Suzan DelBene wins big in WA-01, will face John Koster in November

Well, that was anticlimactic.

Con­trary to what many pun­dits and polit­i­cal com­men­ta­tors had pre­dict­ed, the five-way Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­test for U.S. House in Wash­ing­ton’s 1st Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict is turn­ing out to be not close at all.

As of 9:40 PM, with no more bal­lots expect­ed to be tab­u­lat­ed until tomor­row, for­mer Microsoft vice pres­i­dent Suzan Del­Bene had a com­mand­ing lead over fel­low Democ­rats Dar­cy Burn­er, Lau­ra Rud­er­man, Steve Hobbs, and Dar­shan Rau­ni­yar in every coun­ty in the dis­trict. The numbers:

Suzan Del­Bene: 23.33% (17,663 votes)
Dar­cy Burn­er: 14.6% (11,051 votes)
Lau­ra Rud­er­man: 7.08% (5,358 votes)
Steve Hobbs: 6.79% (5,137 votes)
Dar­shan Rau­ni­yar: 2.48% (1,879 votes)

Recent polling had led many to expect that there would be a bat­tle for sec­ond place between Del­Bene and Burn­er (Repub­li­can John Koster is in first place with a plu­ral­i­ty of the vote) . But Del­Bene evi­dent­ly built a much stronger lead among Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers in the final weeks than those sur­veys showed.

Burn­er has already thrown in the tow­el; both her cam­paign team and Del­Bene’s have con­firmed that she called Suzan a lit­tle bit ago to con­cede the race. And just a few min­utes ago, she tweet­ed the following:

It’s crit­i­cal that the Dems take the House in Nov. In WA, we must send new mbrs Kilmer, Heck, and Del­Bene to Congress.

— Dar­cy Burn­er (@DarcyBurner) August 8, 2012

Speak­ing at an elec­tion results watch par­ty in Kirk­land, Lau­ra Rud­er­man also con­ced­ed defeat and con­grat­u­lat­ed Del­Bene on her victory.

Rud­er­man’s plans for a strong fin­ish in the win­now­ing elec­tion were upset a few weeks ago when it was dis­cov­ered that her moth­er, Mar­garet Roth­schild, was behind a shad­owy polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee called “Progress for Wash­ing­ton” that had been send­ing out a series of tacky attack mail­ers which false­ly likened Del­Bene to Mitt Rom­ney and laugh­ably labeled her a fail­ure in business.

Roth­schild had set up the com­mit­tee in June with the help of a not-too-bright polit­i­cal con­sul­tant named Jeff Gumbin­ner to go after Del­Bene because she was upset that Del­Bene had the abil­i­ty to invest large sums of mon­ey to strength­en her cam­paign’s finan­cial resources. Because fed­er­al elec­tions law pro­hibits enti­ties that finance inde­pen­dent expen­di­tures from coor­di­nat­ing with can­di­dates, Roth­schild did­n’t tell her daugh­ter that she was respon­si­ble for the attack mail­ers. Con­se­quent­ly, for sev­er­al weeks, Roth­schild was essen­tial­ly play­ing bad cop to Rud­er­man’s good cop… with­out Rud­er­man’s knowledge.

Around the same time that Roth­schild was approv­ing Gumbin­ner’s plans to trash Suzan Del­Bene in the mail, she con­sent­ed to play a star­ring role in a tele­vi­sion spot con­ceived by Rud­er­man and her media team, intend­ed to bol­ster Rud­er­man’s can­di­da­cy and tilt the con­test in her favor.

The cam­paign was only two days away from unveil­ing the ad when the news broke that Roth­schild was “Progress for Wash­ing­ton”, and that “Progress for Wash­ing­ton” was also going up on the air with an ad… though not a pos­i­tive ad warm­ly invit­ing vot­ers to sup­port Rud­er­man. (The “Progress for Wash­ing­ton” TV ad showed Del­Bene mor­ph­ing into Rom­ney). Rud­er­man wast­ed lit­tle time in pub­licly ask­ing her moth­er to pull the plug on the attack campaign.

The TV ad came down and the attack mail­ers ceased, but it was too late. The dam­age had been done. As the results show, Rud­er­man was unable to gen­er­ate the momen­tum for her can­di­da­cy that she had hoped to ignite in the final days of the cam­paign. It looks like she’s going to end up in fourth-place over­all, far behind Repub­li­can John Koster and fel­low Democ­rats Dar­cy Burn­er and Suzan Del­Bene, but ahead of Steve Hobbs and Dar­shan Rauniyar.

As it so hap­pens, the top-four vote get­ters in this race have all run for fed­er­al or statewide office before and lost. Koster unsuc­cess­ful­ly ran against Rick Larsen in 2000 and 2010, los­ing nar­row­ly both times. Burn­er unsuc­cess­ful­ly chal­lenged Dave Reichert twice (in 2006 and 2008), also los­ing nar­row­ly both times.

Del­Bene then took on Reichert in 2010, but, like Burn­er, could­n’t defeat the incum­bent con­gress­man. Rud­er­man left the state House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives to run against Repub­li­can Sec­re­tary of State Sam Reed in 2004, but Reed eas­i­ly won reelec­tion that year. (Rud­er­man, by the way, also sought the Wash­ing­ton State Democ­rats’ top job of par­ty chair in ear­ly 2006, but lost to Dwight Pelz).

No doubt Del­Bene under­stands how Burn­er and Rud­er­man feel right now. They cam­paigned vig­or­ous­ly, but nei­ther crossed the fin­ish line first… or sec­ond. And only the top two can­di­dates can go on to the gen­er­al election.

Except for Burn­er, none of Del­Bene’s rivals appears to have post­ed any kind of state­ment online con­ced­ing defeat, or offer­ing con­grat­u­la­tions to Del­Bene. Per­haps we’ll see some sup­port­ive state­ments issued by the oth­er cam­paigns tomorrow.

Con­gress­man Rick Larsen, who endorsed Del­Bene and appeared at her vic­to­ry par­ty in Kirk­land, had this to say:

I am thrilled to con­grat­u­late Suzan Del­Bene on her deci­sive vic­to­ry tonight. She has the char­ac­ter, expe­ri­ence, and knowl­edge to rep­re­sent the 1st Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict well, and I look for­ward to serv­ing along­side her in Congress.

The Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty will prob­a­bly add Del­Bene to its list of nom­i­nees for fed­er­al office in 2012 at its next quar­ter­ly meet­ing in Sep­tem­ber, if not before then. The par­ty did not nom­i­nate a can­di­date in the 1st Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict at the state con­ven­tion in June, though it did nom­i­nate can­di­dates in eight of the state’s oth­er con­gres­sion­al districts.

POSTSCRIPT: Del­Bene and Koster also grabbed the top two spots in the spe­cial elec­tion to serve out the last few weeks of Jay Inslee’s term in the old 1st District.

Those results:

Repub­li­cans
John Koster: 34.78% (28,832 votes)
Steven J. Gerdes: 2.79% (2,317 votes)

Democ­rats
Suzan Del­Bene: 25.07% (20,786 votes)
Dar­cy Burn­er: 15.21% (12,612 votes)
Lau­ra Rud­er­man: 9.59% (7,955 votes)
Bri­an Sul­li­van: 3.4% (2,822 votes)
Dar­shan Rau­ni­yar: 2.93% (2,431 votes)
Bri­an Berry: 2.05% (1,700 votes)
Ruth Mor­ri­son: 1.51% (1,256 votes)
J. Byron Hol­comb: 0.99% (817 votes)

Note that Steve Hobbs did not file for this spe­cial election.

Inde­pen­dents
Bob Cham­pi­on: 1.66% (1,380 votes)

SECOND POSTSCRIPT: Here’s Lau­ra Rud­er­man’s state­ment on the results, in which she con­cedes defeat and endors­es Del­Bene. A grace­ful way to exit:

When we launched this race in June 2011, we knew it would be a hard-fought jour­ney. That my path through the pri­ma­ry was not clear.

We’ve spo­ken with thou­sands in the 1st dis­trict who see the Amer­i­can Dream slip­ping from their grasp. Who work hard every day but strug­gle to make a liv­ing wage. Who can’t afford health care for their fam­i­lies, or can’t afford to retire with dignity.

We fought against long odds. We left no stone unturned. We scrapped for every vote.

But we came up a lit­tle short.

I am incred­i­bly proud of the cam­paign that we ran.

Thank you to my won­der­ful cam­paign staff and to all of the vol­un­teers who tru­ly fueled this cam­paign from the ground up. I couldn’t have done it with­out you.

And thank you to my hus­band, Craig, for his unwa­ver­ing sup­port when our house turned into cam­paign head­quar­ters. And to my two won­der­ful step­kids, Jake and Amelia, who would have liked to see me home for din­ner and help­ing with home­work a lit­tle more often.

Now it’s time to regroup and con­tin­ue work­ing hard for the peo­ple we met along this jour­ney. We need to re-elect Barack Oba­ma as Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States so the peo­ple of our dis­trict who want afford­able health­care have a cham­pi­on in the White House.

We need to make sure that Jay Inslee becomes the next gov­er­nor from the State of Wash­ing­ton, and we must put the 1st Con­gres­sion­al dis­trict in Demo­c­ra­t­ic hands. I would like to offer my endorse­ment to Suzan Del­Bene in her upcom­ing fight against John Koster.

We must also approve Ref­er­en­dum 74 so that any two Amer­i­cans who want to get mar­ried final­ly have that right. We must elect Democ­rats up and down the tick­et to keep fight­ing for our Amer­i­can Dream.

I live all of these issues every day. Just like you do. Now is the time to go out there and fight for our val­ues, for what we believe in as Democrats.

Thank you for this amaz­ing jour­ney and for all of your help and sup­port along the way. I am tru­ly hum­bled by each and every one of you.

Dar­shan Rau­ni­yar and Steve Hobbs have not yet post­ed state­ments to their web­sites react­ing to the results. As not­ed above, they fin­ished behind Koster, Burn­er, and Rud­er­man, but ahead of Lar­ry Ishmael.