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The Overcast: How To Make Sense Of Seattle's Crowded Mayoral Primary

Mike McGinn
Elaine Thompson
/
AP
Then-Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn concedes defeat to current Mayor Ed Murray in the 2013 election. Murray has dropped out of this year's race, and McGinn is running again.

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 Beekmanspoke 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."

A Seattle native and former KNKX intern, Simone Alicea spent four years as a producer and reporter at KNKX. She earned her Bachelor's of Journalism from Northwestern University and covered breaking news for the Chicago Sun-Times. During her undergraduate career, she spent time in Cape Town, South Africa, covering metro news for the Cape Times.