8 pm: Polls just closed, and King County Elections should be dropping tonights results around 8:15 pm, so I’ll be madly reloading their web page between now and then. I’ll update this post with the results of the only truly important race tonight—Seattle Prop 1—and then a few times more with other results and analysis. Stay tuned!
8:11 pm: Omigod, the truth wins (maybe), with Prop 1 (Metropolitan Park District) up 52.4% to 47.6%! Yay!
8:18 pm: Incumbent Democratic House Speaker Frank Chopp is leading leading Socialist challenger Jesse Spear 80% to 19%, which I’m guessing is a little disappointing for the Spear campaign. She’ll do better in November, and I don’t suppose she was ever expecting to win, but it would’ve been nice to see her over 20% in the primary.
8:19 pm: In what will set up a very tense week for State Senate watchers, incumbent Democratic turncoat Tim Sheldon is in a too-close-to-call three-way in the 35th LD. Real Democratic challenger Irene Bowling leads with 34.2%, followed by Sheldon with 33.7%, and then Republican Travis Couture with 32.1%. The top two are up for grabs! That means depending on late ballots, it is a realistic possibility that Sheldon could be out of a job, potentially shifting control of the Senate back to the real Democrats!
8:34 pm: Republican moneybags Microsoftee Pedro Celis (the GOP’s Great Off-White Hope), is actually coming in third in his top-two challenge against Democratic incumbent Microsoftee Suzan DelBene. DelBene 52%, Republican Robert Sutherland (who?) 16%, Celis 15%. Wow. Republicans sure do hate immigrants.
9:13 pm: So just to be clear, I’m not quite declaring victory for Prop 1. With a 4.8% lead, it will likely win. And the Yes campaign says that they phone banked 40,000 voters late, and they were breaking their way. But it’s close enough that late ballots could turn it the other way. We’ll have a better idea tomorrow at 4:30 pm.
Thank you for actually covering the returns.
@1
Seconded.
You’ve got to love the pettiness of the Seattle Times opting for, “Highlights from tonight’s vote count”, instead of mentioning the results of a race they have been talking about nonstop for weeks.
Looks like the Republicans’ anti-parks campaign based on dirty tricks and disinformation backfired on them, or at least failed to overcome the intrinsic good sense of Prop. 1.
In other races, it looks like Tim Sheldon will be the Republican candidate (regardless of what he calls himself) in 35 LD; and, in a race I’ve been watching, in 32 LD incumbent Democratic Sen. Maralyn Chase is shellacking both of her opponents and it appears that Chris Eggen, who ran against her as a Democrat but whom I suspected of being a Trojan horse (i.e., another Rodney Tom and Tim Sheldon) will not make the top two.
Although I never got around to posting this on HA, I had a feeling this might be the year that voters retire Pam Roach. While I don’t know her well, I’ve met her more than once, on one occasion did some legislative business with her, have seen her work a crowd, and despite her personal reputation I’m impressed with her political skills. She also represents a district that’s very much in tune with her conservative politics. (And, she knows how to play to her constituency.) But she’s been in the state senate for 24 years, and like all long-serving politicians, she’s getting shopworn plus her original constituents are being replaced by younger voters who aren’t attached to her, have different issues, and may want a fresh face. Today’s primary won’t determine her fate, but trailing or breaking even in a primary is never a good harbinger for an incumbent, and she looks very much in danger in November.
The big question, of course, is whether the state senate’s Rogue Coalition either dissolves or loses its majority born in treachery, and the senate reverts to the Democratic control that voters thought they had voted for in 2012. It doesn’t look good for the GOP and their fellow travelers. A turnover of Roach’s seat wouldn’t have much impact, because she would be replaced by another Republican, but replacement of Rodney Tom (a certainty) and Tim Sheldon (probable) by Democrats will flip the senate back to the Democrats, if other things stay equal. I don’t know what the GOP’s prospects are for gaining seats elsewhere, but they’re certainly not going to get the 32nd LD senate seat through the person of Chris Eggen (if that was his intent and plan, as I suspect it was).
Chris Eggen campaigned on a platform of working with the Republicans to get things done, even though he ran as a Democrat. (He currently occupies an officially “nonpartisan” seat on the Shoreline City Council.) If he’s not a Trojan horse a la Tom and Sheldon, then he’s naive. If you’re a Democrat, you can’t work with Republicans, because Republicans don’t negotiate or compromise; the GOP is practicing scorched-earth politics that leaves no room for “working with” them on anything, for them it’s either win-or-lose and the only way you can work with Republicans is to give them what they want. The word that describes that is “surrender” and Democrats who give Republicans what they want are surrender monkeys. FDR didn’t hire General Ike to agree to Hitler’s terms. And when I vote for Democratic candidates (or candidates calling themselves “Democrats”), I don’t hire them to agree to the GOP’s terms. I hire them to kick Republican ass. To paraphrase a certain president, “They want war, and war is what they’ve got.” At least, partisan warfare is what they deserve and should get until they decide to rejoin the human race and return to the negotiation table. Until then, I want Democratic politicians willing to bomb them into submission. The minute a candidate starts talking about “working with” Republicans, he’s lost my vote, no matter what he calls himself. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is. I didn’t choose this, and don’t want this, I would much rather our country had an opposition party of the old mold that was willing to bridge differences and work out deals. When the other side takes away that option and leaves you with a choice of only fight or die, I want someone who’s going to fight. Republicans can change this anytime they want. All they have to do is abandon the “my way or the highway” approach and be willing to do business with our side.
In Kansas, Republican Senator Pat Roberts has successfully fended off an odious Tea Party challenger. The Tea Party doesn’t seem to be doing very well in other races nationwide, either.
One can hope the government shutdown sparked a backlash against that crowd of loonies. Their attempt to force a default of America’s national debt scared the bejeezus out of Wall Street and probably aligned significant Big Money and Big Business forces against them.
Tacoma already has a Metropolitan Parks District, although it’s board is directly elected to six year terms, not the city council in an ex-officio capacity.
http://www.metroparkstacoma.org/about/
great job HA!
The Yes campaign for the parks district outspent the No campaign by 10 to 1. Does anyone doubt that influenced the outcome, maybe just a little?
Roger @5, something to watch re Sheldon: South Kitsap may push Couture just over Sheldon, being a teabilly (glibertarian/evangelical) concentration after redist, and relatively numerous They also tend to report later in the process, so it’s not over yet.