February of last year saw hundreds of us converging on Mount Zion Baptist Church, at 19th & Madison, for the Democratic Caucus. It’s time to go there again, this time for a more local political purpose. Some Central District neighbors and I have arranged a combined Central District & Capitol Hill election forum, which is being co-sponsored by (among others) the Capitol Hill Community Council and the East District Council.

At the forum, which will be on Monday July 27th from 6 to 9 PM, you’ll be able to submit questions to all the candidates for Mayor and City Council and for the local School Board position, and hear how they cope with them. If your question doesn’t get pulled out of the hat, you should be able to grab the candidates before and afterwards to grill them.  All the details of the election forum are posted here, together with flyers for you to share. Here’s the approximate schedule, in case you can only come for part of the event:

6:00 Start: 5 minutes Welcome (Pastor), 5 minutes intro etc.

1) 6:10 School Board position 5: Cullen, Helmstetter, Bass, Smith-Blum

2) 6:35 Council position 2: Conlin, Ginsberg

3) 6:50 Council position 6: Kaplan, Licata, Israel

4) 7:10 Council position 4: Bagshaw, Tobin, Carver, Plants, Bloom

5) 7:35: Council position 8: O’Brien, Williams, Forch, Miller, Royer, Rosencrantz

6) 8:05 Mayor: McGinn, Donaldson, Nickels, Mallahan, Garrett, Drago, Campbell, Sigler

7) 9:00. Thanks. Disband.

This is an all mail election: ballots mailed out around July 30th – return them by August 18th.  Registration by mail, and address changes, deadline was July 18.  If you are not registered in Washington State you may register in person by August 3.  For more information see: http://www.kingcounty.gov/elections/registration.aspx or call 206-296-VOTE (8683)