Both: Port of Seattle
Pier 69, the spectacular headquarters of the Port of Seattle (top), and CEO Mic Dinsmore.
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Previously
The Port in a Storm
The races for Seattle Port Commission might change the direction of King County's billion-dollar, economic-development government. (Oct. 5, 2005)
Big Bucks for Port Races
A new PAC raises $100,000. (Aug. 24, 2005)
So Long, Sodo
The grand ambitions of a developer clash with an impassioned politician's hope to save Seattle's working waterfront. (April 28, 2004)
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For many, last year's races for Port Commission were the most important in the Port of Seattle's 94-year history. Sharing that assessment is CEO Mic Dinsmore, one of the most powerful men in Seattle. Dinsmore runs a port that owns 1,400 acres of working waterfront and Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. It has a $1 billion annual budget. He is also the chairman of the Seattle branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, a vital part of the federal government's most powerful economic tool. Dinsmore is not an elected official. He is a public employee who reports to elected officials—the nonpartisan Seattle Port Commission, whose five part-time members, chosen by voters in King County, serve overlapping four-year terms.
Three of those five seats were at stake last November. The election, Dinsmore and his opponents agree, could have switched control of the commission to members opposed to the CEO's way of doing things. Dinsmore saw it as a battle between those who wanted to continue the Port's mission of essential economic development for King County and those who wanted to destroy it. The CEO's critics saw the vote as pitting reformers with a commitment to environmentalism, civil rights, and living-wage union jobs against Dinsmore, who, they charge, encourages ill-conceived real-estate development that is outside the Port's mission, controls a bureaucracy of questionable integrity, and practices political favoritism.
Dinsmore's candidates prevailed in races for two of three seats that were up for grabs in 2005. Today, three of the Port's five commissioners, a slim majority, can be counted on generally to support Dinsmore and his vision for an agency that has nearly global influence over Seattle commerce.
With so much at stake last November, perhaps even his job, Dinsmore was not a passive observer. E-mails obtained by Seattle Weekly suggest that Dinsmore and his allies may have violated a law against the use of government facilities in political campaigns. And he seems to have been actively recruiting candidates to shore up support on the commission. Dinsmore denies breaking the law or recruiting candidates. He asserts that he did not participate in any Port campaigning even as a private citizen, much less as a public employee.
But the two commissioners who are Dinsmore skeptics, midtermer Alec Fisken and newly elected Lloyd Hara, believe the CEO did violate the law prohibiting use of government facilities in political campaigns, based on evidence Seattle Weekly has collected. Says Fisken: "We could fire him. That would be good." Hara, who was elected in November to an open seat, doesn't support immediate termination but says Dinsmore should leave the Port at the end of his informal term of employment on Dec. 31, 2007. (Dinsmore does not have an employment contract.)
Commissioners Pat Davis and John Creighton, who prevailed in last November's election with help from Dinsmore allies, say the evidence does not show that Dinsmore broke the law. Says Davis: "I don't see anything wrong or illegal." The fifth commissioner, Bob Edwards, a Dinsmore supporter, agrees.
A visit to Dinsmore's office requires one to walk the length of the Port's headquarters at Pier 69 at the northern end of Seattle's central waterfront. On the inside, the 160,000-square-foot headquarters, bought and remodeled for around $37 million, is the most beautiful government building in King County. It is also a symbol for Port critics of arrogance and the wealth of the institution. The headquarters' architects, Hewitt- Isley, brought together the building's existing elements—it's a former warehouse for a salmon cannery—with new construction in a truly inspired fashion. The massive concrete pillars that supported the warehouse have been exposed and decorated and run the entire length of the building. A 400-foot indoor "stream" wanders in a marble trough throughout the first floor, and soaring ceilings with skylights on the second floor make parts of the space feel more like a cathedral than an office building.
In a corner office with stunning views of Elliott Bay and the Olympic mountains, Dinsmore, 59, who is paid $273,435 a year, runs the Port's operations as he has since 1992, making him the longest serving executive director in the Port's modern history. The Port is a booming business. Last year, record numbers of cargo containers moved through its terminals—more than 2 million. Sea-Tac Airport accommodated 29.3 million passengers. Visitors on cruise ships at the Port's docks numbered 686,000. All of this activity generates thousands of union jobs, billions of dollars of economic activity for the region, and relies on more than $64 million in tax revenue from King County residents.
Dinsmore is dressed in a dazzling white shirt and pink tie, his handsome face framed by a perfectly maintained gray mustache and a thick shock of salt-and-pepper hair. He is utterly composed and confident, betraying emotion only when he talks of Fisken, a commissioner that Dinsmore is convinced wants to tear down the Port out of sheer political perversity. "Alec is about destroying an institution, not building it," says Dinsmore.
Dinsmore believes the effort to destroy the Port began with the election in 2001 of Lawrence Molloy, whom Creighton defeated last November. A "blue-green" coalition of labor unions and environmental activists supported Molloy, a talkative, friendly engineer, and were key to his surprise defeat of longtime incumbent and labor leader Jack Block. Two years later, in 2003, the blue-green alliance won another upset victory when Fisken defeated Eastside venture capitalist Clare Nordquist. In 2005's general election, the "blue-green" alliance supported two candidates—hard-charging Microsoft millionaire Jack Jolley, who unsuccessfully opposed 20-year-incumbent Davis, and Molloy, who faced off against Republican attorney Creighton. The election also featured an open-seat contest between former Seattle City Treasurer Hara and marine lobbyist Rich Berkowitz. While the reformers could not agree on a candidate in that race, Dinsmore and his allies favored Berkowitz.
