Mike O’Brien For Seattle City Council Position 8

For me, this is the easiest choice out of all the races.  Among the reasons:  Mike O’Brien has been consistent in his support for an integrated surface/transit solution as opposed to the deep bore tunnel.

The list of supporters for O’Brien’s fundraiser includes many of the City’s best thinkers and leaders on urban environmental issues.  These are people whose understanding of sustainability is both deep and wide, and who respect the interdependencies that span the spectrum from neighborhood to global scales.  And they can see that Mike O’Brien gets it.

(To digress, another reason folks may want to support O’Brien is that one of his leading challengers in the race is neighborhood activist David Miller.   To get an understanding of Miller’s decidedly un-hugeasscity perspective, check out my letter to the  “Livable Seattle Movement,” a organization that Miller co-founded.  Given the intellectual sloppiness in the publications authored by Miller’s group, it’s a real hoot to see him claim on his web site that he would “base decisions on real data.”  Equally hilarious is Miller’s utterly meaningless pet term “intra-urban sprawl.”  All of this would best be a topic for another post, but for now perhaps some of you commenters could help me out here and explain why I would be wrong to conclude that the gestalt of Miller is antidensity NIMBYism thinly veiled in Seattle old-guard neighborhood populism?)