This morning, the campaign season kicked into a higher gear – with a little more than three months to go till the primary — as the first major campaign forum of the season, sponsored by the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce-affiliated Alki Foundation, brought movers and shakers from the worlds of business and politics to the Washington Athletic Club. We will be covering the major citywide/countywide races here in the months ahead, so we went for a closeup look at participating candidates, and video to share with you. We’re breaking this story into two parts, four clips each – in this one, the one-minute opening pitches each Seattle Mayor candidate made. Four of the five who are officially running participated (Joe Mallahan wasn’t there). The top clip is James Donaldson; the next three, in order, are Michael McGinn, incumbent Greg Nickels, and Norman Sigler:

Each candidate’s name above is linked to his campaign website. This morning’s event also included a “lightning round” in which a yes/no question was asked and each candidate had to hold up a paddle showing his answer – one notable question regarding West Seattle concerns, “Do you support building park-ride garages in Seattle?” – McGinn and Nickels said no, Donaldson and Sigler said yes. In a separate story later tonight, we’ll have our clips of the four County Executive candidates who appeared. The Seattle Chamber’s photos from this morning are posted on its Flickr site; for a different style of as-it-happened coverage, see what we wrote via Twitter on our @wsblive account (which we use to cover live events like this, so as not to clutter our other streams) – our main Twitter account is @westseattleblog, and our automated feed of links to WSB stories is @westseattlenews.