Donaldson hopes Mayor Nickels isn’t slam dunk

Here in the outland, the Space Needle is regarded as the only dipstick capable of measuring Seattle’s smug self-importance – though an unnecessary one, since the city is never so much as a teaspoon low.

But the next time your brother-in-law from Ballard is bashing you over the head with quality-of-life statistics, remind him of the election of ’09, when a mayor universally reviled around town seems likely to be returned to office for a third term even he doubts that he’s earned.

At least that’s the impression Greg Nickels gave in his first campaign spot on TV when he wooed voters by announcing, “As mayor, I’ve made my share of mistakes.”

Sort of a scaled-down version of “Don’t change horsemen in mid-apocalypse.”

Bunched with him on the ballot for the Aug. 18 primary and hoping to survive for the runoff are seven other candidates, and it’s at this point we can resurrect the obligatory rim-shot declaration that “standing head and shoulders above the rest” is James Donaldson.

At 7-foot-2, he gets that a lot.

Thirty years ago he helped Washington State and coach George Raveling to his first NCAA Tournament appearance and followed it up with a 14-year NBA career in six cities, the first and happiest stop being Seattle, which he decided to make his home. He opened a physical therapy clinic in Mill Creek, involved himself on a number of community boards and rarely bothered to vote.

“Politics didn’t appeal to me before,” he admitted. “I was content being a worker bee. I felt like there were folks at city hall who would take care of things. As I got more involved it struck me that it wasn’t a big leap for me to get on the other side of the table and help.”

Well, sometimes it’s a bigger leap than you think.

Donaldson filed first to run for a city council position, but when no prominent challenges to the embattled Nickels appeared he went all-in. Not long after, councilmember Jan Drago took a look at Nickels’ dismal approval ratings and joined the race, as did T-Mobile executive Joe Mallahan. In a recent University of Washington poll, those three and attorney Mike McGinn were in a virtual dead heat substantially behind Nickels for the second spot on the November ballot.

But it’s been a struggle for Donaldson. He’s on his third campaign manager and he’s raised just $35,000 in contributions, not even a tenth of what Nickels has collected.

“I never realized,” he admitted, “the value that having a large amount of money in a campaign had.”

Naïve as that may sound, when the politicians have failed – and Drago was a Nickels ally until opportunity knocked – political inexperience plays like a virtue.

Donaldson has rapped the mayor repeatedly – for being frozen in his tracks when snow paralyzed the city last winter, for creating a climate hostile to small business and for simply being out of touch in failing to curb civic salaries. What he’s avoided is having his basketball celebrity tied to a one-note campaign based on Nickels’ pitiful effort to keep the city’s NBA franchise from being pirated to Oklahoma City – though Donaldson is more than willing to speak to that, too.

“This was a city-county-state issue – the Sonics were everybody’s team,” he said. “I know that the current owners in Oklahoma knew our political people wouldn’t be able to get together a coordinated effort. The mayor should have been out in front leading the charge and he wasn’t.”

And he sees it as part of a larger issue: Seattle’s image and stature relative to the rest of the state.

“Sometimes I get the feeling Seattle wants to act like an island unto itself,” Donaldson said. “We need leadership that reaches out statewide, regionally, and officials who are willing to go to Olympia and build relationships. With the Sonics and the arena funding issue, people didn’t feel they had to care.”

Of course, it’s taken some time for James Donaldson to feel he had to care, too. It’s interesting and perhaps significant that Sacramento recently dumped a two-term incumbent to elect another former NBA player, Kevin Johnson, to be its mayor. In Detroit, ex-Piston great Dave Bing was elected to complete the term of disgraced mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and is running for a full term.

Ex-athletes have gone into politics before, but few from the NBA.

“I think you’ll see more of it,” Donaldson predicted. “You’re seeing guys doing well in other fields after basketball and becoming well received and respected, and they’re going to see this is another great way to give back to their communities.”

In this case, a community – he hopes – that’s spent its Nickels’ worth.