With a lit­tle more than 9,000 votes to count, it seems that What­com Coun­ty races have been decided. 

The real inter­est­ing race in What­com Coun­ty is inside the 42nd dis­trict. Matt Krogh is chal­leng­ing fresh­man Vin­cent Buys and Natal­ie McClen­don is chal­leng­ing Jason Over­street. Buys doesn’t have much of a record and Rep. Over­street doesn’t even get along with mem­bers of his (Repub­li­can) par­ty. Num­bers today and yes­ter­day show the same mar­gin, with McClen­don and Krogh behind by about 7%. Riley Sweeney from The Polit­i­cal Junkie quot­ed Matt, who said that the results were “with­in our mar­gin of vic­to­ry. When you fig­ure in the con­ser­v­a­tive swing of the low turnout, this is a success.” 

The intrigu­ing part about the 42nd is that both Matt and Natal­ie are behind by the same mar­gin against their oppo­nents, show­ing that vot­ers who vote for one can­di­date will vote for the oth­er, sug­gest­ing per­haps a clos­er coor­di­na­tion is need­ed between the two campaigns.

Rep. Kris Lyt­ton ran an uncon­test­ed race, so no news there. Both Sen­a­tor Kevin Ranker and Rep. Jeff Mor­ris have won hand­i­ly, and from all looks these two dis­tin­guished offi­cials will win the gen­er­al elec­tion and con­tin­ue to serve their con­stituents well in Olympia. 

In Spokane, Amy Biviano came behind her oppo­nent, Matt Shea, the incum­bent Repub­li­can who has been cit­ed for pulling an ille­gal gun on anoth­er dri­ver dur­ing a road inci­dent. This is the only notable race in the 4th, as the two oth­er Repub­li­cans in the 4th leg­isla­tive dis­trict ran uncon­test­ed cam­paigns. In the 6th, Rep. Andy Bil­lig, run­ning for retir­ing Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Lisa Brown’s seat, con­tin­ues to trump Spokane City Coun­cil Mem­ber Nan­cy McLaugh­lin with almost 58 per­cent of the vote, and Mar­cus Ric­cel­li leads the field in the race to replace Rep. Bil­lig. Ric­cel­li was run­ning against two oth­er Democ­rats and two Repub­li­cans in the pri­ma­ry, and will face off against Tim Benn in the gen­er­al election. 

With ground to be gained in the 42nd and the 4th, it seems that, with strong cam­paigns, con­ser­v­a­tives in the area can be kicked out of the leg­is­la­ture. Spokane is not the con­ser­v­a­tive strong­hold many believe it is, and with more vot­ers turn­ing out in the gen­er­al elec­tion, the news for our state could be reserved­ly optimistic. 

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2 replies on “Election Update: Whatcom, Spokane races”

  1. Thank you for the link! You say that Buys and Over­street haven’t built up a record but in the two years they have been in office, Buys has man­aged to acquire a mea­ger 12% rat­ing from the Wash­ing­ton State Labor Coun­cil, one of the low­est scores in the House. One of the only per­son with a low­er score? Jason Over­street. What else has Over­street done? Tried to pass a bill that would allow you to pay your pow­er bill with gold coins.
    http://blogs.bellinghamherald.com/politics/politics/rep-jason-overstreet-introduces-bill-to-replace-paper-money-with-gold/

    So while they haven’t been in office long, they have man­aged to waste quite a bit of time and tax­pay­er dol­lars on not cre­at­ing jobs.

  2. Riley, please think a lit­tle deep­er before you ridicule what Buys and Over­street are doing–if the WA state Labor board is giv­ing them that rat­ing and they are try­ing to do things like that, then it def­i­nite­ly means that the WA state Labor Board­’s low rat­ing is a good sign!! That bill that Over­street was a pro­po­nent of, WOULD cre­ate jobs—you just have to think longer about it. If we were allowed to pay our pow­er bills in gold/silver, we would not have to pay them with FRN’s, which are con­stant­ly deflat­ing as the FED con­stant­ly prints more of them. Every dol­lar that the FED prints increas­es the mon­ey sup­ply, shrinks the pur­chas­ing pow­er or the FRN’s in your pock­et, and steals wealth from you invis­i­bly!! That’s why being able to use gold/silver would be great–their val­ue can­not be stolen, in fact it increas­es when the mon­ey sup­ply increas­es because they are worth more of the cheap­er FRN’s. So, peo­ple pay with gold, they do not lose the defla­tion val­ue of their mon­ey, they there­fore save more mon­ey, have more mon­ey, and have mon­ey to invest in things such as cre­at­ing jobs, spend­ing mon­ey which cre­ates jobs, and the like. Think deep­er please! Our coun­try needs it.

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