Havana owner Quentin Ertel, like many people who make their living from Seattle nightlife, is not a fan of City Attorney Tom Carr. His dislike is strong enough that he threw a fundraiser last Thursday at his Capitol Hill bar in support of Carr’s challenger, Pete Holmes.

In an online screed announcing the event, Ertel put his friends on notice. “Tom Carr, who is at the helm of the status quo currently running the City, does not deserve your vote,” wrote Ertel. “He runs his office with a puritanical streak. Quite simply, he hates bars and nightlife. Really.”

To be fair, Ertel also wrote that Carr hates puppies. But given the nightlife community’s strong condemnation of the city’s Operation Sobering Thought, we thought it important to ask whether Carr really hates bars.

“I don’t hate bars,” says Carr. “Interestingly, I have never heard of Havana. My favorites right now are Christos on Alki [and] Talarico’s in the West Seattle Junction; they both have Manny’s on tap. I enjoyed McGilvra’s [in Madison Park] the other night; they have a great Bitburger on tap.”

So not only does Carr not hate bars, he’ll even order a beer in one. Of course, as Nina Shapiro’s May 13 profile of Carr (“Two-Tone Tommy”) proved, if the man did hate bars, he’d have a pretty good reason. Per Shapiro’s piece, Carr’s father ‘didn’t do very much,’ Carr says. ‘My dad was an alcoholic’… One day when Carr was 14, he watched his father head to a party. It was a noteworthy sight: His dad was sober. But he drank too much at the party and fell down a flight of stairs. The accident was fatal.”