Mayor Murray urges voters to remember ‘paralysis’ of Mike McGinn years

Moments after Mike McGinn announced he would enter the Seattle mayoral race, current Mayor Ed Murray’s campaign released a statement.

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Murray’s campaign touted his Murray’s 19 years of “progressive leadership” and pointed to concerns from McGinn’s tenure as mayor. That included McGinn’s “divisive and confrontational style” that led to “years of paralysis, dysfunction, and infighting at City Hall.” Murray’s campaign also noted that McGinn “led a flawed and failed search for a new police chief” and proposed a transit measure that voters rejected.

Here is Murray’s full statement:

Mayor Murray’s approach, which he developed over 19 years of progressive leadership in the legislature, is to bring diverse constituencies together to find common ground in order to create real solutions for the problems that we face. That is the steady, experienced approach that Seattle needs.

Mayor Murray has proven time and again over the last four years that he has the skills to build consensus around difficult issues, and develop effective policy solutions to translate our shared progressive values into action. Whether it is reaching agreement to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour without harming our small businesses, negotiating a historic Grand Bargain between affordable housing advocates and developers to require for the first time in our city’s history that all new construction must also create or fund affordable housing, helping to pass major expansions of bus and light rail transit service or developing and implementing a subsidized quality pre-school program to finally eliminate the achievement and opportunity gap that holds back so many of our poor and minority children, Mayor Murray has delivered for Seattle.

The last four years of Mayor Murray’s leadership stand in sharp contrast to the previous administration, when Mike McGinn was mayor. Mike McGinn’s divisive and confrontational style led to years of paralysis, dysfunction, and infighting at City Hall. As mayor, Mike McGinn picked fights with everyone under the sun. He attacked our Democratic governor, calling her a liar. He fought the Obama Dept. of Justice on police reform. He fought with our U.S. Attorney. He fought with our City Attorney. He fought with the City Council.

As mayor, Mike McGinn led a flawed and failed search for a new police chief. Mayor Murray, on the other hand, led a widely praised search effort that led to the appointment of Chief O’Toole. As mayor, Mike McGinn created an affordable housing task force that led nowhere and produced nothing. Mayor Murray created an affordable housing task force that led to a Grand Bargain that is creating thousands of additional affordable units across Seattle. As mayor, Mike McGinn proposed a ballot measure to fund transit that the voters rejected. Mayor Murray, by contrast, has passed major ballot measures to expand funding for transit, transportation, affordable housing, parks, and quality pre-K.

We believe that the people of Seattle do not want to return to those bad old days of failed and divisive governance. We look forward to drawing a clear contrast between Mayor Murray’s stellar record effective, progressive leadership and the track records of all of the other candidates in the race.

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