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.