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.

Friday, November 15th, 2013

Friday elections update: Richard Conlin concedes to Kshama Sawant in Seattle; SeaTac Proposition 1 still ahead

Acknowl­edg­ing that he will not be able to over­come Kshama Sawan­t’s incred­i­ble and sus­tained late momen­tum, incum­bent Seat­tle City Coun­cilmem­ber Richard Con­lin con­ced­ed defeat this evening in a news con­fer­ence at Seat­tle City Hall, admit­ting he was “sur­prised and dis­ap­point­ed.” He was flanked by Coun­cil col­leagues and sup­port­ers, includ­ing for­mer may­oral hope­ful Tim Burgess.

He also released a state­ment with pre­pared remarks to news outlets.

“Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it appears that my oppo­nent has received a greater num­ber of votes,” he said, in a nod to Sawan­t’s dai­ly gains. “I hope that she will serve the peo­ple of Seat­tle effec­tive­ly dur­ing her time in office.”

Sawan­t’s cam­paign, how­ev­er, isn’t tak­ing vic­to­ry for granted.

“Even if Con­lin con­cedes, votes left could trig­ger recount, cost the cam­paign $,” the cam­paign tweet­ed ear­li­er today. “Help pre­vent that by vol­un­teer­ing & donating.”

A recount seems unlike­ly at this point giv­en that Sawan­t’s lead con­tin­ues to widen. Yes­ter­day, it was 1,148 votes; today, it jumped to 1,640. The trend is clear and has been remark­ably con­sis­tent. Sawan­t’s share of the vote has gone up and down with each batch, but it’s repeat­ed­ly been over fifty per­cent, day after day. That’s how she was able to turn what was a called race for Con­lin into a late victory.

Con­grat­u­la­tions to her and her supporters.

In oth­er news:

  • Steve Kas­ner made up a lit­tle ground today against Kevin Wal­lace in Belle­vue, nar­row­ing Wal­lace’s lead to one hun­dred and eighty-five votes after Wal­lace had expand­ed it to two hun­dred and one.
  • SeaT­ac Propo­si­tion 1 (the Good Jobs ini­ti­atve) is still pass­ing, but the yes vote is down to forty-nine after ris­ing to fifty-three yes­ter­day. There are only a few hun­dred votes left to count in SeaT­ac and it looks like Propo­si­tion 1 will pass. In antic­i­pa­tion of that out­come, oppo­nents (includ­ing Alas­ka Air­lines) have already gone to court to try and have it invalidated.
  • An esti­mat­ed 23,851 bal­lots now remain to be processed statewide accord­ing to the Sec­re­tary of State. 20,782 of those are in King Coun­ty. The oth­er thir­ty-eight coun­ties are pret­ty much done count­ing ballots.

Coun­ties have until Novem­ber 26th to fin­ish count­ing bal­lots. By the 26th, elec­tion results must be cer­ti­fied and trans­mit­ted to the Sec­re­tary of State.

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