Steve Kasner is closing in on Kevin Wallace in Bellevue: Is victory possible?

While there has been plen­ty of media cov­er­age sur­round­ing SeaT­ac Propo­si­tion #1 (the Good Jobs ini­tia­tive) and the con­test between Kshama Sawant and Richard Con­lin for Seat­tle City Coun­cil, there’s anoth­er very close race of sig­nif­i­cance that has­n’t received as much atten­tion: Belle­vue City Coun­cil Posi­tion 4.

The con­test pits Demo­c­rat Steve Kas­ner, an activist, against Repub­li­can Kevin Wal­lace, a devel­op­er. Wal­lace start­ed off ahead on Elec­tion Night and has remained in first place through­out the vote-count­ing, but his lead is shrinking.

On Tues­day, Wal­lace had 51.20% of the vote and a three hun­dred and eighty-two vote lead. As of tonight, his lead has been cut down to two hun­dred and twen­ty-two, and his share of the vote is only 50.37%.

Kas­ner won 54.43% of the bal­lots that were added to the tal­ly this evening, which is impres­sive. Now the ques­tion is, will the trend continue?

And even if it does, will Kas­ner be able to catch Wal­lace? He needs to have a good day on Tues­day if he is to over­take Wal­lace. King Coun­ty Elec­tions reports it has received 33,971 bal­lots back from Belle­vue res­i­dents as of today. Of these, 33,108 have been either count­ed or are ready for count­ing (mean­ing they’ve under­gone sig­na­ture ver­i­fi­ca­tion). So there are a few more bal­lots to be processed.

It’s sig­nif­i­cant that Kas­ner went from being four hun­dred and nine votes down to two hun­dred and twen­ty-two votes down in one day. He has cer­tain­ly nar­rowed the gap. But he’s run­ning out of time to close it. We’ll see if he does.

For now, this is one race that is too close to call.