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.

Wednesday, November 7th, 2018

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.

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