Seattle challengers oust Schell

Associated Press

SEATTLE — Mayor Paul Schell hoped to avoid being the first Seattle mayor voted out of office since 1956, but he trailed his top two rivals in early primary returns Tuesday.

With 55 percent of precincts reporting, City Attorney Mark Sidran had garnered 34 percent of the vote to King County Councilman Greg Nickels’ 32 percent and Schell’s 22 percent.

Schell needed to beat at least one of them to advance to November’s general election.

"It doesn’t look good. I have to be honest," Schell said Tuesday night.

Last week’s terrorist attacks were "the kind of context that is going to favor an incumbent, for stability," said local historian Walt Crowley. But he said Schell "has a tremendous capacity to screw up."

Schell, 63, knew he had a lot to overcome. He slept as Mardi Gras rioting left one dead and more than 70 injured this year. Boeing didn’t warn him before announcing it was moving its headquarters to Chicago.

But the city’s handling of the 1999 World Trade Organization protests most strongly marred his tenure. About 50,000 demonstrators overwhelmed the 400-plus police officers assigned to control them; the city shut down in clouds of tear gas.

"Paul Schell has had his chance, and I think we need new leadership in the city," said apartment manager Gary Kirch, 56, who voted for Nickels.

The top two finishers in the primary advance to the general election. Schell, Nickels and Sidran — all Democrats in this liberal city of 563,000 people — led a field of 12 candidates.

The last Seattle mayor to lose a general election was Allan Pomeroy in 1956. It’s been even longer since a mayor failed to survive the primary — Charles Smith in 1936, Crowley said.

Schell stressed his record in Seattle’s neighborhoods, where he boosted spending on roads and helped raise millions of dollars for new or improved parks and libraries.

Sidran is best known for pushing through civility laws, which increased penalties for aggressive panhandling and urinating in public and banned sitting on sidewalks in some business districts.

Nickels, a career politician, said he knows how to work the system and boasted of his efforts to improve public transportation.

A top issue in the campaign has been Seattle’s traffic, which studies show to be among the nation’s worst. Schell and Nickels have supported building a light-rail system linking to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Sidran favored improved bus service.