Jan Drago run; and that would be Greg Nickels. As a friend of mine who wishes anonymity said to me recently, "It would make Nickels look good."
Who knows? Maybe that indeed is why she is thinking of running, since she and the current mayor seem like bosom buddies.
-- Terry Parkhurst, Seattle WA
Posted Thu, Apr 23, 5:27 p.m. inappropriate
Amen to Mr Parkhurst's comment. That has been my exact experience in working with her. She get's some whim of an idea and runs with it sans all knowledge or logic. Ignoring anything truly relevant while hyping the lunatic seems to be her modus operendi. Mayor material? God forbid.She'd be a Nickel's clone with even fewer smarts.
Posted Fri, Apr 24, 8:02 a.m. inappropriate
Trolleys have trolley poles. Streetcars have pantographs.
Posted Sat, Apr 25, 11:09 a.m. inappropriate
Jan Drago for Mayor. Really bad idea.
She couldnt' even run a ice cream parlor very well. It was in the seventies and was in the Pike Place Market. I think it was a Hagan Daz?
She and her husband had recently arrived here from Cleveland.