DORI MONSON

Dori: It’s report card time, and Jenny Durkan gets a D

Nov 28, 2018, 5:27 AM

jenny durkan, income tax...

Former U.S. Attorney Jenny Durkan, left, is administered the oath of office for Seattle mayor by U.S. District Court Judge Richard A. Jones on Nov. 28, 2017. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)

(AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)

In honor of her one-year anniversary as mayor of Seattle this Wednesday, the Dori Monson Show took a cue from its news partner KIRO 7and decided to give Mayor Jenny Durkan a grade for her first 365 days in office.

“I give her a D — she’s not quite a failure yet, but I haven’t seen any improvement,” Dori said. “Crime is worse. Homelessness is worse. Money being squandered is worse. Break-ins are the worst in America, for property crime, we are the worst [major] city in America.”

That’s not to say that Durkan could not improve her grade in the future — but she would have to put in some serious extra credit hours to turn the city’s failures around.

“If somebody came in and we actually had crime go down, and people safe walking down the streets, and cars that don’t get their windows smashed every couple of seconds,” Dori said, then he would start handing out honor roll grades.

Dori criticized the mayor for saying that a chunk of the city’s new $5.9 billion budget will go toward helping Seattle’s “least advantaged.”

“I hate phrases like that. Why are any of us the ‘least advantaged?'” Dori asked. “That’s such a bizarre turn of phrase. The reality is, we all have the same opportunities.”

He elaborated, “I know from personal experience that being in poverty doesn’t mean you can’t climb out of it — it means you’ve got to make some decent decisions along the way.”

Dori also had a good laugh when Councilmember Sally Bagshaw, who just announced her retirement, told KIRO 7 that Durkan is doing well because she “knows her department heads, knows who she can trust and rely upon.”

“Is that the standard these days? She knows her department heads … Is that what we’re grading our city on these days?” Dori laughed. “We’ve got a lot of crime out there. We’ve got a lot of problems. But the mayor knows her department heads now.”

You may be wondering if there is any past mayor of Seattle whom Dori would give a grade that would make parents reading a report card proud. The answer is yes — but you have to go back to the 1990s.

“I like Norm Rice — he was a good guy,” Dori said of the mayor who served from 1990 through 1997. He added that Rice was the last Seattle mayor to have the guts to come on the Dori Monson Show.

In Dori’s view, the mayor’s office just went downhill after that.

“Greg Nickels, we got a dusting of snow and the entire region was paralyzed,” Dori said. “Why? He did not want to put salt on the street because he was afraid it would wash into Puget Sound — which is all salt water.”

RELATED: Cato Institute on why Jay Inslee gets a failing grade

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