When Seattle residents get their primary ballots in the next few weeks, they are going to see a list of 21 people hoping to lead the state's largest city.
Seattle Times political reporter Jim Brunner and City Hall reporter Dan Beekman spoke to two local politics experts about the mayor's race for The Overcast, their weekly politics podcast.
Below is an excerpt from one of their conversations with Monisha Harrell, a local political consultant and the chair of the board of directors for Equal Rights Washington.
They also spoke with Seattle University politics professor Marco Lowe. If you want to hear more about specific candidates' strengths and weaknesses, check out the whole podcast. You can find The Overcast on iTunes, Tunein, Sticher and SoundCloud.
Interview Highlights From Monisha Harrell
On her picks for the general election...
"If I had to place my bets right now, I still think it's anybody's game within the top six. ...You need to be able to have a loyal base, so a base that's going to pick you first amongst everybody else. ...When you've got 21 candidates, 15 percent could be all you need to get through, and so it's just who's got loyalists."
On whether we might see a "Trump bump" in voter turnout...
"We're not talking about a race where we're going red versus blue. This is Seattle. This isn't Georgia [legislative district] 6. This isn't the sort of area where if I don't vote for this person, then Trump wins. That's just not going to happen, and everybody kind of knows that."
On incumbent Mayor Ed Murray's possible write-in campaign...
"He still has to run the city during the day, and so he would need a full-time team. He would need an experienced team. What you don't have right now is you don't have a lot of experienced politicos out of work."
