Richard Mitchell, Jane Hague emerge as finalists for King County Council District #6

Tonight, vot­ers end­ed a live­ly four-way con­test for a bat­tle­ground coun­ty coun­cil dis­trict by send­ing the old­est can­di­date (a well known incum­bent who has served sev­er­al terms) and the youngest can­di­date (a first time office-seek­er) on to the gen­er­al elec­tion for a Novem­ber matchup.

In the returns just released by King Coun­ty Elec­tions, Repub­li­can Jane Hague and Demo­c­rat Richard Mitchell hold the top spots. Hague is far and away the leader with 39% of the vote, but col­lec­tive­ly, her oppo­nents have 61% of the vote, which isn’t a good sign for her cam­paign. Mitchell, mean­while, leads the group of chal­lengers with 27.87% of the vote. John Creighton is close behind with 25.15% of the vote, and Pat­sy Bon­in­con­tri was a dis­tant fourth with 7.30%.

The num­bers:

Bal­lots Cast/Registered Vot­ers: ²⁴⁵¹⁷⁄₁₂₁₁₃₉ (20.24%)
Pat­sy Bon­in­con­tri: 7.30% (1,681 votes)
Richard E. Mitchell: 27.87% (6,420 votes)
Jane Hague: 39.30% (9,054 votes)
John Creighton: 25.15% (5,795 votes)
Write-in: 0.39% (89 votes)

Only six hun­dred and twen­ty five votes sep­a­rate Mitchell and Creighton. While it’s pos­si­ble that Creighton could make up the dif­fer­ence, it’s unlike­ly. This is a low turnout elec­tion, and there won’t be a huge flood of late bal­lots like we saw last year, with the poten­tial to alter the out­comes of races.

Creighton needs to sub­stan­tial­ly close the gap tomor­row when the next batch of tab­u­lat­ed bal­lots are fac­tored in to have a rea­son­able shot at catch­ing up. Mitchell is assured of mov­ing on as long as he does­n’t give up too much ground.