NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate is the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Tuesday, November 7th, 2017

Manka Dhingra defeats Jinyoung Lee Englund in 45th, Washington’s Senate flips Democratic

Vot­ers in Wash­ing­ton State’s 45th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict are deci­sive­ly back­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­ate hope­ful Man­ka Dhin­gra in ear­ly Elec­tion Night returns, putting an end to five years of Repub­li­can con­trol of Wash­ing­ton’s Sen­ate and unit­ing the Left Coast under a tri­fec­ta of Demo­c­ra­t­ic-run statehouses.

As of just past 8 PM, Dhin­gra had 55.42% of the vote, with Englund trail­ing ten points behind at 44.58%. Many more bal­lots are left to count, but this will be an extreme­ly dif­fi­cult gap for the Repub­li­cans to overcome.

The Repub­li­can estab­lish­ment and its deep pock­et­ed cor­po­rate back­ers spent mil­lions of dol­lars to finance a series of adver­tis­ing onslaughts against Dhin­gra, des­per­ate­ly try­ing to smear her in a last ditch attempt to remain in power.

These results con­vinc­ing­ly demon­strate their efforts failed.

Manka Dhingra applauds

Man­ka Dhin­gra applauds the work of her teen cam­paign com­mit­tee at a joint event with Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray (Pho­to: Andrew Villeneuve/NPI)

Dhin­gra will take over from Repub­li­can Dino Rossi upon the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of results. She is mak­ing his­to­ry tonight as the first Indi­an Amer­i­can woman to be elect­ed to the Leg­is­la­ture from the East­side… and is only the sec­ond Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date to win a Sen­ate race in the his­to­ry of the 45th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict after Eric Oemig.

9:30 PM UPDATE: It did­n’t take long for reac­tions to pour in.

“Tonight the Democ­rats have retak­en the major­i­ty in the Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate with Man­ka Dhingra’s win in the 45th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict!,” said Wash­ing­ton State Sen­a­tor Sharon Nel­son, who will soon become the new Major­i­ty Leader.

“As MSNBC is say­ing, it is a big night for Democ­rats across the nation in a rejec­tion of Trump! Thank you to every­one who helped make this elec­tion a blue wave!”

“I send hearty con­grat­u­la­tions to Sen­a­tor-elect Man­ka Dhin­gra on her deci­sive win tonight,” said Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee. “It was a hard-fought race, and Manka’s bold ideas and pos­i­tive vision for the dis­trict res­onat­ed with voters.”

“We’ve had good bipar­ti­san suc­cess­es in Olympia over the past few years and that will con­tin­ue,” the Gov­er­nor added. “I also look for­ward to action on some issues that have stalled for too long. Man­ka is a smart, big-thinker who will bring her cre­ativ­i­ty and ener­gy to the leg­isla­tive process. She will rep­re­sent the 45th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict well, and I know she will be a breath of fresh air in Olympia.”

Englund weighed in on the ini­tial results on Twit­ter, writ­ing:

Want to say a big thank you to every­one who has sup­port­ed me these last 6.5 months. It’s been a long road with its ups & downs, but I am hum­bled & grate­ful for friends made & expe­ri­ences shared. There are still a lot of votes left to be count­ed, we will have an update tomorrow.

In August, Englund and Repub­li­can Par­ty oper­a­tives held out hope that late bal­lots would trend Repub­li­can, with King Coun­ty Repub­li­can Chair Lori Soete­lo even pre­dict­ing Englund would make up ground as the count­ing went on. But instead, Man­ka Dhin­gra widened her lead near­ly every time a new count was released.

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2 Comments

  1. Yes, Mrs. Englund will prob­a­bly lose but don’t post this click-bait non­sense until she does. She has­n’t offi­cial­ly lost yet so until you’re pre­pared to call the race, don’t!!!!!!!!!!!!

    # by Jenny H. :: November 7th, 2017 at 8:29 PM
    • Jen­ny, Man­ka has a ten point lead. She’s going to win, in all like­li­hood. If the race was close, then our take on the ini­tial results would have been very different.

      Nobody “offi­cial­ly” los­es (or wins) until all the bal­lots are count­ed. Any char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of the results before they become offi­cial is by nature a projection. 

      In pub­lish­ing this post, we did call this con­test for Man­ka: that’s why the head­line reads “Man­ka Dhin­gra defeats Jiny­oung Englund in 45th, Wash­ing­ton’s Sen­ate flips Democratic.” 

      # by Andrew :: November 8th, 2017 at 8:09 PM
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