NPI's Cascadia Advocate

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

Thursday, November 15th, 2018

Emily Randall widens her lead over Marty McClendon in tight 26th District Senate race

Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­ate con­tender Emi­ly Ran­dall gained a lit­tle bit of breath­ing room today in her bid to become the next State Sen­a­tor in Wash­ing­ton State’s 26th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict, widen­ing her lead over rival Mar­ty McClen­don — a Repub­li­can — to eighty-eight votes. That might not sound like much, but yes­ter­day, the gap between the two was only twelve votes, so this is a sig­nif­i­cant bump.

Ran­dall led dur­ing the first few days of count­ing before sud­den­ly giv­ing up the lead to McClen­don on Fri­day, Novem­ber 9th. This week, she rebounded.

On Tues­day, she erased most of the lead McClen­don had tak­en with Fri­day’s drop, which was lop­sided in his favor. Yes­ter­day, she over­came McClen­don’s lead entire­ly and took a tiny lead of her own. And today she has main­tained her ;ead and gained a lit­tle breath­ing room. It’s still an extreme­ly close race, no ques­tion about that, but from Ran­dal­l’s per­spec­tive, it’s bet­ter to be out front than trailing.

With today’s updat­ed returns in, Ran­dall has 34,606 votes, or 50.06%, and McClen­don has 34,518 votes, or 49.94%. As before, Ran­dall is win­ning the Kit­sap Coun­ty por­tion of the dis­trict and McClen­don is win­ning the Pierce Coun­ty portion.

Incred­i­bly, Ran­dall and McClen­don’s race in the 26th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict, as tight as it is, is no longer the clos­est Sen­ate race in the state.

At least for until tomor­row, that hon­or belongs to the 42nd Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict, where only fifty-eight votes sep­a­rate entrenched Repub­li­can incum­bent Doug Erick­sen (one of the co-chairs of Trump’s 2016 cam­paign in Wash­ing­ton State) from his Demo­c­ra­t­ic chal­lenger Pinky Var­gas, a Belling­ham City Councilmember.

What­com Coun­ty did not update its returns in that race today and no fur­ther update is planned until Novem­ber 26th, the Mon­day after Thanksgiving.

Kit­sap and Pierce coun­ties both plan to release updat­ed returns tomor­row after­noon, so the num­bers in the 26th are bound to change again.

Nei­ther coun­ty reports hav­ing many bal­lots left to process. In Kit­sap, an esti­mat­ed five hun­dred are left, while in Pierce, there are fif­teen hun­dred. Those totals include bal­lots from neigh­bor­hoods with­in each coun­ty that aren’t in the 26th.

We will keep you post­ed on developments.

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One Comment

  1. Hope­ful­ly Emi­ly remains ahead by the time the count finishes. 

    # by Charles Claesson :: November 16th, 2018 at 2:44 AM
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