Burner Election-Watch Party

With roughly 10 percent of precincts reporting, this young man's mother leads her opponent by a 57 - 43 percent margin.


That's the good news. There are, of course, many tens of thousands of ballots left to count, and the bad news is that both the King and Pierce county elections offices are having some sort of technical problems with their machines that are preventing them from counting anything in a timely fashion. Odds are, we won't know the result of this race for the next several days. Certainly this small early result is a significant improvement over the results from this time of night two years ago, and as Darcy said to her supporters at the Bellevue Westin, "I'll take 57-43 as the first batch of reporting."

Nevertheless, the crowd here at the Bellevue Westin hotel, at the Burner campaign's election watch party, is loving the results from our district on up through the Governor's race and of course the wonderful result in the Presidential race. Our heartiest congratulations to President-elect Obama. What a pleasure it is to be able to use those words.

All of us here at the Westin have been frustrated with the lack of timely results from King and Pierce counties. That's something I would encourage our Secretary of State to investigate and rectify at the earliest possible moment. Overseeing our state's elections is perhaps the job's most important role, and it is truly embarassing for two of Washington's most populous counties to suffer such a critical failure in their elections offices on such a momentous night.

It is difficult to sum up into a few words the feeling of being with so many excited and commited progressives tonight, watching these wonderful results come in from across the nation. Elation, zeal, and relief, mixed in generous doses, might come close. Wrapped up in the euphoria of the evening, it would be easy to lose sight for a moment or an hour or even a day or two, of the awesome responsibility that victory puts on all our shoulders. We won, now we have to do something.

Thankfully, amid the cheers and applause, the hugs and tears of joy, we heard one voice raise a clarion call to action, reminding us that we have work to do. When given a moment at the microphone tonight, this young man, perhaps America's newest and youngest rising political talent, cut straight to the point:

Do you know what's happening with the polar bears? Their ice is almost gone.We
have to reverse global warming. We have to re-freeze the polar ice cap.

The young man's name is Henry Burner, and with those simple words devoid of spin and political calculation, he reminded everyone in the room that yes, tonight is a good night, but we have a mighty big job ahead of us.

Roll up your sleeves, America. It's time to get to work.