The election results released by King County Elections at 4:08 PM today August 19, 2009 did not bring good news for Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels. He actually received the least votes of the 3 candidates battling for the 2 seats in the General Election.
Joe Mallahan picked up 4725 votes
Michael McGinn picked up 3989
Greg Nickels picked up 3943 votes.
Joe Mallahan has now moved into first place with 26.76% of the vote, Michael McGinn has slipped to second place with 26.48% and Nickels remained in third with 25.19%.
You can check the results for all the candidates running for Seattle Mayor by going to the King County Elections website.
The Primary Election is being decided by dismal turnout numbers. Out of 379,721 registered voters in Seattle only 81,725 voters have been counted so far. That’s a turnout of 21.52%.
The irony here is that Nickels is being defeated by 2 unknown candidates who have never run for office before. One has to wonder what kind of political campaign advice was being given to Nickels regarding the campaign he ran.
Over the years Nickels seems to have lost touch with his Democratic base which is strange. Most of his political record is very progressive and he has been a strong champion of environmental issues. Unfortunately he lost neighborhood support by his administration siding with developers over neighborhoods.
And he did not seem to be running a campaign that reached out to grassroots democrats. Many people seemed to feel estranged from Nickels. Maybe if he had spent more time campaigning and being visible things would now be different. As it is his prospects of making it through the primary don’t look good and have to be a shock to someone just elected to head the US Conference of Mayors.
