GREENWOOD GOTHIC: "At Mayor Mike McGinn's Backyard BBQ" (with photos)

Eli Sanders (The Stranger):

"Mayor McGinn, taking questions from a constituent yesterday evening."

The light in Mayor Mike McGinn's back yard yesterday evening was so perfect it felt like we were at a staged shoot for some future campaign mailer. It was just a lucky, late-summer fluke, this tree-filtered golden light, but McGinn and his guests soaked it up.

He was kicking off his re-election effort with a low-key, homey fundraiser that drew about 100 supporters, each asked to pay $50 to get behind the white picket fence at the McGinn family's modest Greenwood house.

There was an open bar; a nice spread (including veggie burgers, raspberries in yogurt, orzo salad, and homemade chocolate chip cookies); and of course a speech in which McGinn, dressed in Tevas, camping shorts, and a red polo shirt, reminded his donors how things went in his underdog 2009 campaign.

"I didn't get a lot of money from the people who normally hand out money," McGinn told the crowd. "But there's a flip side to that: I don't answer to them."

There, standing between a McGinn family rain barrel and the McGinn family vegetable garden, were the people McGinn said he answers to:

• E.S.
• Greenwood Gothic.

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Howie P.S.: I have previously opined about how the The Stranger is McGinn's "BFF" and this story about his campaign roll-out, Seattle-style, fits my story line.