District 2 has seven candidates for an open seat on the Seattle City Council. While none of them are uniformly outstanding on transit and land use issues, some are much better than others. As a reminder, here’s our rating system.

The two candidates in this tier share a lot of common ground. They are both for safer streets, more housing types in single family zones, and prioritizing transit. In both cases, concern about displacement veers into unproductively demonizing developers. We would not characterize them as transit wonks, and there are occasional positions we don’t like in their policy mix. But we believe the impact of either overall would be strongly positive.

Phyllis Porter

We expect Phyllis Porter to especially prioritize multi-modal safety and de-emphasize cars. A hard-core bike and safety activist, leader in the Seattle Greenways movement, and co-founder of Black Girls Do Bike, she has organized several memorial protests when bicyclists and pedestrians have gotten killed by cars on Rainier Ave. And then she turned the protests into legislative action by helping design safety improvements for Rainier that unfortunately died in the Seattle process. We don’t like her position on congestion pricing, but that’s about it.

Tammy Morales

Tammy Morales is a community organizer with a polished set of policy proposals and key endorsements that suggest she’ll hit the ground running. Her purpose is less centered on transportation, and her reservations about congestion pricing and bus lane camera enforcement aren’t great. But she seems most likely to effectively build a coalition to get good things done.

Good

Chris Peguero

For a candidate who is emphasizing climate change, Chris Peguero has a platform oddly light on transit and a general increase in housing density. A longtime Seattle City Light employee, we would have liked to have seen more enthusiasm from highly placed people in the City. We like that he had the guts to cite the racial roots of zoning laws at the MASS forum. His policy answers were a mixed bag, but we believe he would do more good than harm on the council.

Fair

Mark Solomon is essentially a nonentity on transit and land use issues. It’s not why he is running and it’s hard to say what impact he would have on these debates.

Poor

Ari Hoffman wants to have bus routes designed to keep them out of the way of general car traffic and eliminate various revenue sources for transit.

Omari Garrett is a stunt candidate who says interesting things, but actively endorses Tammy Morales.

The Seattle Transit Blog Editorial Board currently consists of Martin Duke, Frank Chiachiere, and Brent White.