Mona Das closes in on Joe Fain in 47th District; now trails by just ninety votes

Demo­c­ra­t­ic chal­lenger Mona Das is on the cusp of over­tak­ing entrenched Repub­li­can State Sen­a­tor and alleged rapist Joe Fain in Wash­ing­ton’s 47th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict. Moments ago, King Coun­ty Elec­tions pub­lished updat­ed returns, which show that Das is in an excel­lent posi­tion to over­take Fain lat­er this week.

Last night, ini­tial results showed Fain with a small lead of just two hun­dred and sev­en­ty-four votes. As of today, Fain’s lead has shrunk to just nine­ty votes.

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.

If Das can con­tin­ue the pos­i­tive momen­tum into tomor­row and Fri­day, then she could seize the lead and end the elec­tion as the vic­tor in the race.

Das’ vic­to­ry would be huge for Democ­rats because it would give them anoth­er pick­up in the Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate. The 47th gained an all Demo­c­ra­t­ic del­e­ga­tion twelve years ago in the 2006 midterms, but the Repub­li­cans wrest­ed two of the seats back in the 2010 midterms four years lat­er when Fain defeat­ed Clau­dia Kauff­man and Mark Har­grove defeat­ed Geoff Simp­son, leav­ing Pat Sul­li­van as the lone Demo­c­ra­t­ic mem­ber of the dis­tric­t’s delegation.

Should Das win, she’ll send a man once con­sid­ered to be a ris­ing star into ear­ly retire­ment and bring much need­ed diver­si­ty to the state­house in Olympia.

The daugh­ter of immi­grants, Das is a trans­plant to the Pacif­ic North­west who worked in the tech­nol­o­gy sec­tor before start­ing MOXY Mort­gage in 2004. MOXY is a busi­ness that works to edu­cate and empow­er first time homebuyers.

Das briefly ran for Con­gress in the 8th Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict against Kim Schri­er and sev­er­al oth­er Democ­rats before decid­ing to with­draw from the race.

She then opt­ed to run for the Sen­ate in the 47th against Fain.

The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty made the 47th a tar­get­ed dis­trict, devot­ing sub­stan­tial resources and ener­gy to South King Coun­ty to boost Das, Schri­er, and Mark Har­grove’s chal­lenger Debra Enten­man. Enten­man is cur­rent­ly lead­ing Har­grove by a fair­ly com­fort­able mar­gin and improved her stand­ing in today’s count, so she looks to be on her way to join­ing the House Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus in Olympia.

We’ll keep an eye on this race and let you know what hap­pens next.