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Back in June of 2005, before most Washington voters knew his name, Strategic Vision showed Mike McGavick trailing Sen. Maria Cantwell 50% to 36% in their first head to head poll. By August 2005, McGavick had climbed to 38%. Fifteen months and untold millions later, McGavick has finally reached the magic 39% mark.

Hmm. These are Will Baker numbers — barely a few points higher than my dog would get merely by putting an “R” next to her name on the ballot. I mean, damn… even Richard Pope managed to get 44% of the vote this year. (Keep your spirits up Richard, maybe tenth time’s the charm.)

Not that this was much of a surprise, as McGavick never managed to gain any traction. Even when a couple polls briefly showed the margin closing this summer, it was solely due to Cantwell’s numbers coming down, while McGavick continued to bump his head on the low 40’s.

Why? Well yeah, there was that big blue wave thing — but McGavick was always a sucky candidate running a sucky campaign, and a quick scan through my previous posts suggests he never really had a chance, whatever the political climate.

Take a look. I come off as a pretty smart guy:

April 19, 2005, on reports that Mike McGavick, Rick White and Chris Vance were all scrambling to get Karl Rove’s endorsement:

I’m not really concerned which of the three the voters Rove ultimately chooses, as it’s hard to take seriously a field that includes Vance as a viable candidate. I’ll be the first to admit that Cantwell is no Patty Murray, and should be vulnerable… but if these crappy candidates are the best the state GOP Karl Rove can come up with, it’s gonna be a cakewalk.

July 16, 2005:

I just don’t think defeating Cantwell will be as easy as the Republican faithful think it will. Apart from Rossi, all other GOP hopefuls trailed Cantwell by double digits in a recent Republican poll… and after a slow start, the Senator now reports a $3 million head start in her campaign account. And it doesn’t really matter who the GOP throws up against her, if she’s smart, Cantwell herself will all but ignore her opponent, choosing to run against Frist, DeLay, Rove, Bush and the right-wing Republican hegemony in DC.

It is true that Cantwell has not been the most visible of senators… mostly because she is simply a policy wonk, genuinely uncomfortable with shameless self-promotion. She is also a true moderate on most issues, and as such simply can’t generate exciting headlines like some of her more liberal (and, um… media savvy) colleagues. But her moderate politics and understated style work both ways, making her very difficult to attack. As tough as it is for Cantwell to generate real passion within some progressives, it will be equally tough for her opponent to generate passion against her, outside of the core Republican base.

Democrats will rally to Cantwell because they understand what is at stake nationally, and WA’s moderates and independents who gave both Patty Murray and John Kerry decisive victories last November, will need to be given a good reason to dump Cantwell in 2006.

I’m not sure a multimillionaire Safeco CEO can give them that reason.

July 18, 2005:

It’s hard to imagine how the Republicans are going to present a multi-millionaire insurance company executive who proudly advocates shipping jobs overseas, as a “man of the people.” But you know they’re going to try.

I hear some righties snidely claim that they’re going to force Cantwell to run on her record. Well I hate to burst their bubble, but McGavick has a record too, and it ain’t gonna look so pretty by the time November, 2006 comes around.

July 21, 2005:

I continue to wonder if McGavick, a man with a long record as an insurance industry lobbyist and executive is really the right person to run in WA state against Cantwell, a successful executive herself? Do Rove and Dole and the NRSC strategists really understand Washington state? As one Republican consultant suggests, maybe not.

“What people think in the Beltway and what goes on back home are two different things, and there’s a disconnect there.”

Hmm… the same kind of disconnect that labeled the politically diminutive George Nethercutt a “giant killer”…?

December 5, 2005:

The GOP had counted on an unpopular Cantwell being an easy target, but now it seems clear that McGavick is not only going to have to sell himself to WA voters, he’s going to have to make a strong case for tossing out Cantwell as well. And with Bush’s approval ratings in the toilet, and the GOP leadership not far behind, it’s gonna be pretty tough making the argument that we need to give the president one more Republican vote in the Senate.

Perhaps this partially explains why his fellow Republicans aren’t lining up to challenge McGavick for the nomination?

December 15, 2005, on Sen. Cantwell’s rising approval numbers:

There was a time when state R’s expected the national party to pour lavish sums into this race, but it’s beginning to look like that money would be better spent defending Representatives Dave Reichert and Cathy McMorris.

December 29, 2005:

The problem for McGavick is that contrary to popular belief, Christian conservative voter turnout can be pretty soft, especially when the Republican candidate gives them little to get excited about. And as much as McGavick needs to draw votes from Dems and independents, he also needs a strong showing from the GOP base.

March 2, 2006, on McGavick’s announcement that “civility” would be a central theme of his campaign:

Today’s event

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King and Pierce counties have now reported their latest results from WA-08. Dave Reichert’s lead over Darcy Burner has expanded slightly to 3120 votes.

However, I am now absolutely confident that the race will narrow substantially over the next few days as King County continues to tabulate over the holiday weekend… and Pierce doesn’t report again until Monday.

(Oh… and I still expect the race to narrow.)

There seems to be a lot of confusion over the vote count in WA-08 — even the utltra-reliable Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo got it wrong — so let’s clarify a few things.

First, WA-08 spans King and Pierce Counties; over the past two elections about 81 percent of the votes have come from King, about 19 percent from Pierce. Currently Darcy Burner is leading in King County by about 0.75 percent, and losing Pierce by about 13 percent. Dave Reichert has been holding about a 2,700 vote lead.

Second, when the King and Pierce County results pages say 100% of precincts have reported, they are only referring to the poll votes, which will account for only around 20 percent of the total votes cast. The vast majority of votes were cast by mail.

Things don’t get any easier from there. Pierce reports that it has 65,000 ballots left to count, and King reports 189,000, but as we learned in 2004, these are only estimates and could even now be off by the tens of thousands, while thousands more ballots are still arriving every day. To further complicate the math, we have no idea how many of the remaining ballots actually fall within the boundaries of WA-08. In 2004 WA-08 accounted for about 30 percent of all King County ballots and about 20 percent of those cast in Pierce — but the absentee ballots are counted in no particular order, so it is quite possible that WA-08 is significantly over or under represented in the current count.

So how many ballots are really left to count? Who knows? If you assume that ballots counted thus far have been evenly distributed geographically, and you go by the ballots left to count reports, there should be about 57,000 WA-08 ballots left to count in King and about 13,000 in Pierce… but that just strikes me as way too low. This would produce a total turnout in WA-08 of about 223,000, compared to 336,499 in 2004 (a presidential election year and an open seat) and 203,335 in 2002 (a year when popular incumbent Jennifer Dunn faced no serious competition.) I find it hard to believe that turnout would be closer to 2002 than to 2004. But who knows?

And then there are the provisional ballots. Probably numbering in excess of 10,000 in King County alone. Just like in recounts, provisionals tend to favor Democrats, because let’s face it… on average, we simply have more trouble voting. These will be the last ballots to be counted, and could produce a several hundred vote surge for Burner at the very end.

So here’s my not very bold guess: only 40 to 60 percent of ballots have already been counted. That leaves plenty of room for Burner to erase a 2,700 vote deficit.

As I wrote in the previous post, I wouldn’t be surprised if WA-08 ends up in a recount. And we all know what happened the last time we had one of those.

So I’m particularly wary about allowing the conspiracy theorists to get their frame established before the rest of us realize there’s anything to theorize about. Take for example this little paranoid fantasy my new beer buddy Stefan tossed off late election night, almost as an aside:

I heard a story from an informed source that someone walked into a polling place in Bellevue and stuffed a bunch of “flood ballots” into an Accuvote. They have lawyers looking into this.

Hmm. Stefan doesn’t tell us exactly what his source is informed by, but it doesn’t seem to be reality. As KCRE spokesperson Bobbie Egan points out in Stefan’s own comment thread, a so-called “flood ballot” is merely a plain paper printout of a sample ballot on King County’s web page, and as such:

There is no way for ballot tabulation equipment to count a simple Web page. Only a ballot, properly programmed for the specific election by King County Elections could be read by the equipment.

I’d wager that a slight majority of Washingtonians still believe that Democrats likely stole the governor’s mansion from Dino Rossi, a bullshit misconception built entirely of tiny little turd pellets of untruth like this one. Left unrefuted, public opinion gets shaped by a “where there’s smoke there’s fire” mentality. Two years ago the PR war was pretty much over before most of us knew it had started, but KCRE seems to have learned its lesson — it is very heartening to see Egan proactively refuting even the stupidest rumors.

Both King and Pierce Counties updated their returns for WA-08, and while the margins have started to tighten, Dave Reichert continues to maintain about a 2,700 vote lead.

That said, there are many more ballots left to count in King than in Pierce, which historically only accounts for about 19 percent of the district’s total vote, and if this race follows the usual pattern, we should expect to see the margin continue to tighten as the votes come in, with Burner gradually eating away at Reichert’s lead. Whether she gains enough to overtake Reichert, well… that’s where the drama is.

You’ll notice that both campaigns have been pretty quiet today, not wanting to play the expectations game. I’m guessing that’s because neither campaign really knows which way this one’s going. Provisional ballots tend to substantially favor Democrats, and those will be the last to be counted, so don’t be surprised to see a sudden swing of several hundred votes towards Burner during the final days of the count.

I’m smelling a recount.

UPDATE:
Just to clarify: we don’t know exactly, because ballots are still coming in, but we’ve only counted about 60 percent of the ballots thus far, maybe less. So this thing is far from over.

UPDATE: (5:39 PM)
Not that we didn’t already know the Dems took control of the Senate, but the AP just officially called Virginia for Webb.

Okay, let’s be honest, yesterday’s election was a certifiable, big blue blowout. No, we didn’t get everything we want, but that’s only because we wanted everything. Instead, all we got was Democratic control of the House, Democratic control of the Senate, huge pick-ups in the state legislature, and every single statewide initiative and Supreme Court race going our way. If Darcy Burner and Peter Goldmark had declared victory last night, I would have personally considered the election a clean sweep.

As it is, Peter lost a tough, closely contested race in a district with a huge Republican advantage, and Darcy’s race is still too close to call. Although the numbers admittedly look better for the other side (you’d always rather be up than down,) there are still a lot of ballots left to count, and I’ve heard conflicting analyses about Darcy’s chances, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed. If I sound a little sanguine it’s only because nothing that happened last night was a surprise (except, perhaps this,) and because I was so emotionally invested in Darcy’s race that nothing short of a victory party would have made last night complete.

I guess I’m just greedy, because of course I understand that both WA-08 and WA-05 were amazing victories for the local netroots, long before election night. We weren’t supposed to win either of these races — in fact, we weren’t even supposed to make them close. That was the storyline the local media adopted heading into the election year, and that was the storyline we worked so hard to rewrite. Of course the candidates deserve most of the credit, but the netroots played a huge role in making them both viable.

And win or lose, Darcy and Peter both played a necessary role in helping the Democrats retake the House. The 50-state strategy was a team effort, and yesterday’s 30-plus seat pick-up was a team win. Darcy in particular drew an enormous amount of Republican resources into a seat they hadn’t expected to seriously defend. The NRCC made the decision that WA-08 was a priority, and as a result resources were shifted from races that Democrats went on to win.

So before I go on to do any more analysis and gloating I just want to take a moment to thank all of you for your contribution towards changing the face of politics national and locally. This was a historic election for the Democrats and for the nation. And it’s just a hint of what’s to come.

Too little, too late.

Meanwhile, the John McCain death-watch begins.

Initiative 920 lost, and it lost huge. The current numbers show I-920 barely passing in only three Eastern Washington counties, and failing statewide by 61% to 39%, an embarrassing 22-point margin that will only grow once the bulk of King County’s ballots are added to the mix.

This was more than a repudiation — it was a political ass-whooping… an electoral “fuck you” to estate tax repeal, its rhetoric, and the selfish multi-millionaires who backed it.

In arrogantly pushing to repeal Washington’s estate tax, proponents like Seattle Times publisher Frank Blethen have set their cause back a decade or more. If the state GOP wants to continue to champion the cause, more power to them. Or rather, less power, for repudiating the overwhelming will of the voters is a sure fire path towards cementing the kind of stunning legislative losses they achieved last night. And if Frank or Martin or one of their wealthy buddies wants to sink more millions into yet another hopeless initiative, well… a fool and his money are soon parted, and as long as that adage holds true, voters don’t seem to mind if a tiny fraction of the money ends up in state coffers.

Had I-920 passed last night, even just squeaking by, we would have surely seen copycat initiatives popping up on ballots nationwide. Now that seems unlikely. But should estate tax repeal forces seek to cherry-pick a more millionaire friendly state, the No on I-920 campaign has provided a blue print for countering their carefully constructed, Luntzian, “death tax” rhetoric.

With the Democrats now in control, estate tax repeal is also as good as dead at the federal level, and I-920’s crushing defeat will give House and Senate leaders no incentive to moderate their position. In fact, by arrogantly overreaching, I-920’s backers may have actually damaged efforts to reach a compromise that would have significantly raised exemption levels on both the state and federal tax. Certainly, Blethen should expect no support from Sen. Maria Cantwell, who lost the Times’ endorsement due to her refusal to vote for repeal, yet still won reelection by an 18-point landslide.

If there was ever an example of editorial impotence, this is it.

I’m mainlining caffeine right now in an effort to jump start my own election analysis, but I thought I’d start by stealing some from The New Republic:

The Democrats have won back the House. Rahm Emanuel, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), nearly tripped over himself on the way to the microphone to claim the credit. In fact, while the tidal wave in the House looks like a bit of strategic genius by Emanuel–and pundits are starting to call it that way (Howard Fineman on MSNBC noted that the Democrats even picked up a seat in Kentucky, where the 3rd District candidate was John Yarmuth–“Emanuel’s fourth choice!” Fineman exclaimed, as if in awe of the power possessed by Emanuel’s mere table scraps)–in race after race, it actually represents the apotheosis of forces Emanuel has doubted all long: the netroots.

In two competitive House races in the Bluegrass State, Emanuel’s first choices lost by 9 and 12 points. In the 2nd District it was Colonel Mike Weaver, the cofounder of Commonwealth Democrats, a group of conservative Democratic state legislators. In the 4th, it was Ken Lucas, a former congressman whom Robert Novak recently called “moderate conservative” in a column Emanuel’s “recruiting coup” in coaxing Lucas out of retirement. Both were the kind of candidates Emanuel has favored in his famous nationwide recruiting drive. Yarmuth, meanwhile, was founder of the state’s first alternative newspaper, said things on the campaign trail things like “the No Child Left Behind Act … is a plan deliberately constructed to create ‘failing’ schools,” and called for “a universal health care system in which every citizen has health insurance independent of his or her employment.”

It was a pattern repeated across the country. New Hampshire’s 1st District delivered Carol Shea-Porter, a former social worker who got kicked out of a 2005 Presidential appearance for wearing a T-shirt that said turn your back on bush. That might have been her fifteen minutes of fame–if, last night, she hadn’t defeated two-term Republican incumbent Jeb Bradley. For the chance to face him, however, she had to win a primary against the DCCC’s preferred candidate, Jim Craig–whom Rahm Emanuel liked so much he had the unusual move of contributing $5000 to his primary campaign. Shea-Porter dominated Craig by 20 points–and then was shut out by the DCCC for general election funds.

[…] John Hall is poised to become the Democrats’ version of Sonny Bono–a former environmental and anti-nuclear activist and co-author of the hit 1970s hit “Still the One,” he just won New York’s 19th District House seat. Chris Carney, now heading to Washington to represent Pennsylvania’s 10th, beat beleaguered incumbent (and alleged-strangler) Don Sherwood. “Until Carney was ahead by double digits,” complained Howie Klein of DownWithTyranny, a blog that backed his candidacy, “Rahm wouldn’t take his phone calls.” Larry Kissell, a high school social studies teacher, is, as of this writing, in a statistical dead heat with an incumbent Republican from of all places, North Carolina. Says Klein: “If Rahm had a little bit of foresight to see this guy was for real, and to see that he was a candidate who could have won, a little bit of money would have made all the difference for him.”

[…] The thing all these successful candidates share in common is backing by the same dirty-necked bloggers and netroots activists that pundits have been calling the political kiss of death. Yarmuth, Shea-Porter, Hall, and Kissel–in addition to Democratic pickups Jerry McNerney in California, Joseph Sestak and Lois Murphy in Pennsylvania, Amy Klobuchar in Minnesota, Bruce Braley in Iowa, Kristin Gillibrand in New York, and Senators-elect John Tester of Montana and Sherrod Brown of Ohio–were all beneficiaries of a PAC called Blue America, a joint project of the blogs Firedoglake, DownWithTyranny, and Crooks & Liars. “Most of the candidates we support come directly from our readers,” Klein says.

Some of their chosen beneficiaries were hopeless and remained so. The bloggers say that’s the risk you take when you’re trying to build a party infrastructure for the long term. Others were hopeless, however, only until the netroots-types got their mitts on them. […] The bloggers, blunt as they may be, think they have a better plan for building a lasting Democratic majority. Last night’s results suggest the rest of us should start taking it seriously.

The netroots won yesterday, and we won big. There will be ups and downs, but yesterday was the first step towards rebuilding the Democratic Party and a new, national progressive majority.

There’s too much to write about, and I’m just too damned tired.

The polls just closed in parts of Indiana and Kentucky, and I feel like a kid on Christmas Eve the first night of Chanukah. I’ll be starting my evening around 5PM at the Montlake Alehouse where our Tuesday night gathering of Drinking Liberally will be meeting a few hours early to watch the East Coast returns, and I invite you all to join me. I’ll then set out party-hopping, before ending the night in Bellevue with Darcy Burner.

I’m not sure how much I’ll be blogging throughout the night, so I think I’ll just start this running thread where I can post occasional updates and observations. Tune in throughout the night for what I hope to be some well-deserved gloating.

3:43 PM
Dems are pretty optimistic in Louisville, where John Yarmuth (D) is leading Rep. Anne Northup (R) in KY-03 51.1 to 47.6 with 15 percent of precincts reporting. Interestingly, exit polls showed Yarmuth winning by, tada… 51-47.

Why am I so interested in KY-03. Well, it’s the only competitive race reporting, but it’s also a bit of bellweather as it only recently moved into the “toss-up” category during the last couple weeks, and Hotline only rated it the 36th most competitive House race. If Dems are comfortably beating incumbents in Kentucky, well… we’ll see.

4:07 PM
More exits polls show close Senate races in Tennesee, Missouri and Arizona, and the Dems running away most everywhere else. (Lieberman is apparently winning by 5 points in CT… I’m not sure what party he is.) And… Vermonters have just elected our nation’s first Socialist Senator, Bernie Sanders.

4:31 PM
I’m heading to the Alehouse. So far, I’ve heard nothing that indicates we aren’t in the midst of a big blue wave. We’ll know a lot more over the next hour.

5:31 PM
I’m at the Alehouse, and they just called the PA Senate seat for Bob Casey. Rick Santorum has been retired. Congratulations Dan Savage, we owe it all to you.

5:55 PM
I’m sharing a pitcher of beer with Stefan Sharkansky. He bought. I guess I’m a beer whore.

As for the election, Ken Blackwell didn’t win the governor’s race in Ohio. So I guess we still have a democracy afterall.

7:02PM
Still at DL. Santorum just conceded. The crowd here broke into chants of “dog on man.”

10:14PM
Nationally, it’s a wave. The Dems have taken the House, and most likely the Senate. I’m at the Dem party at the Sheraton, and everbody is hopped, but I’m heading out to Bellevue where Darcy is currently behind in a tight race. I’ve got no idea where any of the numbers are coming from, so I don’t know what her prospects are, but as always, I’d rather be ahead than behind. Cantwell won, the bad initiatives lost, and we’re picking up a bunch of seats in the state legislature. Darcy would be the icing on the cake… but the cake’s pretty damn tasty on its own.

I got my heart broken in 2004, believing the exit polls. But I guess I’m just a glutton for punishment. Here’s the first leak to come my way:

Democrats leading:
Virginia (52-47)
Rhode Island (53-46)
Pennsylvania (57-42)
Ohio (57-43)
New Jersey (52-45)
Montana (53-46)
Missouri (50-48)
Maryland (53-46)

Republicans leading:
Tennessee (51-48)
Arizona (50-46)

Don’t trust ’em, but I’d rather the numbers show we’re up than down.

Flooding is hampering Get Out The Vote (GOTV) efforts throughout the state, and the state Democratic coordinated campaign needs more volunteers. If you’ve got a couple hours to spare, give your local office a call and help take our nation in a new direction.

COORDINATED CAMPAIGN OFFICES

AUBURN
240 Auburn Way S, Suite 1A
Auburn, WA 98002
253-333-2148
253-939-9452

BELLEVUE
12443 Bel Red Road, Suite 310
Bellevue, WA 98005
425-454-2509

BELLINGHAM
215 W Holly Street, Suite B28
Bellingham, WA 98225
360-738-4681

EVERETT
2812 Lombard Avenue, Suite 106
Everett, WA 98201
425-259-2985

OLYMPIA
506 Columbia Street SW
Olympia, WA 98501
360-357-6274

SEATTLE
1848 Westlake Avenue N
Seattle, WA 98109
206-352-3963

SILVERDALE
3100 NW Bucklin Hill Rd. Suite 226
Silverdale, WA 98383
360-698-6856

SPOKANE
151 S Washington St
Spokane, WA 99201
509-838-1718

TACOMA
711 St. Helens Avenue, Suite 100
Tacoma, WA 98402
253-573-2841

TRI-CITIES
2634 W. Bruneau Pl.
Kennewick, WA 99336
509-735-3037

WENATCHEE
33 North Mission — P.O. Box 1061
Wenatchee, Washington 98801
509-664-6621

VANCOUVER
1717 Broadway St.
Vancouver, WA 98663
360-695-0821

YAKIMA
1210 W. Lincoln Avenue
Yakima, WA 98902
509-453-0115