Editor’s note: 3 months till our state’s primary – and while that sounds like a long time, we’ve got many more candidates to introduce you to, so — after kicking off with two County Executive candidate interviews (Dow Constantine and Larry Phillips) earlier this spring — we’re continuing the profiles now, with veteran West Seattle journalist Jack Mayne on the WSB politics-reporting team — starting with his story about one of the West Seattleites running for City Council, David Ginsberg:

(David Ginsberg at left, photographed after becoming the 34th District Democrats’ 2nd vice chair in January; note that the group has not yet made its endorsement in City Council races)

By Jack Mayne
Reporting for West Seattle Blog

West Seattle’s David Ginsberg has been phased out of his technology job with Washington Mutual and now wants to displace Seattle City Council President Richard Conlin as the Position 2 councilmember.

Why three-term incumbent Conlin, when there are open seats?

“I understand this is the toughest seat I could have chosen,” Ginsberg said during a recent interview at Coffee to a Tea with Sugar in The Junction.

“I also think that after 12 years, he’s had time to make the changes he wanted. I had high hopes for him with he was first elected, and, quite frankly, he has not lived up to those hopes. I don’t think anyone should skate by without a serious challenge, so we decided to give him that challenge.”

Ginsberg (official biography here), like several other council contenders, believes it would be better for the community if Mayor Greg Nickels had a strenuous opponent in this year’s election.

One of the major problems he sees is the continued high cost of living and he would like to research a minimum livable wage for workers in Seattle.

Now the city is creating an “underclass of people” who work here and who need to be able to afford to live here.

“We need to make sure that people who work in Seattle can afford to live in Seattle, and I think it’s time we work with business and community leaders to explore whether a living wage will help accomplish that goal,” Ginsberg said. “We certainly do not want to drive jobs out of the city. It’s a tough nut to crack.

“The City Council has the authority to create a living wage,” he says. “Other cities have done it.”

He said a variety of people need to come together – business groups, low-income groups – to come together to forge a solution so people can afford to work and live here.

He also sees new construction as clashing with neighborhood plans all over Seattle, and that some neighborhood plans are weaker than others or more out of date with reality: “The answer is to strengthen our neighborhood plans and conform our zoning laws to our neighborhood plans so that it is easier to get construction permits.”

Examples of the bad zoning include so-called “six packs” and “four packs,” six or four tall, slender blocky townhomes on a normal residential lot. Another zoning woe is the “megahouse” which replaces a traditional, smaller neighborhood home with a building two, three or more times larger, changing a neighborhood’s character.

Ginsberg says zoning problems should not be legislated citywide, but exceptions to newly revised zoning laws should be strenuously checked before approval, he said.

Residents of neighborhoods must be involved in creation of upgraded neighborhood plans, he says. Waiting until the new house is finished before a citizen objects is too late, he says, people must be attending meetings and keeping involved in their communities: “I’m ready for this. I’ve already done it. I’ve been managing through touch decisions and cutting costs by 15 percent to 20 percent per year for the past five years at Washington Mutual.

“My sense is that we can maintain the essential services. We do not need to cut to the core. We absolutely cannot cut police. My opponent (Councilmember Conlin) has said that we may need to do that because of the budget crisis. We have some projects that can be postponed that are less essential so we can take care of to make sure that our people are safe.”

Ginsberg would implement the mayor’s proposed expansion of the Seattle Police Department more quickly because there is an expansion of gang violence, that schools are having an increased problem with truancy.

“They say that truancy is a number one indicator of gang membership,” he said. “We cannot allow any part of Seattle to become like south central Los Angeles. The approach that Mr. Conlin has proposed ¬– slowing down that (expansion) — is exactly the wrong approach.”

Money is one major obstacle the city must face, he says, adding that innovative ways to move forward can help the city overcome financial crises.

Then, he says there is gang violence.

“In some areas of the city, people are afraid to leave their homes,” Ginsberg says. “People who know people who’ve been killed are afraid and think the city is not listening to them.”

He doesn’t believe the city can solve the problem by itself, but there must be joint efforts of churches, community leader, the police, other agencies and the citizens.

Youth get into gangs between the fifth and eighth grades and there must be better options for people.

“It cannot be a choice between flipping hamburgers and joining gangs,” Ginsberg says. While it may seem like a good choice to join a gang at first, looking down the road makes it a bad way to go.

Regarding Seattle City Light, Ginsberg says we need to have the power generation system that will best serve the citizens of the city. With the city continuing to grow, he says we need to do that using all forms of energy, he says, including wind, solar, even wave energy “if someone can figure out a way to harness it.”

He noted small power generation — such as home-based turbines or solar panels, where excess power could be sold to the city or other power concerns — would be a way for the future.

Ginsberg lives in the newly redeveloped portion of High Point, and noted that those who live there chose it because of the mix of market-rate buildings and those reserved for the former residents of the government units that were left over from World War II.

He says he has not heard the negative comments about the mixing of incomes at High Point that were prevalent as the project was getting underway.

“It’s a great neighborhood, it’s beautiful,” he said. “It is hard to tell the difference between the market rate homes and the affordable housing. It seems to be working.”

On the upcoming ballot measure that would place a 20-cent tax on most grocery bags, Ginsberg thinks that is “the wrong way to attack the problem”:

“I live in High Point and some of those people live in low income housing and (this tax would mean) those people who have to walk all the way to Thriftway (at Morgan Junction) to get groceries cannot get an apple for their kids because they have to pay a tax on their bag? It is another regressive tax (and) we already have the most regressive taxes in the country.”

Ginsberg did say he would consider banning plastic bags. Or perhaps the city could require new biodegradable bags that are made from cornstarch rather than just banning plastic bags. He thinks a ban on plastic bags made from petroleum could be placed on a city election ballot – an election different from the measure on the August ballot that seeks to ban the bag tax.

Ginsberg says that while we should continue to increase the manpower of the Seattle Police, he does think the department should work to do more with less.

On garbage service, he says the recent change over in garbage and recycling collection was not managed as well at it should have been. Both companies now sharing the collection contract knew of the changes and whether it was the companies’ fault or the city’s fault, it was not handled as it should have been, he says.

He says the cost of campaigns is daunting to many people and that he has been told that a council candidacy will cost a quarter of a million dollars, but he thinks it will be less this year because of the economy.

Ginsberg says some people who have lost jobs or are about to lose jobs have made maximum donations to his campaign.

He says he has mixed feelings about his job with Washington Mutual ending. “It is tough” to keep saying goodbye to people as the WaMu employees were phased out. It would have helped keeping his income into the early parts of the campaign, but that was not to be.

“I am running a campaign against a formidable candidate, so I need to take the time to get out and see people and talk to them,” he says.

He and his partner have adopted twins, children born to a cocaine-addicted mother.

“They began going through withdrawals the moment they were born,” Ginsberg says on his campaign Web site. “Those early weeks were tough for them. But they persevered, and since then they’ve shined – last year both of them finished kindergarten at the top of their classes. To get there, I know they had to overcome obstacles I can scarcely imagine.”

Ginsberg had a high local visibility in the Obama presidential campaign, but says he has been politically active his whole life.

“I certainly think the high level of the Obama campaign certain brought me around to think this was certainly a good time to run. I am ready, it’s time.”

He is not deterred by the countless number of hours a councilmember must dedicate to the job, the vast number of meetings a member must attend, the night sessions that can stretch into the wee hours.

“I am passionate about politics, to begin with. I am a policy wonk – I love it. I love the city and I would be spending time researching these issues anyway. I might as well put my passion to work doing something useful.”

Ginsberg’s campaign website is at davidginsberg.org; he’s on Twitter at @davidginsberg, and on Facebook here.

David Ginsberg has announced a campaign kickoff event for May 28 at Youngstown Arts Center, 6:30 pm. Meantime, our candidate profiles will continue in the City Council races, as well as other contests on this year’s ballot; see the latest list of declared candidates here. Filing deadline is June 5, so more could still declare they’re running.