Licata facing stiff competition for first time in political life

This is the final of three stories this week profiling the races for Seattle City Council.

Seattle City Councilmember Nick Licata starts each of his committee meetings with a poem.

To him, it's a way to add culture to government. To voters, it's an endearing quirk that, along with his reputation as the council's most liberal member, keeps Licata cruising to re-election term after term.

In 2001 and 2005, he won re-election with 77 percent of the vote.

Now Licata is facing two strong challengers for the first time in his political career. Both say they like him and acknowledge his personal popularity, but they argue he is too much a naysayer to get much done.

"He's a nice guy," said Jessie Israel, who in the past has voted for Licata. "Nice guy, good values ... He has a track record of saying no to things but not really getting solutions."

Israel, 35, a King County Parks manager, has scored many big-name endorsements in the race, gaining a reputation as a rising political star. She has $66,000 to Licata's $90,000.

Licata's other challenger in the Position 6 race, architect Marty Kaplan, is running his first political campaign, but brings years of experience on the city Planning Commission. He has raised more than $70,000, largely from business people who feel Licata's views are unfriendly to business.

The top two vote-getters in the Aug. 18 primary move on to the Nov. 3 general election.

When Licata was first elected to the City Council on his second try in 1997, he was living in a commune on Capitol Hill and was best known for fighting new sports stadiums as a leader of the group Citizens for More Important Things.

He's notoriously unafraid of the politically dicey. He fought light rail because he was concerned it would hurt bus service.

He rallies openly for the legalization of marijuana, and famously told Sports Illustrated in 2006 that the effect of losing the Seattle Sonics would be "close to zero." He later apologized, but continued to fight using public money for arena improvements.

"You can't be a leader from the caboose," he said. "To be a leader you gotta be in the engine, and sometimes it gets hot in the engine."

Licata says he has been effective. Other council members vote in the minority as often as he does, he said, but he is more likely to make a public statement after being on the losing end of a vote.

He said he's "a political realist." Once Licata's made his point, he's often willing to vote for legislation with which he doesn't completely agree.

"The public wants to know that the council's working. A council that always agrees on everything is not a legislative body," he said. "I think I influence more legislation than anyone else."

Israel said Licata is an obstructionist, particularly on transit, where he has been a staunch supporter of buses but not always other kinds of transit.

She claims Licata "sued" Sound Transit over light-rail cost overruns in 2002, but he said he had distanced himself from Sane Transit by time the group had filed the lawsuit.

In records from King County Superior Court, Licata issued a declaration in 2002 saying he was a member of Sane Transit and opposed the light-rail line. He believes the questions he and others in Sane Transit asked helped the project in the long run.

He does get his way sometimes, he said. On a recent rezone in Interbay, he helped broker a compromise on an affordable-housing program.

Questions he asked about how the South Lake Union streetcar could force cuts to bus service in other parts of town "framed the debate," he said.

Israel says she is frustrated by Seattle's infamously drawn-out decision-making process and that she would bring new energy to the council.

She's earned the support of the Cascade Bicycle Club and police and firefighter unions.

The firefighters reported this week a $10,000 independent expenditure to send out mailers in support of her campaign.

Israel switched positions on the 20-cent fee for disposable grocery bags and now plans to vote for it.

She believes a voluntary program would be better, but the $1 million-plus the plastics industry put into the campaign to stop the fee persuaded her to vote for it. Kaplan also supports the fee.

Licata was part of an 8-1 council majority that approved the fee, which is now a referendum on the primary ballot.

Israel supports building a tunnel on the waterfront, and expanding the streetcar network.

She says her experience working with City Year, an AmeriCorps program for at-risk youth, gave her the idea for an after-school mentoring program she believes would cut down on dropouts, truancy and youth violence.

Kaplan says Licata is too "old-fashioned" and unwilling to move the city forward. Israel is too inexperienced, he said.

Kaplan seldom lets a public appearance go by without mentioning his role as a student volunteer on Victor Steinbrueck's campaign to save the Pike Place Market in 1971.

He's now principal of his own downtown architecture firm and, on the Planning Commission, has worked on the details of some of the city's biggest development and transportation issues.

Kaplan has the endorsement of the Alki Foundation, the political arm of the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce.

As an architect, Kaplan said he knows how to envision the future. He supports replacing the Alaskan Way Viaduct with a tunnel, as planned, and chastised Licata for his opposition to the project, saying city leaders have "a mandate" to find a solution.

He thinks Licata hasn't done enough to work with other council members.

"I think we need to embrace the 21st century and not keep looking back," he said. Licata "has self-marginalized that seat."

In 1989, Licata led an effort to set term limits for City Council members. At the time, as head of the Metropolitan Democratic Club, he told The Seattle Times that candidates who serve for more than three terms become bored, lazy and unimaginative.

Yet two decades later, he is running for a fourth term. He hasn't lost his passion, he said.

Licata considered a run for mayor this year and thought about leaving elective office altogether. But then, he said, he wondered who would ask the hard questions if he were gone.

"I felt guilty. Like no one else would," he said.

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