Richard Mitchell again widens lead in county council race; John Creighton admits defeat

Less than an hour ago, King Coun­ty Elec­tions updat­ed unof­fi­cial results for the August 16th win­now­ing elec­tion with a batch of fresh­ly-tab­u­lat­ed bal­lots. The new num­bers con­firm that Richard Mitchell will be mov­ing on to the gen­er­al elec­tion with Jane Hague in the 6th Coun­ty Coun­cil dis­trict race, as we pro­ject­ed yes­ter­day. Here’s how the race looks now:

Bal­lots Cast/Registered Vot­ers: ³⁴⁰¹⁹⁄₁₂₁₁₃₉ (28.08%)
Pat­sy Bon­in­con­tri: 7.17% (2,299 votes)
Richard E. Mitchell: 29.68% (9,522 votes)
Jane Hague: 38.33% (12,295 votes)
John Creighton: 24.51% (7,862 votes)
Write-in: 0.31% (101 votes)

As of this after­noon, Richard Mitchell is now ahead of John Creighton by 1,660 votes, up from 1,225 yes­ter­day. He is also con­tin­u­ing to inch clos­er to Jane Hague, with 29.68% of the vote, up from 29.06% yesterday.

Mitchel­l’s cam­paign declared vic­to­ry yes­ter­day evening, but Creighton and his team wait­ed until this after­noon to con­cede. Creighton had con­fi­dent­ly pre­dict­ed that he would over­take Mitchell and advance to the gen­er­al elec­tion around lunchtime yes­ter­day, but a few min­utes ago, he admit­ted defeat.

I have been blessed to have been cho­sen by the vot­ers twice to rep­re­sent them on the Seat­tle Port Com­mis­sion, and know that you win some and you lose some in pol­i­tics. Despite los­ing, I am extreme­ly proud of my cam­paign team and the cam­paign we ran, focus­ing on the issues that mat­ter to vot­ers. I want to thank my many vol­un­teers and sup­port­ers who gave gen­er­ous­ly their time, effort and resources to the cam­paign. I look for­ward to con­tin­u­ing rep­re­sent­ing King Coun­ty res­i­dents and work­ing on impor­tant region­al issues as a Seat­tle port commissioner.

We’ll con­tin­ue to keep an eye on this race in the days ahead. It’ll be inter­est­ing to see how far apart Richard Mitchell and Jane Hague are when the results are cer­ti­fied and become offi­cial. The spread may only be six or sev­en per­cent­age points.