Has Mayor Durkan finally found her footing after a year in office?

Mayor Jenny Durkan is coming up on a year in office, and appears to be settling on a different approach to office that’s leading to a steady series of political victories. She certainly got off to a rocky start.

“Jenny Durkan is a lot like the Seahawks. They started out pretty slow, and now they’re hitting their stride,” said KIRO Radio’s Tom Tangney. “The focus is how differently she handled things. She decided to be the face of the argument, rather than the manipulator behind the scenes.”

Her first few months on the job saw Durkan seemingly failing to establish control from behind the crowd, including hastily appointing Carmen Best chief of police after an uneven selection process, and working to repeal the head tax only a month after signing the measure.

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“People feel like she hasn’t done enough for the homeless problem, and there’s the whole head tax debacle,” said co-host Mike Lewis. “She was not engaged up front with issues, which allowed the city council to kind of run amok.”

So while Durkan appeared to dip below .500 in the first half of the year, the second has seen her take a more pronounced position on issues, reports The Seattle Times.

“She’s kind of found her feet. Now she has a stable organization around her, which people don’t give enough credit to,” Mike said. “The successes would be the education levy that just got through, she’s trying to reform the upper branches of Seattle City Light, transit passes for high school students, and she has added shelter beds.”

She’ll be highlighting other accomplishments this week, including 681,000 pounds of trash from unauthorized homeless camps, and an agreement to renovate KeyArena without public money. But her biggest challenge may be ahead, managing the Alaskan Way Viaduct shutdown. That should be perfectly smooth sailing.

What do you think of her first year?

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