The political risk of freeway removal

One aspect of the embarcadero removal in San Francisco that we should take into account is that the Mayor Art Agnos lost re-election because the China-town merchants  who had supported him disagreed with him and defected. That said, in Seattle Mike McGinn was elected due to his anti-tunnel stance. He did do a bit of hedging on this position in the in the latter days of the campaign but I do not read much into this since he won with nearly the same number of votes as Councilmember Mike O'Brien who made no such hedges on his anti-tunnel stance.