NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate provides the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Tuesday, November 6th, 2012

Whatcom, Spokane LD Races: Democrats win the 3rd, 40th, Republicans win 4th, 6th, 42nd

With a 46% of the bal­lots count­ed in What­com Coun­ty and 56% of the vote in Spokane, the two chal­lengers in the House, Democ­rats Matt Krogh and Natal­ie McClen­don, have seemed to lost their bid to unseat Reps. Vin­cent Buys and Jason Overstreet.

They came up short in the pri­ma­ry, and unless a large surge of votes come in which are pri­mar­i­ly Demo­c­ra­t­ic, the 42nd will be solid­ly red rep­re­sent­ed. The most inter­est­ing thing about this race is that both of the candidate’s vote totals are almost exact­ly the same, both gar­ner­ing 46% per­cent in their races. Matt Krogh, as of tonight’s returns, only had six­teen more votes cast in his race than in Natalie’s, and it became appar­ent dur­ing the pri­maries that vot­ers thought of them as a pack­age deal. Here’s hop­ing they pull through, but it will be a pleas­ant surprise.

In Spokane, Andy Bil­lig hand­i­ly won the Sen­ate seat of retir­ing Major­i­ty Leader Lisa Brown, with a cur­rent mar­gin in the dou­ble-dig­its. Mar­cus Ricel­li, who was run­ning to replace Rep. Bil­lig, also hand­i­ly won his election.

Mod­er­ate Demo­c­rat Amy Biviano lost against gun-tot­ing Matt Shea in the so-red-it-bleeds 4th LD, and in the 6th LD in east­ern Wash­ing­ton, rep­re­sent­ed by Michael Baum­gart­ner, chal­lenger to Maria Cantwell, in the state sen­ate, Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date Den­nis Dell­wo lost to Jeff Holy. 

In the 40th dis­trict, which includes Belling­ham, all Demo­c­ra­t­ic incum­bents hand­i­ly won reelec­tion, send­ing sol­id and stel­lar law­mak­ers back to the leg­is­la­ture to fight for the best future of our state.

None of these results are like­ly to change, and all are large­ly indica­tive of these can­di­dates per­for­mances dur­ing the pri­ma­ry. No sur­pris­es here, and even with some dis­ap­point­ments, our state will large­ly be served well by the rep­re­sen­ta­tives they have elect­ed to go to Olympia, because while (most) of east­ern Wash­ing­ton and north of Belling­ham will vote against what we need as a state, these areas haave also vot­ed in very ded­i­cat­ed indi­vid­u­als who will serve with our best inter­ests at heart. 

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