Nathan Schlicher concedes to Jan Angel in the 26th LD following latest ballot tally

After updat­ed returns from Pierce and Kit­sap coun­ties showed Repub­li­can Jan Angel con­tin­u­ing to gain ground for the sec­ond straight day in the fierce­ly-con­test­ed con­test for State Sen­ate in the 26th LD, Nathan Schlicher’s cam­paign announced that Schlich­er had called Angel ear­li­er this evening to concede.

“I’m proud of our team, but I think it’s safe to say we won’t be clos­ing the gap,” Schlich­er told the Kit­sap Sun’s Steven Gard­ner.

That’s a pru­dent con­clu­sion giv­en that each new batch of bal­lots count­ed to date have giv­en Angel a wider lead. On Elec­tion Night, Schlich­er was few­er than eight hun­dred votes behind Angel, but as of tonight, he’s 1,543 votes behind.

In Angel, Schlich­er drew the tough­est of oppo­nents. Angel was pre­vi­ous­ly a Kit­sap Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­er who was elect­ed to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives in 2008, a year in which Democ­rats did rea­son­ably well, although not as well in state leg­isla­tive races as 2006. She was eas­i­ly reelect­ed in 2010 and 2012.

Hav­ing rep­re­sent­ed Kit­sap Coun­ty and then the 26th LD for years, Angel had strong name recog­ni­tion and a base of sup­port to draw on in and around the Port Orchard area. Democ­rats have tra­di­tion­al­ly count­ed on the Kit­sap por­tion of the 26th LD to sup­ply votes, so Angel’s strength there made her even more of a for­mi­da­ble oppo­nent. Schlich­er was real­ly an incum­bent in name only — Angel was the de fac­to incum­bent in the race because she had already run and won three times.

Schlich­er, hav­ing nev­er run for office before, had to intro­duce him­self to vot­ers, and so found him­self in the posi­tion of being the under­dog despite being the de jure incum­bent. He cam­paigned hard and secured the endorse­ments of The Seat­tle Times, The News Tri­bune, and the Penin­su­la Gate­way, but is com­ing up short. He is doing bet­ter than he did in the win­now­ing elec­tion, but Angel still has a major­i­ty of the vote, and will be the like­ly vic­tor when the elec­tion is certified.

Angel’s appar­ent tri­umph puts Repub­li­cans one seat away from being in out­right con­trol of the Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate, and strength­ens Mark Schoesler’s hand going into 2014. (Schoesler is the Sen­ate Repub­li­can leader. Rod­ney Tom is nom­i­nal­ly the major­i­ty leader of what he and the Repub­li­cans call the “Major­i­ty Coali­tion Cau­cus”. In real­i­ty, Tom is the leader of him­self and Tim Shel­don, in an alliance with Mark Schoesler and the Republicans.)

The con­test between Schlich­er and Angel was the only leg­isla­tive race this year that pit­ted a Demo­c­rat against a Repub­li­can; there were two oth­er spe­cial elec­tions for Sen­ate in east­ern Wash­ing­ton that were all Repub­li­can affairs.

Democ­rats spent heav­i­ly to help Schlich­er and defeat Angel, while Repub­li­cans spent heav­i­ly to defeat Schlich­er and help Angel. In the end, Democ­rats were ham­pered by Schlicher’s lack of name recog­ni­tion and the usu­al dif­fi­cul­ty of try­ing to get Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers to turn out in an odd-num­bered year. (Demo­c­ra­t­ic turnout is tra­di­tion­al­ly high­er in even-num­bered years, par­tic­u­lar­ly pres­i­den­tial years).

We can see the dif­fer­ence in turnout when we com­pare this year’s num­bers to last years. Cur­rent results show that 39,033 votes have been tal­lied, 20,288 for Angel and 18,745 for Schlich­er. Last year, on the third day of bal­lot count­ing, the Sec­re­tary of State’s office report­ed that 52,297 peo­ple had vot­ed in the elec­tion for State House, Posi­tion 1 in the 26th LD between Jan Angel and Demo­c­rat Karin Ashabran­er. A sim­i­lar num­ber of bal­lots had been split at that point between Demo­c­rat Lar­ry Seaquist and Repub­li­can Doug Richards: 52,027.

That’s a dif­fer­ence of more than thir­teen thou­sand people.

What’s more, Angel’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic oppo­nent Karin Ashabran­er (who did not give Angel much of a chal­lenge and ulti­mate­ly lost by near­ly a twen­ty point spread) had already received 21,327 votes by the third day of count­ing last year. That’s 2,582 more votes than Schlich­er cur­rent­ly has, and 1,039 more than Angel cur­rent­ly has.

Angel would still have been tough to beat in an even-num­bered year. But I have no doubt Schlich­er would have ben­e­fit­ed from high­er Demo­c­ra­t­ic turnout and Demo­c­ra­t­ic coat­tails had he faced Angel for Sen­ate in 2012. Schlich­er had to run on his own, for the first time, in an off-year elec­tion. There were big inde­pen­dent expen­di­tures on his behalf, but there were also big inde­pen­dent expen­di­tures against him. In the end, van­quish­ing Angel proved to be a hur­dle too high.

I per­son­al­ly hope Schlich­er con­sid­ers run­ning again, either against Angel for Sen­ate next year, or against Angel’s suc­ces­sor for House. He is authen­tic, thought­ful, and knowl­edge­able. The Leg­is­la­ture could use his voice. I glad­ly cam­paigned and can­vassed for him this autumn and I would do it again.