Standing in the Belltown Labor Temple in early June at a mayoral candidate forum, Seattle City Council member Jan Drago used the "c" word. The incumbent's style, said Drago, didn't fit with Seattle. It was "the Chicago way."
Ismael Roldan
Braden VanDragt
Lone wolf: Nickels at a campaign forum.
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The "Chicago" epithet has been dogging Mayor Greg Nickels almost since the day he took office. P-I columnist Joel Connelly started calling Nickels "Hizzoner"—a nickname associated with longtime Windy City mayor Richard J. Daley—during Nickels' first year as mayor, and continues to deploy the moniker regularly. In a 2007 piece on Crosscut.com, columnist Knute Berger described Nickels as a "strongman, Chicago-born" mayor—even though Nickels' family left the city of broad shoulders before the future mayor could walk. Seattle Weekly, too, has employed the term: A 2006 story claimed Nickels had "belied his big-softy reputation by instituting a regime of Chicago-style hardball politics that has left a timid city council cowed."
The idea of Nickels as a Daley wannabe is one of those ideas that has filtered down from the rhetoric of political insiders into general popular perception, even conventional wisdom. At Drago's campaign launch in front of the Seattle Art Museum in May, David Schraer, a commercial architect active in political issues, said he isn't supporting the incumbent because "Mayor Nickels is bringing machine politics to Seattle, he's really trying to make it like Chicago."
Pressed for an explanation, Schraer said there's a perception in his field that if you want to get city work, you have to support the mayor. He doesn't have any specific examples, but he says that's the reason people he knows are avoiding endorsing anyone else.
As Schraer's comment demonstrates, Nickels' challengers may not be doing themselves any favors by painting the mayor as a vengeful Chicago-style tyrant. The scare tactics may be scaring off their own potential supporters.
Nonetheless they continue to make the mayor's purported political style a campaign issue. Drago has repeatedly said she would work more collaboratively than Nickels—both with Olympia and the city council. Joe Mallahan sent out a press release in June saying: "People in Seattle deserve better than the bully in office now." And former city council member Peter Steinbrueck—who isn't running, but who weighs in on the race so often it kind of feels as though he is—one-upped everybody by calling Nickels' tactics "Gestapo-like" at a breakfast meeting with the Seattle Neighborhood Coalition last month.
Trouble is, it's almost impossible to get any of Nickels' accusers to provide details about the mayor's supposedly Daleyesque behavior.
For instance, in a campaign kickoff speech outside KeyArena on June 4, candidate James Donaldson accused Nickels of strong-arming constituents. "Our citizens and business owners have been politically threatened by people connected with the leadership of our city," he declared. "And they have been threatened with unfair regulation, inspection, denial of permits and grants."
But when asked by the Weekly for examples of these abuses of power, Donaldson's spokesperson Cindi Laws was unable to provide any, saying the individuals involved wouldn't speak to a reporter, even off the record.
The very word "Chicago" represents everything that good-government Seattleites abhor: high-pressure horse-trading, pay-for-play lobbying, and the unabashed wielding of decision-making power—possibly without first conducting six months of public outreach to stakeholders at local community centers. It's the ultimate insult in Seattle politics.
After all, scandals have followed nearly every Chicago or Chicago-bred politician for the past century. A close advisor to current mayor Richard M. Daley was sent to jail two years ago for doling out city jobs in exchange for political support, and a Daley family member recently pleaded guilty to taking more than $5,000 in bribes to steer government work to favored trucking companies. More recently, Governor Rod Blagojevich (who built his career in Chicago and keeps a home there) was caught on wiretap responding to the notion that he appoint an ally of Barack Obama to the president-elect's vacated Senate seat, but without receiving anything lucrative in return: "Fuck him. For nothing? Fuck him."
Sitting for an interview with Seattle Weekly in the the Columbia Tower's food court, with only his campaign spokesperson and a baggie of cherries (which he offers to share), Seattle mayor Greg Nickels hardly seems cut from the same cloth. This is the man whose first TV campaign ad of the year, released last week, opens with what amounts to an apology: "As mayor I've made my share of mistakes."
"I don't think I would last a week in Chicago politics," he says. And he calls the accusation that he would withhold building permits or unnecessarily inspect someone's business as retribution for supporting an opponent in this election absurd. "I have never operated that way and I never will," he says.
So is Greg Nickels really a Chicago-style bully? Let's examine the evidence.
You're Fired
Nickels started his term in office in 2002 by asking all senior staff for letters of resignation. Then he asked them to write a job description, explaining what they do and how it fit in with his agenda. "That was a shock right there," says former Department of Neighborhoods head Jim Diers.
