Corporate Welfare: Generally shows up in the campaign in the context of Council members and developers taking credit for all the flashy new buildings downtown. Challengers like Goldstein, Harris, and Bentley are also big fans. The flip side is community activists demanding more resources to and input from neighborhoods and basic services (Chong, Licata, Peyton, Shives, Kylen; though just about all say they wanna fix the potholes). By far the most explicit demands to end the funnelling of tax money to the rich have come from Nick Licata.

Other Big Projects: Chong and Licata have spent a lot of time criticizing the city's use of Councilmanic bonds (not subject to voter approval) for big ticket projects like Key Arena (Seattle's other new sports arena), the Nordstrom parking garage, a new symphony hall, and buying Key Tower, The $90 million property tax proposal to help Seattle patch up its infrastructure is supported by Schell and Chow, opposed by Chong and Nickels for its side projects and the failure to include maintenance monies.

Transportation: Greg Nickels (mayoral race) and Aaron Ostrom (City Council) have done the most to push RTA and diversified transit planning. Schell worries about the cost of the Capitol Hill tunnel and about the Mukilteo commuter rail blocking freight traffic. Of course, Mussolini wanted trains that ran on time, too.

Comprehensive Plan: The Norm Rice "urban village" model, crippled by two Commons votes, has drawn a lot of criticism; Noland and Chong, as Council members, voted against it this year. The heat has centered around lack of public input and lack of budget money to implement it. The possible solutions: budget the money over neighborhood objections (Schell, Ostrom), study it some more, or start over.

Public Safety: Liberal Seattle is generally very good on human rights, especially when they're far away; the City Council is poised to pass a law penalizing companies doing business in Burma.

Closer to home, forget human rights. Police accountability for abuses in our own city is a non-issue; the trend instead is to call for more cops and/or better cop technology in the name of safe streets. Noland leans most heavily on this theme. It's done in the feel-good guise of "community policing," which, in Seattle as in many other cities, has been a sham. Seattle's cops disproportionately target poorer, non-white neighborhoods, ignore civil rights, and embrace the military model that should be the antithesis of community policing. Actual community-based crime prevention comes more often from neighborhood councils, churches, and block watches than from SPD. Until SPD changes its ways, more cops and toys will make the problems worse, not better.

Bashing the Underclass: On an array of constitution-defying issues (anti-loitering ordinance, postering ban, no sitting, teen dance ordinance, parks crackdown, etc.), Noland is the worst of a sorry lot. Most of the self-identified activist candidates (Licata, Ostrom, Chong, Conlin, Peyton, et al) oppose such measures, but there's no political momentum to overturn them. More likely, such voices would be the opposition to whatever scum-cleansing schemes Mark Sidran and friends hatch next.

Education: Mayor and city council have little impact on Seattle's educational policies; that's mostly the School Board. Virtually every candidate supports the education levy.

Housing: Another forgotten issue. Possible proposals like right of first refusal, an anti-abandonment ordinance, and lifting the ban on attached rental units are getting very little attention, while costs for both rentals and low-end properties are fast getting out of reach of ordinary working families. Half the city is renters, but there's not one among current council members or mayoral candidates. Licata has done the most on this issue.

Accountability: Chong is the only mayoral candidate who wants an independent auditor for city finances.

Process: Much of the neighborhood anger comes from the Rice/City Council track record of ignoring citizen input--first comes the vision, then the plan, then the implementation, then the public hearings. Three candidates--Chong, Licata, and Steinbreuck--are exceptionally strong on challenging this system. The non-Chong council members, plus Schell, Goldstein, and Conlin, are at the secret treehouse end of the spectrum.