Out with old and in with new?

If history is any guide — and it usually is — then Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels is toast.

Even if Nickels somehow survives this primary election, as more votes are counted this week, the odds are crazy long that a sitting mayor this unloved in summer could win back the city's hearts in the fall.

It's not you, Greg, it's us. Or maybe it is you. Either way, it's over.

Three-fourths of Seattle wants someone new.

I looked back over local and Washington state elections during the past two decades and couldn't find a single time where an incumbent got less than 30 percent of the vote in a primary and went on to win the general election.

Even scoring 40 percent spells serious trouble for an incumbent. Former House Speaker Tom Foley, in 1994, got 35 percent in a primary and went on to lose. Former U.S. Sen. Slade Gorton had 43 percent in a 2000 primary, then lost. When incumbents in numerous city council races scored in the 30s or low 40s in primaries they almost always went on to lose.

The lowest primary vote total I could find for an incumbent who went on to win was 39 percent — for current Seattle City Councilman Richard McIver, in 2005.

Yet Nickels scored an abysmal 25 percent. The only reason there's any possible path to re-election left for him is that his two upstart challengers, Mike McGinn and Joe Mallahan, are so unknown and untested.

What happened?

Maybe it was the snow debacle (though Nickels' approval ratings were dismal before last winter). Maybe it was his stubborn crusade for a downtown tunnel. (The anti-tunnel candidates did mighty well yesterday. Maybe the issue of what to do with the Alaskan Way Viaduct isn't settled yet after all.)

Or maybe it was a general sense Nickels is running some sort of ideas factory, not a city.

I know a lot of Seattleites who felt he was thinking too many pear-shaped environmental thoughts. Had lost sight of the mayoral basics: Filling potholes, catching burglars, plowing snow, that kind of stuff.

One of his green ideas — a 20-cent "green fee" on plastic and paper grocery bags — didn't fare much better Tuesday than he did. Voters crushed it.

No doubt we'll now be told by civic officials that it wasn't the bag fee plan that was bad, it was the times. That the poor economy did it in.

I don't think so. People didn't find the measure expensive so much as trivial, annoying and off-topic.

It had the stink of the latte tax. It felt like a non sequitur. As in: We're fretting about Boeing leaving, schools declining, parks closing, gun crime rising. And you want to talk about ... plastic bags?

Nickels was quoted recently as saying he sensed voters are "grouchy." And are taking it out on incumbents.

That might be true. The one Seattle School Board member up for re-election, Mary Bass, looks to be in trouble as well.

There isn't an incumbent in the King County executive's race. But the runoff this fall now features a King County insider, Councilman Dow Constantine, versus another of those shiny new outsiders, Susan Hutchison. She outpolled him in the primary by 15 points.

It isn't at all far-fetched to say that voters now have set the stage for both Seattle and King County to be headed by people with zero governmental experience. People — Mallahan or McGinn in Seattle, Hutchison in King County — who are so fresh they have never run for anything. Let alone been elected.

Turning the entire Seattle-King County local government empire over to newbies has not been tried before, to my knowledge.

Maybe Nickels is right — maybe you voters are willing to take that kind of risk because you're grouchy.

More likely is after decades of the same old thing, it just felt right to try something new.

Danny Westneat's column appears Wednesday and Sunday. Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com.