WA Filing Week 2021 has ended: A look at who’s filed in key races as of Friday evening

Fil­ing Week 2021 is in the books!

Since Mon­day morn­ing of this week, the Sec­re­tary of State and coun­ty elec­tions offi­cials have been accept­ing for­mal dec­la­ra­tions of can­di­da­cy from Wash­ing­to­ni­ans who have decid­ed they want to run for office at the local level.

As of this evening, can­di­date fil­ing has closed. There will be a spe­cial can­di­date fil­ing peri­od next week for posi­tions sub­ject to elec­tion that did­n’t attract any can­di­dates dur­ing the reg­u­lar five day fil­ing win­dow we just held.

This is an odd num­bered year, which means that cities and char­ter coun­ties like King and Sno­homish will have leg­isla­tive and exec­u­tive posi­tions on the bal­lot, along with some judi­cial posi­tions. School dis­tricts, ports, and oth­er local gov­ern­ments across the state will also be hold­ing elec­tions this year.

This post is the last in a series of reports that began on Mon­day. We’ll have one more Fil­ing Week report next week to recap the can­di­date withdrawals. 

Browse candidate filings by county

Coun­ties are list­ed in order of pop­u­la­tion, not alphabetically

Notable filings

• Seat­tle: City Attor­ney Pete Holmes now has two oppo­nents: pub­lic defend­er Nicole Thomas-Kennedy and Repub­li­can Ann Davi­son, who unsuc­cess­ful­ly ran for Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor last year. The may­oral race, mean­while, now has a total of fif­teen candidates.
• King Coun­ty Coun­cil: The Repub­li­can coun­cilmem­bers (Kathy Lam­bert, Pete von Reich­bauer, and Rea­gan Dunn) each drew mul­ti­ple oppo­nents, while the Demo­c­ra­t­ic coun­cilmem­bers (Rod Dem­bows­ki, Dave Upthe­grove) only drew one oppo­nent each. Vot­ers will need to win­now the field in Posi­tions #3, #7, and #9 for the gen­er­al election.
• Seat­tle Port Com­mis­sion (King Coun­ty): Incum­bent Com­mis­sion­er Ryan Calkins has drawn an oppo­nent, Nor­man Z. Sigler. The oth­er incum­bent Com­mis­sion­ers Peter Stein­brueck and Stephanie Bow­man already had one oppo­nent each. Because no one else filed for Port in any of the three races, we already know what the gen­er­al elec­tion matchups will be.
• Red­mond: Incum­bent Coun­cilmem­ber Tani­ka Pad­hye did not file for reelec­tion, guar­an­tee­ing that at least one new coun­cilmem­ber will be join­ing Red­mond’s leg­isla­tive branch at the end of this year. Vying to suc­ceed Pad­hye are Melis­sa Stu­art, who filed on Mon­day, Den­nis Ellis, and Jack­son Fields, son of Coun­cilmem­ber Steve Fields.
• Belle­vue: NPI sup­port­er Ruth Lip­scomb has entered the race for Posi­tion #4, chal­leng­ing Jared Nieuwen­huis, while Car­lota Wil­hite has with­drawn. Nieuwen­huis is one of the coun­cil’s most right wing members.

Sev­er­al juris­dic­tions end­ed up with­out any con­test­ed races at all. Car­na­tion, Enum­claw, Hunts Point, and Cov­ing­ton are a few examples.

Sim­i­lar­ly, there won’t be any con­test­ed judi­cial races in King Coun­ty this year, as none of the judge­ships drew more than one candidate.

Upcoming deadlines and important dates

Fil­ing Week is over. Here are the next three fil­ing-relat­ed impor­tant deadlines:

• Mon­day, May 24th, 2021 is the can­di­date with­draw­al deadline
• Tues­day, May 25th, 2021 is the last day for Sec­re­tary of State to cer­ti­fy can­di­dates to Coun­ty Auditors. 
• Fri­day, May 28th, 2021 is the date when can­di­date state­ments and pho­tographs for the state vot­ers’ pam­phlet are due.

The Top Two elec­tion will begin in July, with bal­lots expect­ed to land around July 16th. Vot­ing will con­clude on Tues­day, August 3rd at 8 PM.