Tonight, vot­ers end­ed a live­ly four-way con­test for a bat­tle­ground coun­ty coun­cil dis­trict by send­ing the old­est can­di­date (a well known incum­bent who has served sev­er­al terms) and the youngest can­di­date (a first time office-seek­er) on to the gen­er­al elec­tion for a Novem­ber matchup.

In the returns just released by King Coun­ty Elec­tions, Repub­li­can Jane Hague and Demo­c­rat Richard Mitchell hold the top spots. Hague is far and away the leader with 39% of the vote, but col­lec­tive­ly, her oppo­nents have 61% of the vote, which isn’t a good sign for her cam­paign. Mitchell, mean­while, leads the group of chal­lengers with 27.87% of the vote. John Creighton is close behind with 25.15% of the vote, and Pat­sy Bon­in­con­tri was a dis­tant fourth with 7.30%.

The num­bers:

Bal­lots Cast/Registered Vot­ers: 24517⁄121139 (20.24%)
Pat­sy Bon­in­con­tri: 7.30% (1,681 votes)
Richard E. Mitchell: 27.87% (6,420 votes)
Jane Hague: 39.30% (9,054 votes)
John Creighton: 25.15% (5,795 votes)
Write-in: 0.39% (89 votes)

Only six hun­dred and twen­ty five votes sep­a­rate Mitchell and Creighton. While it’s pos­si­ble that Creighton could make up the dif­fer­ence, it’s unlike­ly. This is a low turnout elec­tion, and there won’t be a huge flood of late bal­lots like we saw last year, with the poten­tial to alter the out­comes of races.

Creighton needs to sub­stan­tial­ly close the gap tomor­row when the next batch of tab­u­lat­ed bal­lots are fac­tored in to have a rea­son­able shot at catch­ing up. Mitchell is assured of mov­ing on as long as he does­n’t give up too much ground.

About the author

Andrew Villeneuve is the founder and executive director of the Northwest Progressive Institute, as well as the founder of NPI's sibling, the Northwest Progressive Foundation. He has worked to advance progressive causes for over two decades as a strategist, speaker, author, and organizer. Andrew is also a cybersecurity expert, a veteran facilitator, a delegate to the Washington State Democratic Central Committee, and a member of the Climate Reality Leadership Corps.

Adjacent posts

Enjoyed what you just read? Make a donation

Thank you for read­ing The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate, the North­west Pro­gres­sive Institute’s jour­nal of world, nation­al, and local politics.

Found­ed in March of 2004, The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate has been help­ing peo­ple through­out the Pacif­ic North­west and beyond make sense of cur­rent events with rig­or­ous analy­sis and thought-pro­vok­ing com­men­tary for more than two decades.

The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate is fund­ed by read­ers like you and trust­ed spon­sors. We don’t accept unso­licit­ed ad buys or pub­lish con­tent in exchange for money.

Help us keep The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate edi­to­ri­al­ly inde­pen­dent and freely avail­able to all by becom­ing a mem­ber of the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute today. Or make a dona­tion to sus­tain our essen­tial research and advo­ca­cy jour­nal­ism. Your con­tri­bu­tion will allow us to con­tin­ue bring­ing you fea­tures like Last Week In Con­gress, live cov­er­age of events like Net­roots Nation or the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion, and reviews of books and doc­u­men­tary films.

Become an NPI mem­ber Make a one-time donation