Voters reelect Susan Owens, retain Steve Gonzalez in state Supreme Court races

It’s been a good night for Supreme Court incum­bents so far.

Jus­tices Susan Owens and Steve Gon­za­lez each appear to have won new six-year terms rep­re­sent­ing the peo­ple of Wash­ing­ton on the state’s high­est court, which is com­prised of nine jus­tices overall.

Under Wash­ing­ton State law, a can­di­date for Supreme Court or appel­late court in Wash­ing­ton is elect­ed if he or she wins a major­i­ty of the vote (as opposed to a plu­ral­i­ty) in the win­now­ing election.

Con­sid­er­ing that both of the afore­men­tioned jus­tices have well above fifty per­cent of the vote in ear­ly returns, it seems safe to con­clude that they will be able to wind down their cam­paigns and pre­pare for the Court’s next term.

As of 9:40 PM, here were the results for Supreme Court Posi­tion #2:

Susan Owens: 63.5% (413,402 votes)
Dou­glas W. McQuaid: 24.14% (157,169 votes)
Scott Stafne: 12.36% (80,459 votes)

And here were the results for Posi­tion #8:

Steve Gon­za­lez: 56.9% (364,615 votes)
Bruce O. Daniel­son: 43.1% (276,142 votes)

Pri­or to the incor­po­ra­tion of King Coun­ty’s returns into the statewide results, Gon­za­lez held only a nar­row lead over chal­lenger Bruce Daniel­son, who did not cam­paign but nev­er­the­less is win­ning by aston­ish­ing mar­gins in near­ly all of the state’s rur­al coun­ties. Gon­za­lez, how­ev­er, is win­ning big on his home turf of King Coun­ty… and when I say big, I mean real­ly big. Gon­za­lez has a whop­ping 74% of the vote in King Coun­ty, which has allowed him to jump ahead of Daniel­son to a more com­fort­able statewide lead. Gon­za­lez is also win­ning in some key swing coun­ties, includ­ing Sno­homish, Pierce, Kit­sap, What­com, Island, and Thurston.

Gon­za­lez was appoint­ed to the Supreme Court in Jan­u­ary by Gov­er­nor Chris Gre­goire. He suc­ceed­ed retir­ing Jus­tice Ger­ry Alexan­der, who left the court after reach­ing the manda­to­ry retire­ment age. Pri­or to his appoint­ment, Gon­za­lez was a well-respect­ed King Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court judge.

Because he only drew one chal­lenger, Gon­za­lez’s race was guar­an­teed to be decid­ed in the win­now­ing elec­tion. (Exclud­ing write-ins, it’s math­e­mat­i­cal­ly impos­si­ble for one can­di­date to not to have more than fifty per­cent of the vote when the vote can only be split between two can­di­dates). Owens might have gone to a runoff in Novem­ber had her oppo­nents cap­tured more of the vote, but even with two chal­lengers, she still man­aged to get above the six­ty per­cent mark.

That’s pret­ty impressive.