Joe Fain concedes to his Democratic challenger, Senator-elect Mona Das

Dear Friends,

I want to con­grat­u­late Sen­a­tor-Elect Das on her new oppor­tu­ni­ty to serve South King Coun­ty in the Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate. I look for­ward to sup­port­ing her dur­ing the tran­si­tion in any way I can.

The past eight years have been the most pro­fes­sion­al­ly reward­ing time in my life. I’m so grate­ful to my sup­port­ers, friends, con­stituents, and col­leagues for giv­ing me the oppor­tu­ni­ty to serve.

I espe­cial­ly thank my fam­i­ly, and most of all my wife, Stef­fanie. Pub­lic ser­vice is incred­i­bly demand­ing on a fam­i­ly; few rec­og­nize the dai­ly sac­ri­fices that our loved ones must make.

Dur­ing my time in office, I tried to be a bridge between par­ties and ide­olo­gies. Our mod­ern polit­i­cal cul­ture cre­ates plen­ty of par­ti­san war­riors but far too few diplomats.

For our State and Coun­try to thrive, we must start lis­ten­ing to one anoth­er with open minds and open hearts. We can­not fear what we see as dif­fer­ent. We can­not vil­i­fy one anoth­er as a way of grasp­ing for pow­er. Only a free, open, and respect­ful soci­ety is capa­ble of fac­ing and over­com­ing the chal­lenges before us.

While I will miss the end­less chal­lenges and rewards of leg­isla­tive ser­vice, these elec­tion results widen the door to my fam­i­ly and two young boys who need and deserve a full-time dad who has been large­ly absent dur­ing the long win­ter months of the pre­vi­ous leg­isla­tive sessions.

Elect­ed ser­vice in Amer­i­ca is not pres­ti­gious. We are all just every­day cit­i­zens who are called, for a time, to give what we can on behalf of our neigh­bors. That is the sys­tem I love and trust. Thank you for putting your trust in me these past two terms. I’m so proud of what we have accom­plished together.

With grat­i­tude,

Joe

On Elec­tion Night, Fain had a nar­row lead over Das, which shrank to less than a hun­dred votes by Wednes­day after­noon. Yes­ter­day, Das over­took Fain and seized the lead. Today, she expand­ed her lead to more than five hun­dred votes.

The trend is clear: Mona Das will become the 47th Dis­tric­t’s next state sen­a­tor. Con­grat­u­la­tions to her on a well-fought campaign.

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 Repub­li­can 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. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, his con­ces­sion state­ment this evening does not address or even refer to Faber’s allegation.