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.

Wednesday, August 8th, 2012

Election Update: Whatcom, Spokane races

With a lit­tle more than 9,000 votes to count, it seems that What­com Coun­ty races have been decided. 

The real inter­est­ing race in What­com Coun­ty is inside the 42nd dis­trict. Matt Krogh is chal­leng­ing fresh­man Vin­cent Buys and Natal­ie McClen­don is chal­leng­ing Jason Over­street. Buys doesn’t have much of a record and Rep. Over­street doesn’t even get along with mem­bers of his (Repub­li­can) par­ty. Num­bers today and yes­ter­day show the same mar­gin, with McClen­don and Krogh behind by about 7%. Riley Sweeney from The Polit­i­cal Junkie quot­ed Matt, who said that the results were “with­in our mar­gin of vic­to­ry. When you fig­ure in the con­ser­v­a­tive swing of the low turnout, this is a success.” 

The intrigu­ing part about the 42nd is that both Matt and Natal­ie are behind by the same mar­gin against their oppo­nents, show­ing that vot­ers who vote for one can­di­date will vote for the oth­er, sug­gest­ing per­haps a clos­er coor­di­na­tion is need­ed between the two campaigns.

Rep. Kris Lyt­ton ran an uncon­test­ed race, so no news there. Both Sen­a­tor Kevin Ranker and Rep. Jeff Mor­ris have won hand­i­ly, and from all looks these two dis­tin­guished offi­cials will win the gen­er­al elec­tion and con­tin­ue to serve their con­stituents well in Olympia. 

In Spokane, Amy Biviano came behind her oppo­nent, Matt Shea, the incum­bent Repub­li­can who has been cit­ed for pulling an ille­gal gun on anoth­er dri­ver dur­ing a road inci­dent. This is the only notable race in the 4th, as the two oth­er Repub­li­cans in the 4th leg­isla­tive dis­trict ran uncon­test­ed cam­paigns. In the 6th, Rep. Andy Bil­lig, run­ning for retir­ing Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Lisa Brown’s seat, con­tin­ues to trump Spokane City Coun­cil Mem­ber Nan­cy McLaugh­lin with almost 58 per­cent of the vote, and Mar­cus Ric­cel­li leads the field in the race to replace Rep. Bil­lig. Ric­cel­li was run­ning against two oth­er Democ­rats and two Repub­li­cans in the pri­ma­ry, and will face off against Tim Benn in the gen­er­al election. 

With ground to be gained in the 42nd and the 4th, it seems that, with strong cam­paigns, con­ser­v­a­tives in the area can be kicked out of the leg­is­la­ture. Spokane is not the con­ser­v­a­tive strong­hold many believe it is, and with more vot­ers turn­ing out in the gen­er­al elec­tion, the news for our state could be reserved­ly optimistic. 

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2 Comments

  1. Thank you for the link! You say that Buys and Over­street haven’t built up a record but in the two years they have been in office, Buys has man­aged to acquire a mea­ger 12% rat­ing from the Wash­ing­ton State Labor Coun­cil, one of the low­est scores in the House. One of the only per­son with a low­er score? Jason Over­street. What else has Over­street done? Tried to pass a bill that would allow you to pay your pow­er bill with gold coins.
    http://blogs.bellinghamherald.com/politics/politics/rep-jason-overstreet-introduces-bill-to-replace-paper-money-with-gold/

    So while they haven’t been in office long, they have man­aged to waste quite a bit of time and tax­pay­er dol­lars on not cre­at­ing jobs.

    # by Riley Sweeney :: August 9th, 2012 at 10:54 PM
  2. Riley, please think a lit­tle deep­er before you ridicule what Buys and Over­street are doing–if the WA state Labor board is giv­ing them that rat­ing and they are try­ing to do things like that, then it def­i­nite­ly means that the WA state Labor Board­’s low rat­ing is a good sign!! That bill that Over­street was a pro­po­nent of, WOULD cre­ate jobs—you just have to think longer about it. If we were allowed to pay our pow­er bills in gold/silver, we would not have to pay them with FRN’s, which are con­stant­ly deflat­ing as the FED con­stant­ly prints more of them. Every dol­lar that the FED prints increas­es the mon­ey sup­ply, shrinks the pur­chas­ing pow­er or the FRN’s in your pock­et, and steals wealth from you invis­i­bly!! That’s why being able to use gold/silver would be great–their val­ue can­not be stolen, in fact it increas­es when the mon­ey sup­ply increas­es because they are worth more of the cheap­er FRN’s. So, peo­ple pay with gold, they do not lose the defla­tion val­ue of their mon­ey, they there­fore save more mon­ey, have more mon­ey, and have mon­ey to invest in things such as cre­at­ing jobs, spend­ing mon­ey which cre­ates jobs, and the like. Think deep­er please! Our coun­try needs it.

    # by Ethan Neff :: August 20th, 2012 at 11:51 AM
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