Democratic challenger Mona Das overtakes Republican incumbent Joe Fain in 47th LD

It appears that Joe Fain may soon be relieved of his respon­si­bil­i­ties as a Wash­ing­ton State Sen­a­tor rep­re­sent­ing the 47th Dis­trict. Updat­ed returns pub­lished by King Coun­ty Elec­tions this after­noon show Fain now los­ing to his Demo­c­ra­t­ic chal­lenger, small busi­ness own­er Mona Das, by a mar­gin of two hun­dred and six votes.

On Elec­tion Night, Fain led by two hun­dred and sev­en­ty-four votes. In yes­ter­day’s count, he led by only nine­ty. Now his lead is gone entire­ly. If the cur­rent trend con­tin­ues through the rest of the count, he will lose to Mona Das.

This is a huge break­through for the Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, which had hoped to pick up sev­er­al Sen­ate seats in these midterms.

Pri­or to this after­noon, only two Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­ate chal­lengers had leads over Repub­li­can incum­bents (Claire Wil­son and Emi­ly Ran­dall). Now, three do.

Fain is one of the top Repub­li­cans in the Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate. A mem­ber of Mark Schoesler’s lead­er­ship team, he holds the post of Minor­i­ty Floor Leader, and is thus a fre­quent fix­ture on TVW when the Leg­is­la­ture is in session.

Pri­or to his leg­isla­tive ser­vice, Fain worked for King Coun­ty Coun­cilmem­ber Pete von Reich­bauer. It was dur­ing those years that Can­dace Faber alleges that Fain raped her. Fain has denied the alle­ga­tion with­out even both­er­ing to refute or dis­cuss the sub­stan­tial vol­ume of infor­ma­tion Faber has pro­duced explain­ing what happened.

Fain was also, pri­or to this after­noon, one of the few Repub­li­cans still hang­ing on any­where in King Coun­ty. But now it looks like he’s a goner.

A vic­to­ry for Das — the daugh­ter of Indi­an immi­grants — would make King Coun­ty’s state­house del­e­ga­tion more diverse. The 47th was once rep­re­sent­ed in the Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate by Clau­dia Kauff­man, the first Native Amer­i­can woman ever to be elect­ed to the Leg­is­la­ture, but Fain defeat­ed her eight years ago.

Now his own bid for reelec­tion looks like it could fail —  to a woman of color.