Tight Seattle mayor's contest won't be decided for days

Seattle's mayoral race was too close to call Tuesday night, with environmentalist attorney Mike McGinn holding a narrow lead over T-Mobile executive Joe Mallahan.

With 85,000 ballots counted, the two were separated by a mere 910 votes.

The outcome of the race will be decided in the coming days. If turnout predictions are correct, 125,000 or so ballots remain to be counted.

McGinn's insurgent campaign was outspent 3-to-1 and opposed by the city's biggest labor and business groups. McGinn even threw what many considered a Hail Mary pass two weeks ago by backing away somewhat from his signature issue of the campaign: opposition to the deep-bore tunnel planned for Seattle's waterfront.

His party at The War Room, a Capitol Hill bar, erupted in cheers of "we like Mike" after results were posted. "We really defied the conventional wisdom, that the candidate with the most money, the candidate that has the longest list of endorsements can win it," McGinn said.

Even as they celebrated, McGinn's supporters continued to work.

They passed out cellphones and lists of undecided voters to volunteers, with instructions to find people who hadn't mailed their ballots. Those voters were urged to drop off ballots at five QFC stores where McGinn volunteers collected them and drove them to be postmarked at a SeaTac post office that stayed open until nearly midnight.

Mallahan, who came to the race with little political experience, was by no means ready to concede.

"It's a great Seattle tradition; we never have any blowout campaigns," he told supporters at The Edgewater Hotel. "I think this thing is far from over."

He joked: "I want a whole planeload of you down in Miami to do the recount."

Mallahan and McGinn were survivors of an eight-way August primary that ousted two-term incumbent Mayor Greg Nickels.

Mallahan, 47, is a T-Mobile vice president who was virtually unknown in local political circles when he entered the race in May.

With no public record to go by in Seattle, Mallahan talked about his business experience and his community-organizing days when he lived in Chicago in the 1990s.

He got through the primary by spending $230,000 of his own money on his campaign, coupled with relentless criticism of the Nickels administration.

McGinn, 49, is an attorney who quit his job defending corporations to create a public-interest nonprofit, the Seattle Great City Initiative.

As a leader of the local Sierra Club, McGinn led environmentalist opposition to a failed multibillion-dollar roads-and-transit measure in 2007. He campaigned for Sound Transit's light-rail expansion plan, which passed last year.

The two men ran contrasting campaigns. Mallahan sought endorsements from big-name labor and business groups that had shunned him during the primary.

McGinn responded to criticism that he was a one-issue candidate by issuing policy statements on public safety, taxes and other issues. He held 23 neighborhood town halls.

Mallahan raised more than $688,000, including his own $230,000 contribution, and relied on paid consultants. McGinn raised just $200,000, but ran a very lean, volunteer-dependent campaign.

A turning point in the race came two weeks ago, when McGinn seemed to backtrack on the biggest issue in the race: his opposition to a deep-bore tunnel to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct.

He had campaigned almost solely on his vow to block the tunnel during the primary, and he continued to oppose it in his general-election campaign. But Oct. 19, after the Seattle City Council voted on an agreement with the state to move forward on the tunnel, McGinn said he wouldn't hold up progress on the project.

He promised to continue asking "hard questions" and to fight a provision in the state law that attempts to hold Seattle responsible for cost overruns on the $4.2 billion project.

Mallahan seized on what he called McGinn's "flip-flop" and argued the job of the next mayor was to work to bring in the tunnel project on time and within budget. He said his own management experience better prepared him for that task.

Jim Brunner: 206-515-5628 or jbrunner@seattletimes.com

Emily Heffter: 206-4648246 or eheffter@seattletimes.com

Seattle Times reporter Maureen O'Hagan contributed to this report.