{"id":5184,"date":"2025-11-10T08:54:49","date_gmt":"2025-11-10T04:54:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/?p=5184"},"modified":"2025-11-10T07:37:01","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T03:37:01","slug":"sleepless-in-seattle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/?p=5184","title":{"rendered":"Sleepless in Seattle"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Though I live about 2300 miles away, I&#8217;ve been watching with interest this year&#8217;s Seattle mayoral race. Two candidates with wildly different political views, wildly different campaign styles, a David and a Goliath, an insider and an outsider, an incumbent and a neophyte challenger.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, and one of the candidates is a childhood friend I&#8217;ve known for over 30 years.<\/p>\n<p>Nearly a week post-election the race is still &#8220;undecided.&#8221; On Election Night the incumbent mayor, Bruce Harrell, led by about seven percentage points. (It galls the math teacher to hear &#8220;leads by seven percent&#8221;; let&#8217;s at least agree on\u00a0<em>that<\/em> one.) I figured, eh, it was fun while it lasted.<\/p>\n<p>But all I&#8217;ve heard for nearly a week is that somehow this lead is not what it seems. The late-arriving ballots always lean &#8220;progressive.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not sure which is more depressing: that the media are so enamored of calling a horse race that they&#8217;ll make a blowout seem close by any lies necessary, or that &#8220;late-arriving&#8221; ballots\u00a0<em>really do<\/em> lean progressive; it just takes them a while to figure out how to get that cheating operation to look clean.<\/p>\n<p>Some sleepless nights involved in whoever&#8217;s pulling strings and drawing lots in this scheme. I&#8217;m sure the good people of Seattle are going to get what they deserve.<\/p>\n<p>Washington&#8217;s one of like 8 or 10 states I&#8217;ve never been to. However this one plays out, I think I&#8217;m going to keep it that way for the next four years.<\/p>\n<p>I can&#8217;t believe I&#8217;m saying it, but I prefer the Washington on this side of the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Though I live about 2300 miles away, I&#8217;ve been watching with interest this year&#8217;s Seattle mayoral race. Two candidates with wildly different political views, wildly different campaign styles, a David and a Goliath, an insider and an outsider, an incumbent &hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/?p=5184\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5184"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5185,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5184\/revisions\/5185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}