Seattle City Council candidates: Living wages vs. energy

Sally Clark, who was appointed to the Seattle City Council this year to fill a vacancy, is running against attorney Stan Lippmann in Tuesday's election to keep her position for another year.

The four-year term of Jim Compton, the council member she replaced, would have expired in 2007.

Clark cites her experience, a desire to keep the living wage a reality in Seattle and reforming the Seattle School Board.

Lippmann's top issues include building a new source of energy and replacing the Alaskan Way Viaduct with a suspended structure.

Clark, who has raised more than $100,000 to Lippman's $100, chaired the council's Economic Development & Neighborhoods this year, focusing on creating working-class jobs.

"There are a lot of people who are never going to go get a Ph.D. in biochemistry," she said. "We have both an obligation and practical need to connect some of those folks with the educational support, skills training, the life support so they get their feet on the ladder."

To that end, Clark said she is working on maintaining funding for the Seattle Jobs Initiative, which helps lower-skilled workers attain better-paying jobs, and using her position as "a bully pulpit" for economic development.

While she has not passed much legislation out of her committee, Clark said, she has been effective at working out compromises on the council.

Lippmann predicts the city will face an energy crisis in 2011 when its contract with the Bonneville Power Administration expires, which is why he wants the city to build a wind-turbine farm.

He also wants to replace the viaduct with a cable-suspended structure, such as the Millau Viaduct in France.

"People are really unhappy because it's [the Alaskan Way Viaduct] a big ugly structure," he said. "Let's build one that's beautiful and thin so it's something beautiful to look at."

Lippmann, who has been unsuccessful in running for everything from mayor to Congress over the past 10 years, says he's serious about this race and is no longer focusing on fighting mandatory vaccinations, an issue he took up in his 1997 mayoral run.

"I'm not your normal politician but I'm not a kook and there's a very small window there," he said.

Sharon Pian Chan: 206-464-2958

or schan@seattletimes.com