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 8th, 2011

Early returns are close, but it looks like Tim Eyman’s I‑1125 is headed down to defeat

FROM ANDREW: Good evening and hel­lo from Fado in Seat­tle! Grace, Eve, and I are mon­i­tor­ing and track­ing elec­tion results from the NO on I‑1125 par­ty, where peo­ple are in a pret­ty good mood.

That’s because, for the moment, it looks like Tim Eyman’s I‑1125 is nar­row­ly head­ed down to defeat. Thank goodness!

As of  around 8:30 PM, the NO vote stood at 51.56%, with the yes vote at 48.44%. Returns are still com­ing in, so we expect these num­bers to change.

Keep Wash­ing­ton Rolling, the broad coali­tion work­ing to defeat I‑1125, is win­ning in much of west­ern Wash­ing­ton, and is doing espe­cial­ly well in King Coun­ty, where 60% of vot­ers are reject­ing I‑1125.

East­ern Wash­ing­ton coun­ties are most­ly vot­ing for I‑1125, with the excep­tion of Whit­man and Garfield coun­ties, which are both locat­ed in the south­east cor­ner of the state. Whit­man, along with King and San Juan, fre­quent­ly votes against right wing ini­tia­tives, but the vic­to­ry in Garfield is unexpected.

FROM GRACE: Big wins in swing coun­ties are play­ing a big role in the down vote on Tim Eyman’s ini­tia­tive. Island, Sno­homish, and Kit­sap, which are each crit­i­cal swing coun­ties, joined King in the NO col­umn, and that’s what’s mak­ing the dif­fer­ence in this elec­tion. Returns in all three of these coun­ties are close.

In Sno­homish Coun­ty, the no vote stands at 50.61% to 49.49% yes. In Kit­sap, it’s 50.78% “no” to 49.22% “yes”, and in Island, it’s 51.74% no to 48.26% yes. With these key coun­ties in the NO on I‑1125 col­umn, the out­look is look­ing good as coun­ties con­tin­ue to report results.

FROM ANDREW: The cam­paign team that ran Keep Wash­ing­ton Rolling for coali­tion mem­bers has just issued a state­ment react­ing to the defeat of I‑1125.

“Wash­ing­ton vot­ers sent a clear mes­sage that they want to keep Wash­ing­ton rolling safe­ly and not have our roads and bridges get bogged down in grid­lock, ” the state­ment said. “Once again, vot­ers around the state have reject­ed anoth­er reck­less Tim Eyman threat to vital trans­porta­tion projects.”

“An unprece­dent­ed coali­tion of busi­ness, labor, com­mu­ni­ty and envi­ron­men­tal groups opposed I‑1125 because the health of our com­mu­ni­ties and the health of our econ­o­my rely on a strong trans­porta­tion sys­tem that keeps peo­ple moving.”

“Our thanks go out to the vot­ers of Wash­ing­ton, the groups and indi­vid­u­als who gen­er­ous­ly donat­ed to the cam­paign, and the vol­un­teers who made tens of thou­sands of phone calls.”

Gov­er­nor Chris Gre­goire also weighed in on the appar­ent victory.

“I am pleased tonight that I‑1125 is fail­ing – and that vot­ers rec­og­nized the short-sight­ed­ness of this ini­tia­tive,” she said in a statement.

“While we are mak­ing incred­i­ble progress to replace the vul­ner­a­ble SR 520 float­ing bridge and the Alaskan Way Viaduct, we have more work to do to improve our trans­porta­tion infra­struc­ture. Had this ini­tia­tive passed, it would have great­ly inhib­it­ed our abil­i­ty to fund sig­nif­i­cant road improve­ment projects. Tonight, it appears we will keep that for­ward momen­tum and con­tin­ue to invest in region­al solu­tions to improve traf­fic, tran­sit and congestion.”

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