Mona Das greeting voters
Mona Das greeting voters

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.

About the author

Andrew Villeneuve is the founder and executive director of the Northwest Progressive Institute, as well as the founder of NPI's sibling, the Northwest Progressive Foundation. He has worked to advance progressive causes for over two decades as a strategist, speaker, author, and organizer. Andrew is also a cybersecurity expert, a veteran facilitator, a delegate to the Washington State Democratic Central Committee, and a member of the Climate Reality Leadership Corps.

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3 replies on “Democratic challenger Mona Das overtakes Republican incumbent Joe Fain in 47th LD”

  2. Emi­ly Ran­dall did­n’t run against an incum­bent. The 26th was an open seat, left open by Jan Angel’s retirement.

    1. Emi­ly declared while Jan Angel was still seek­ing reelec­tion (she dropped out on the last day of Fil­ing Week). So, to be very pre­cise, Emi­ly did run against an incum­bent ini­tial­ly, then she com­pet­ed for an open seat.

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