Local News

Washington state has found an issue that makes mincemeat of the famed Cascade Curtain: marijuana.

Unlike many Northwest issues, the vote on Iniatitve-502 did not break along traditional east-west lines. Instead, weirdly, it broke along a north-south axis.

Voters across the northern half of the state seemed supported the pot initiative, while counties to the south (with the exception of Skamania) voted it down.

See here: http://seattletimes.com/flatpages/politics/2012-washington-election-results.html

Hardly the typical Washington voting map.

Update: 9:12 p.m.

John Urquhart unseated Sheriff Steve Strachan Tuesday to become King County’s top law enforcement officer.

Urquhart jumped out to a big in initial returns.

Initial counts showed Urquhart leading 57 percent to Strachan’s 42 percent.

Update:  9:08 p.m.

Longtime appellate attorney Sheryl Gordon McCloud defeated former state Supreme Court Justice Richard Sanders for a six-year term on the state Supreme Court.

McCloud was leading with 56 percent of the vote, including more than 64 percent in vote-heavy King County.

Sanders served on the court for 15 years before losing his seat two years ago amid controversial remarks about certain minority groups having a crime problem.

Both candidates portrayed themselves as passionate defenders of constitutional rights.

But in their battle to replace Justice Tom Chambers, who is retiring from the court, McCloud criticized Sanders for making what she called “intemperate comments” when he served on the bench  was a justice.

In the race to replace retiring Washington Sate Auditor Brian Sonntag,  Democrat state Rep. Troy Kelley was leading Republican businessman James Watkins by 53 percdent to 47 percent in initial returns.

Meanwhile, Democrat Kathleen Drew and Republican Kim Wyman were in a dead heat in the race to replace retiring Secretary of State Sam Reed. With more than 1 million votes cast, both had roughly 50 percent of the vote.

If Drew wins, she would be the first Democratic secretary of state since Vic Meyers, who lost a re-election bid in 1964.

Democratic Lt. Gov. Brad Owen was leading former state Senate Republican Leader Bill Finkbeiner 53.5 percent to 46.5 percent in the race to hold onto his seat.

Owen has been lieutenant governor since 1997. The lieutenant governor presides over the state Senate and takes command when the governor is out of state.

Finkbeiner is a moderate Republican who provided a key vote needed to pass a landmark gay-rights bill in 2006.

In the state’s most expensive and perhaps ugliest attorney general’s race, Democrat Bob Ferguson held a sizeable lead over Republican Reagan Dunn with 1.4 million votes cast.

Ferguson was leading 54 percent to Dunn’s 46 percent in initial returns.

The contest featured two rising political stars and showcased the importance of the open seat they’re seeking; outside partisan groups spent more than Ferguson and Dunn combined trying to influence the election.

Both Ferguson and Dunn are members of the Metropolitan King County Council, where they sit next to each other in chambers.

They even claim to like one another — at least that’s what they said at the start of a campaign later rife with nasty, personal attacks.

The race to succeed Rob McKenna and become the state’s 18th attorney general got off to a pugnacious start with its first televised debate in June. Dunn went on the offensive in his introductory statement, stressing his crime-fighting experience as a federal prosecutor, a credential Ferguson lacks.

Ferguson countered by pointing out the attorney general’s job is focused mostly on civil, not criminal law. He noted he had more experience than Dunn in civil law.

In the August primary, Ferguson won 52 percent of the vote and called the result a “dream start” for his campaign. It soon turned into something else.

An initiative that reimposes a law requiring a two-thirds vote in the state Legislature, or voter approval, to increase taxes passed Tuesday.

Initiative 1185, sponsored by Tim Eyman, was leading 64 percent to 36 percent in initial statewide counts.

The measure comes at a time when the state budget and the economy are still struggling and the state Supreme Court has mandated increased funding for public schools.

Eyman contends I-1185 is needed, because the last two-thirds requirement was approved by voters in 2010. Under state law, it takes a supermajority in the Legislature to change or repeal an initiative the first two years after passage — a near political impossibility.

But after two years have elapsed, only a simple majority vote is required. That’s an easier task, and lawmakers in the past have suspended the two-thirds rule to increase taxes.

Critics of the initiative argue the two-thirds requirement allows for minority rule — giving a relatively small group of legislators the ability to block any attempt to boost revenue.

Watching the results come in on Tuesday night with supporters at an Everett restaurant, 1st District Congressional candidate John Koster said he felt good about his chances of winning.

“There were 13 self-funded candidates who ran in 2010 and three got elected,” he said. “We’ll trust the voters.”

Before arriving at the Everett restaurant, Shawn O’Donnell’s, he and his wife enjoyed a private dinner at another restaurant, a chance for some reflection. “It’s been a long haul,” he said.

Looking at his supporters, Koster said he was confident they were going to win.

“We ran a great grass-roots campaign,” he said. More than 100 volunteers were walking through precincts on Election Day, urging people to vote.

The restaurant held special meaning, Koster said: “This is where we started the campaign, and this is where we’re going to finish.”

U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell clinch her third term in the U.S. Senate on Tuesday, defeating Republican Michael Baumgartner, according to the Associated Press.

Cantwell had led from the beginning against the lesser-known Baumgartner and had amassed more than $8 million in her campaign.

Perhaps the best predictor of who will win the race for governor has been the vote in the state’s largest county.

In every governor’s race since then-state Sen. Jim McDermott lost to John Spellman in 1980, the King County winner also ended up winning the office.

But that’s hardly a surprise given the overwhelming size of Seattle and its neighboring communities.

More interesting, however, is that Snohomish County is a really good bellwether for predicting how well gubernatorial candidates will do statewide, according to an analysis by Seattle Times database reporter Justin Mayo.

Going back to 1980, it has had the best record for predicting the statewide vote totals for the winner in governor’s race, often nearly mirroring the eventual outcome.

Starting with the McDermott-Spellman race, which Spellman won with 56.7 percent of the vote to McDermott’s 43.3 percent, the vote tallies by the winning candidate for governor in Snohomish County were never more than 1.2 percent off from the statewide total of the eventual winner.

That year, for example, Spellman won 55.4 percent of the vote in Snohomish County.

In fact, on average, the Snohomish County’s winner’s vote only differed from the statewide winner’s total by 0.7 percent.

That doesn’t mean that Snohomish has always predicted the actual winner. Voters in Snohomish voted for the eventual winner in seven of those eight gubernatorial races.

The one outlier: 2004, when Christine Gregoire beat Dino Rossi statewide by less than 200 votes.

That year, Rossi defeated Gregoire in Snohomish County. But even then, Gregoire’s Snohomish County vote total was still within 1.2 percent of the statewide total, which is far closer to the eventual outcome than the results in King County.
1980                               SnoCo        Statewide
D    McDermott          44.6%         43.3%
R    Spellman               55.4%         56.7%

1984
D     Gardner               52.7%         53.3%
R     Spellman             47.3%         46.7%

1988
D     Gardner               62.5%         62.2%
R     Williams              37.5%         37.8%

1992
D     Lowry                  52.4%         52.2%
R     Eikenberry        47.6%         47.8%

1996
D    Locke                    57.4%        58.0%
R    Craswell               42.6%         42.0%

2000
D    Locke                    56.9%        57.9%
R    Carlson                 41.3%        40.2%

2004
D    Gregoire             47.7%        48.9%
R    Rossi                    49.9%         48.9%

2008
D    Gregoire             52.7%       53.2%
R    Rossi                   47.3%        46.8%