Seattle mayoral candidate McGinn: an idealist ready to pack a punch

Seattle mayoral candidate Michael McGinn is an environmentalist who quit his law firm to start a nonprofit. He likes to talk about synergy and vision. He commutes by bicycle.

All that could add up to a Seattle stereotype who's not quite cut out to be a competitive candidate for mayor, especially against two-term incumbent Greg Nickels. But McGinn's supporters say he doesn't get into fights he doesn't think he can win.

"He has a very clear vision of what the future can look like and, yeah, that has some pretty big, bold ideas in there," said Mike O'Brien, a supporter and fellow Sierra Club volunteer. "But at the same time, when he talks about what those ideas are, they're actually pretty reasonable."

McGinn, a former chairman of the local Sierra Club, is one of at least three people challenging Nickels in this year's mayoral election. Former Sonic James Donaldson and corporate recruiter Norman Sigler are also in the race. Former City Councilmember Peter Steinbrueck is considering a run.

McGinn entered the race last month with three big ideas: extending broadband Internet service to everyone in Seattle, improving Seattle Public Schools and upgrading bus service.

A day later, he took a direct shot at Nickels, questioning the mayor's environmental credentials in a news release. When the mayor's campaign rebutted, McGinn offered to debate.

McGinn, 49, has never run for office. His political history began in 1983 when he went to work for Jim Weaver, a Democratic congressman from Eugene, Ore.

Later, as a law student at the University of Washington, McGinn took on the university's administration in several battles as head of the Graduate and Professional Student Senate.

He successfully argued against a university office expansion before the Seattle hearing examiner and helped obtain benefits for teaching and research associates.

As a litigator at the Stokes Lawrence firm (where he eventually became a partner), McGinn started volunteering at the local Sierra Club branch. In his North Seattle neighborhood, he became president of the Greenwood Community Council.

In 2006, he founded the Seattle Great City Initiative, a nonprofit that gets financial support from the Cascade Land Conservancy.

The initiative is intended to bring together different factions — developers, politicians, environmentalists — around the common goal of making Seattle a better place to live.

Most recently, the group helped lead last fall's successful parks-levy campaign. Nickels opposed the measure, saying it was one levy too many for taxpayers.

The matchup between Nickels and McGinn puts some of McGinn's friends in a tough position, said Doug Walker, a Nickels supporter who has worked with McGinn as a businessman and environmentalist.

"He's a good guy and a friend of mine," Walker said. "I have not seen him in a role where he was running anything. I've definitely seen him in this role as a visionary, but those are not always the same thing as the nitty-gritty of managing and running sort of a complex organization."

The mayor should be a good leader who sets the vision, McGinn said. The nitty-gritty gets handled by the mayor's staff.

McGinn expects some people will be hesitant to speak up about his candidacy, especially if they have business at City Hall.

For his part, McGinn says he has been willing to publicly criticize Nickels when the two differed. When the mayor hosted the U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting here in 2007, McGinn organized a protest because he believed Nickels' transportation policies contributed to global warming.

McGinn has also supported the mayor. He served on Nickels' transition team, gave money to his three mayoral campaigns — including this one — and in 2006, praised Nickels in a Sierra Club news release for his "tireless work and political courage." In 2007, Nickels hosted a fundraiser at his house for the Seattle Great City Initiative.

Nickels is said to be vulnerable. But he has $300,000 in the bank and — perhaps more crucial — the apparent support of much of the city's business and environmental communities.

McGinn says he needs only enough money to get out his message. He points to a 2007 roads-and-transit tax package he and Sierra Club leaders opposed. Proponents included Nickels and some of the region's biggest companies and developers.

The campaign pitted environmentalists against each other. Supporters of the measure outspent McGinn's side by $3 million.

"We thought, 'We can't do this, really,'" said O'Brien, president of the local Sierra Club. But they did.

O'Brien was the public face of the campaign, but McGinn said he tried to keep it on course by appealing to environmentalists' values and convincing them that the political outcome they feared — that transit could never pass without roads. — was not a foregone conclusion.

O'Brien remembers McGinn's encouragement: "The line I remember him saying, he said, 'You know, here's a plan we know will make global warming worse. If there is such a thing as environmental malpractice and we did nothing on this, we will have committed malpractice.' "

Last fall, Proposition 1 was turned into a transit-only ballot measure. The Sierra Club and mayor worked together and both could claim victory when the voters said yes.

Emily Heffter: 206-464-8246 or eheffter@seattletimes.com