Tuesday, October 04, 2005

''Who the Heck is Al Runte?''

"Al Runte, candidate for mayor of Seattle, still believes it is possible for a city to plan for the future and to get individuals and neighborhoods involved in the process of governance. He is an unlikely candidate, this former professor who is running for mayor against Greg Nickels. He hasn’t run for office before or served on city boards. Instead he’s been teaching and writing and thinking about how cities should work, about the lessons we can draw from European cities, about how to create a robust infrastructure that will take us through an upcoming time of scarcity.

I think Al got deeply angry that this beautiful city where he has lived for so many years doesn’t work well anymore and he wants to change that and he thinks he knows how to do that. It’s that simple. In interviewing him I felt a bit touched by the fairy dust of belief myself. Maybe we can take back our city on our way to reclaiming our democracy nationally and rebuilding our can-do attitude in this state.

The interview with Al Runte is below the fold."-from Evergreen Politics. Reading the interview, Runte sounded pretty good to me. We know Nickels believes it may take 4 or 5 terms to completely implement his agenda, but maybe Runte can trip him up. The P-I Editorial Board tosses a log on the fire under Nickels today with "Seattle Politics: Nickels' pitch."

No comments: