Matchup appears set in Seattle mayor’s race: It’ll be Ed Murray versus Mike McGinn

Win­now­ing elec­tion night is final­ly here.

Sev­er­al weeks after vot­ing began, the dead­line to turn in bal­lots has arrived, and the first results are com­ing in. All eyes, fig­u­ra­tive­ly speak­ing, are on the state’s largest city, which has the elec­tion’s mar­quee race: a nine-way con­test for mayor.

Only two of the nine will be mov­ing for­ward to the Novem­ber runoff, and at this point it looks like those two can­di­dates will be Demo­c­ra­t­ic State Sen­a­tor Ed Mur­ray and incum­bent May­or Mike McGinn, who polls showed had the lead back in July.

As of just after 8:15 PM, Mur­ray’s share of the vote was 30.24%, with McGinn a few points behind at 27.15%. (See more num­bers at NPI’s Pacif­ic NW Por­tal).

Com­ing in third and fourth place were Peter Stein­brueck and Bruce Har­rell, one a for­mer mem­ber of the Seat­tle City Coun­cil and the oth­er a cur­rent mem­ber. The two of them have more than thir­ty per­cent of the vote com­bined. But indi­vid­u­al­ly, they’re both more than ten points behind McGinn.

The rest of the field — Char­lie Staadeck­er, Joey Gray, Kate Mar­tin, Mary Mar­tin, and Doug McQuaid — are all in the sin­gle digits.

At his Elec­tion Night par­ty at Chi­na Har­bor, Stein­brueck urged sup­port­ers to keep the faith, not­ing many bal­lots left to be count­ed. He was even intro­duced as “the next may­or of Seat­tle.” But Stein­brueck is very far behind McGinn… he would need a huge wave to car­ry him past the incum­bent, and that just does­n’t seem likely.

Stein­brueck­’s sup­port­ers began crowd­ing around a pro­jec­tion screen moments after the first and only results of the night were post­ed. But the returns gave them no cause for cel­e­bra­tion. Stein­brueck took to the stage short­ly after­wards, cheer­ful­ly thank­ing his vol­un­teers and try­ing to strike an opti­mistic tone.

Mur­ray and his sup­port­ers, cel­e­brat­ing at The Croc­o­dile in Bell­town, were jubi­lant. Mur­ray deliv­ered a well-received vic­to­ry speech with his fam­i­ly and friends at his side. Seat­tle City Coun­cilmem­ber Tim Burgess, a for­mer rival of Mur­ray and McGin­n’s, was on the stage, as were City Attor­ney Pete Holmes and State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Cyrus Habib of the 48th LD.

Mur­ray pledged, if elect­ed, to appoint more women to lead­er­ship posi­tions in City Hall, and pro­nounced him­self ready for a live­ly autumn cam­paign with McGinn.

“I’m not run­ning to be a gay may­or of Seat­tle… I’m not run­ning to be a pro­gres­sive may­or of Seat­tle… I’m run­ning to be an effec­tive may­or!” he told his supporters.

Mur­ray has the sup­port of much of the city and the state’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic estab­lish­ment. He picked up endorse­ments from most of the city’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic leg­isla­tive dis­trict orga­ni­za­tions, and promi­nent for­mer office­hold­ers like Gov­er­nor Chris Gre­goire have held events on his behalf.

McGinn and his sup­port­ers, mean­while, were upbeat, cel­e­brat­ing the May­or’s sub­stan­tial lead over all of his rivals except Mur­ray. Their par­ty, at Capi­tol Hill’s 95 Slide, was still going strong late into the night.

Sev­er­al McGinn sup­port­ers I talked to made a point of call­ing the night a huge vic­to­ry over The Seat­tle Times, which they say has spent three and a half years try­ing to bring down McGin­n’s administration.

(The Times has a noto­ri­ous his­to­ry of endors­ing Repub­li­cans for statewide and fed­er­al office; it backed Rob McKen­na and Rea­gan Dunn last year).

Ahead of the elec­tion, many observers won­dered if McGinn would share the fate of Greg Nick­els and Paul Schell, who were oust­ed by chal­lengers in the 2001 and 2009 win­now­ing elec­tions. But McGin­n’s sup­port­ers tell me they always had faith that they’d be able to mount a win­ning campaign.

McGinn vol­un­teers say they’re ener­gized to reelect Mike because they want a city that has great mass tran­sit, safe neigh­bor­hoods, good schools, and a com­mit­ment to com­bat­ing the cli­mate cri­sis. They’re look­ing for­ward to the fall cam­paign, which promis­es to be a fierce and no-holds barred matchup with Ed Murray.

But tonight, they’re cel­e­brat­ing, because Mike McGinn is mov­ing on to the final round in his bid for a sec­ond term as May­or of Seattle.