And in terms of “look[ing] more like a mayor”? Please, have you seen Jan Drago? Or Sally Clark? Or perhaps Charlie Royer and Norm Rice? Casual comfort rules the day. Askew ties when you need them, jackets optional.

Biking to work isn’t such a big deal, several big city mayors do it, and several big city mayors ride transit to work.

I wouldn’t be too sure of that. I’d bet money that he bikes into city hall more often than he does not. Same with O’Brien. Seriously.

I agree that the cut off has to be the postmark or drop date. Otherwise true absentee voters, like those away at college or serving in the military are at a disadvantage. As we’ve just seen, public opinion can change based on events of the last few days before election day.

Transit is to blame!!! (Ignore the Datsun B210 behind the curtain)

Give the mail in time to work out, but perhaps as Oregon does, we should ask people to get their ballots in by election day and not have election day as the last day they could mail them in.

Yes, I too look forward to seeing McGinn’s transit options, but I just hope he shuts up about the tunnel and I have a secret wish that he looked more like a mayor! He will not be expected to bike to city hall, so we can dispense with this for starters. The office of mayor of our great Emerald City is a dignified one and its occupants need to look mayoral and suitably dignified to hold it.

All they would do is basically move up Election Day by a few days for most people, just for the satisfaction of having more complete results on Election Day itself. There is no point to this.

As far I’m concerned, I’ve been wary of both of these candidates since the beginning. I viewed McGinn as the better of two poor candidates, with Mallahan distinguishing himself time and again as a complete pile thanks to his horrible speaking ability. The few times he aactually spoke for himself, he sounded like he could only repeat corporate-speak aphorisms straight out of those pop-business management books you can find at the airport bookstore. To me, someone prone to continually saying “driving solutions” and “advantaging the synergies” and “leveraging the enterprise” doesn’t really have any original ideas.

On the other hand, this City needs an improved relationship with the State of Washington. The State has to acknowledge Seattle’s importance in the State first, but the new mayor has to do better than Greg Nickels did in working with the Leg, or at least the Gov. Early in this race, I thought McGinn might be too prickly to carry that off. But I thought the huge turning point in the race was handed to McGinn by the City Council when they voted to affirm the agreement in principle on the DBT. That gave him the opportunity to sound principled (he reiterated his opposition to the tunnel) while relenting for pragmatic reasons (didn’t want to go against the will of the people of Seattle).

Sorry, but outside the world of comic book politics (like those that dominated the presidential race in 2004), good politicians change their positions on specific issues without being “flip-floppers.” It’s called pragmatism and it’s an intellectually honest approach to inducing learning into governance. In this race, it was McGinn’s first chance to look “reasonable” and “adaptable.” And it was the point when gap in the public opinion polling began to close for McGinn.

On the transit side of things, I do look forward to the environmental study for West Side Link, and progress on the street car system. I look forward to continuing progress in reattaining Seattle’s once notable bike-friendliness. I might live in Burien, but Seattle is why I live here so it will be interesting to see how the city progresses under a new kind of leadership.