Olive Healy drove across the two-decker bridge connecting north and south Seattle twice last Friday before attending one of the four “Town Halls” mayoral candidate Mike McGinn held this weekend. “I still want the viaduct to stay up until it falls down,” Healy, 81, says. That both candidates plan to pull the viaduct down rather than do repairs (Mallahan would keep the tunnel plan, McGinn hopes to swap it out for an expanded surface street), “really bothers me,” she adds.But Healy still plans to vote for McGinn after casting a ballot for James Donaldson in the primary. McGinn convinced her when he came with two volunteers to write down residents’ concerns in a basement room at the Columbia City library branch. He also opened a campaign office about two miles south of the library.Yolanda Gill Mosundire was also among the crowd of about 50 packed into the room. She came away less certain than Healy, but showing up didn’t hurt McGinn any. “I came here mainly to lay out the pros and cons of his candidacy, and I’m doing that with both candidates,” Gill Mosundire says. “But this certainly helps.”McGinn told the crowd that his plan wasn’t to give his stump speech in his two stops in South Seattle Saturday and North Seattle yesterday. Predictably he gave it any way, but in Columbia City, he mostly nodded while residents expressed concerns about available housing, gangs and violence, and the need for jobs. A volunteer wrote everything down in thick black pen on a large pad of paper.Political observers see McGinn’s weekend blitz as an attempt to get a foothold among some of the minority voting blocs that turned out for defeated incumbent Greg Nickels. In today’s Seattle Times, Bob Young talks to high-profile Asian, Hispanic and Black community leaders who are ambivalent about both candidates now dueling it out to lead the city. Of course, there is more to convincing minority groups than meeting location. About 40 of the 50 people who showed up Saturday morning were white.McGinn was passing out a flyer that named transit, education and technology as his top three priorities. Of those three things, the only one the audience in Columbia City repeatedly mentioned was education. He told them it was a pre-primary campaign flyer and pointed out that he has since spent more time on issues like public safety–a far more common theme among the audience at the library.He also said, as evidence that listening is indeed part of his plan for leading Seattle, that since releasing a public safety plan last week, he’s been hearing that it’s too heavy on enforcement and is taking that concern into account. Unfortunately for Healy, who raised her hand at the end of the meeting, but didn’t manage to get in a question, McGinn has so far proved unbending on his viaduct plan.
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