The August 16th primary is seven weeks from Tuesday, but your vote-by-mail ballot will arrive a lot sooner, and candidates are making the rounds to make their pitches. Thursday night, the West Seattle Democratic Women hosted candidates for the two Seattle City Council positions that are on the primary ballot – Position 1 and Position 9. Our video above shows the forum, unedited, while the candidates were speaking and answering questions – the first hour is on the first clip, with the ensuing 12 minutes on the second. (You can watch either in a larger window by clicking the YouTube logo to go to the YT page; please note that YT chooses the freeze frames you see on the video “play” boxes above, we did not.)

WSDW vice chair Lynne Ingalls moderated the forum. All four Position 1 candidates participated – Maurice Classen, Bobby Forch, incumbent Councilmember Jean Godden, and West Seattleite Michael Taylor-Judd; from Position 9, two of the three candidates participated, incumbent Councilmember Sally Clark and Dian Ferguson. WSDW decided on endorsements before the meeting at the West Seattle Golf Course ended; they backed the incumbents, Clark and Godden (note the WSDW’s endorsement rules/qualifications on the left side of their website’s home page). None of the other three council positions up for election this year has more than two contenders, so those candidates all go straight to the November general-election ballot.