Sarah Perry won Kathy Lambert’s precinct in the Top Two — here’s what that tells us about the coming general election battle for the 3rd

A cou­ple weeks ago, King Coun­ty cer­ti­fied the results of the August 2021 Top Two elec­tion, for­mal­ly set­ting the stage for the gen­er­al autumn this elec­tion, in which vot­ers in Wash­ing­ton State’s most pop­u­lous juris­dic­tion will be choos­ing lead­ers for hun­dreds upon hun­dreds of local offices… from King Coun­ty Exec­u­tive to Seat­tle Port Com­mis­sion­er to city coun­cil, school board, and hos­pi­tal board positions.

Among the con­tests that is wide­ly expect­ed to be fierce­ly con­test­ed is the race for King Coun­ty Coun­cil, 3rd Dis­trict.… a suburban/exurban/rural slice of King Coun­ty that has been rep­re­sent­ed by Repub­li­can Kathy Lam­bert for decades.

In its cur­rent incar­na­tion, the 3rd stretch­es from Red­mond and Sam­mamish at its west­ern edges to the coun­ty’s east­ern bor­der, encom­pass­ing small towns like Skykomish, Duvall, and Car­na­tion in addi­tion to larg­er (but still some­what small!) cities like Sno­qualmie and North Bend. Much of Issaquah is also in the dis­trict, which over­laps with parts of the 45th, 41st, 5th, and 48th leg­isla­tive dis­tricts, along with the 1st and 8th con­gres­sion­al districts.

The 3rd has his­tor­i­cal­ly been Repub­li­can turf, but in recent years, its pop­u­lous west­ern side has been enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly vot­ing for Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates up and down the bal­lot, mak­ing it a prime Demo­c­ra­t­ic pick­up opportunity.

In a pre­vi­ous post here on The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate, I explained how King Coun­ty’s East­side sub­urbs have been under­go­ing a slow motion polit­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion from Repub­li­can bas­tion to swing ter­ri­to­ry to pro­gres­sive Demo­c­ra­t­ic strong­hold. As a con­se­quence of steady Demo­c­ra­t­ic gains at the local, state, and fed­er­al lev­els, there are almost no Repub­li­cans left in elect­ed office in King County.

Lam­bert is one of the very few who remain, along with her Coun­cil col­leagues Pete von Reich­bauer and Rea­gan Dunn. (King Coun­ty offices are offi­cial­ly “non­par­ti­san,” but there’s no tak­ing par­ti­san­ship out of pol­i­tics — the par­ti­san dynam­ics remain despite the absence of par­ty labels on the ballot.)

In past cycles, Lam­bert has either drawn only token chal­lengers or no chal­lenger at all, allow­ing her to eas­i­ly romp to reelec­tion. But this year, she’s opposed by one of the hard­est work­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic activists on the East­side: Sarah Per­ry, a dis­ci­plined orga­niz­er with a back­ground in non­prof­it devel­op­ment and com­mu­ni­ty build­ing. Per­ry cruised past fel­low Demo­c­ra­t­ic chal­lenger Joe Cohen in the Top Two elec­tion to secure a spot oppo­site Lam­bert on the gen­er­al elec­tion ballot.

Col­lec­tive­ly, Per­ry and Cohen received 59.40% of the vote, while Lam­bert received just 40.09% — a poor show­ing for a long­time, well known incumbent.

Per­ry (who I have donat­ed to, and strong­ly sup­port, in my capac­i­ty as an indi­vid­ual activist) also improved her posi­tion in the late bal­lots, climb­ing from 34.03% on Elec­tion Night to 36.01% by cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. She fin­ished just two thou­sand and six­ty-eight votes behind Lam­bert in the elim­i­na­tion round.

And, notably, in a sign that Lam­bert could indeed be head­ed for defeat this autumn, Per­ry also beat Lam­bert in her home precinct in Redmond.

Despite split­ting the Demo­c­ra­t­ic vote with Cohen, Per­ry still emerged as the plu­ral­i­ty win­ner in RED 45–2382, accord­ing to the cer­ti­fied results.

She received one hun­dred and thir­ty-five votes over­all in the precinct, while Lam­bert received one hun­dred and five. Cohen received six­ty-five votes.

Per­ry was also the plu­ral­i­ty win­ner in most of the oth­er Red­mond precincts in the dis­trict. She won in down­town and across much of Edu­ca­tion Hill, although Lam­bert man­aged to obtain a plu­ral­i­ty in a few precincts.

Why was Per­ry was able to do so well on Lam­bert’s home turf? Pri­mar­i­ly because Red­mond is one of the most pro­gres­sive cities in the state, and its res­i­dents under­stand­ably want pro­gres­sive rep­re­sen­ta­tion, which Lam­bert is not providing.

Peo­ple vote for who they iden­ti­fy with and who they trust, and Per­ry is run­ning a dynam­ic, peo­ple-pow­ered cam­paign focused on can­vass­ing, empow­er­ing small busi­ness­es, and uni­fy­ing com­mu­ni­ties behind Wash­ing­ton’s pro­gres­sive values.

She’s also talk­ing about get­ting results for the dis­trict, some­thing Democ­rats con­tend Lam­bert is falling short on. For exam­ple, many of the roads in the 3rd are in extreme­ly poor shape. Lam­bert has — to her cred­it — been sound­ing the alarm about this sor­ry state of affairs for years. How­ev­er, she has­n’t been able to secure the fund­ing need­ed to allow the King Coun­ty Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion to prop­er­ly main­tain and resur­face the coun­ty’s rur­al road network.

Per­ry believes that if the 3rd is rep­re­sent­ed by a hard­work­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic leader like her, the dis­trict will stand a much bet­ter chance of get­ting the resource infu­sion that it needs. The neigh­bor­ing 6th Dis­trict has cer­tain­ly ben­e­fit­ed from the clout of its Demo­c­ra­t­ic coun­cilmem­ber Clau­dia Bal­duc­ci, who cur­rent­ly chairs the King Coun­ty Coun­cil and serves on the Sound Tran­sit Board of Directors.

Vot­ers picked Bal­duc­ci to replace long­time Repub­li­can Jane Hague six years ago in a race with dynam­ics sim­i­lar to this one. Bal­duc­ci was eas­i­ly reelect­ed in 2019 to a sec­ond four-year term on the Coun­cil. Inter­est­ing­ly, Bal­duc­ci’s share of the vote against Hague was about 59% — the same mar­gin col­lec­tive­ly achieved by Cohen and Per­ry against Lam­bert in the Top Two. While not all of Cohen’s vot­ers may back Per­ry in the gen­er­al, Per­ry is still well posi­tioned to win if most of them do.

And there may be more Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers turn­ing out to vote this autumn than there were this month and last month in the elim­i­na­tion round.

While most of the 3rd’s precincts went to Lam­bert or Per­ry (with Lam­bert doing the best in the east­ern reach­es of the dis­trict and Per­ry per­form­ing best in the west), Cohen was able to swing a few precincts into his col­umn. He was the plu­ral­i­ty win­ner in a few places in Red­mond, Issaquah, and Sammamish.

The image below visu­al­ly doc­u­ments Per­ry and Cohen’s strength in the 3rd’s west­ern­most precincts, which are the most pop­u­lous areas of the dis­trict in addi­tion to being the most Demo­c­ra­t­ic. The image is a still from this won­der­ful­ly inter­ac­tive, zoomable map cre­at­ed by Jason Weill of Tableau that shows the results of the Lam­bert-Per­ry-Cohen con­test by precinct.

Note that this map does not adhere to the usu­al blue vs. red dichoto­my, where blue sig­ni­fies the Demo­c­ra­t­ic tick­et and red sig­ni­fies the Repub­li­can tick­et. Instead, in this map, precincts with a red/rose col­ored tinge are precincts where Per­ry fin­ished ahead and precincts with a blue tinge are precincts where Lam­bert fin­ished ahead. Orange-tinged precincts are those where Cohen led.

In a piece pub­lished last month for The Wash­ing­ton State Wire, reporter Aaron Kun­kler took a look at the race for the 3rd, which quotes from both me and for­mer Tim Eyman attor­ney Mark Lamb of Bothell.

We had very dif­fer­ent takes on the elec­tion results:

The most dynam­ic of the coun­ty coun­cil races is in the Dist. 3 race, where long-time coun­cil mem­ber Kathy Lam­bert is bring­ing in just under 41% of the vote. It’s not an ide­al num­ber for an incum­bent, said Andrew Vil­leneuve, direc­tor of the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute, who nor­mal­ly hope to see upwards of 50% support.

Lam­bert is run­ning against Sarah Per­ry and Joe Cohen, both chal­lengers from the left who gar­nered 31% and 24%, respec­tive­ly. The posi­tion is non-par­ti­san, but Vil­leneuve said the dis­trict — which has switched from red, to pur­ple, to blue over the past two decades that Lam­bert has rep­re­sent­ed it — may be primed for a more lib­er­al candidate.

“Why should any­one be ter­ri­bly sur­prised that she’s not doing that well,” he said. “To me, all it was going to take is one cred­i­ble candidate.”

But Mark Lamb, for­mer Both­ell city coun­cil mem­ber and founder of the North Creek Law Firm, said he thought Lam­bert was in a strong position.

“With a dif­fer­ent politi­cian, I would be more con­cerned with those results,” Lamb said. “With Kathy Lam­bert, she’s very smart, she’s very hard work­ing, and I think she will be able to move in the gen­er­al elec­tion and prevail.”

So you’re not wor­ried at all, eh Mark?

It’s not unheard of for an incum­bent who does real­ly poor­ly in the Top Two to bounce back in the gen­er­al elec­tion and win. It has hap­pened before.

But this is King Coun­ty’s 3rd Coun­ty Coun­cil Dis­trict we’re talk­ing about… not, say, Wash­ing­ton’s 3rd Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict, where Jaime Her­rera Beut­ler recov­ered from a weak show­ing in the 2018 Top Two to win reelec­tion. King Coun­ty’s 3rd is a Demo­c­ra­t­ic dis­trict, where­as Wash­ing­ton’s 3rd leans Republican.

Her­rera Beut­ler was able to recov­er three years ago pri­mar­i­ly by lock­ing down Repub­li­can vot­ers who’d backed a dif­fer­ent Repub­li­can candidate.

My guess is that Lam­bert already has the Repub­li­can vote… all of it.

Lam­bert needs Demo­c­ra­t­ic votes to win in Novem­ber. She needs peo­ple who don’t share her val­ues to back her for anoth­er term.

If she is so smart and hard­work­ing, then why did­n’t she do bet­ter in the elim­i­na­tion round? Why did­n’t she get more Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers to back her?

She has name recog­ni­tion that Per­ry and Cohen — who have not run for office before — don’t have. She also has a large cam­paign war chest. And she has long been good at show­ing up at com­mu­ni­ty events and non­prof­it functions.

Yet she only got 40%. Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers clear­ly shunned her. Includ­ing, as men­tioned, a major­i­ty of vot­ers in her own Red­mond neighborhood.

In all, near­ly three-fifths of her vot­ing con­stituents either backed Per­ry or Cohen when they filled out their bal­lots this sum­mer. And in the late bal­lots, as not­ed above, Per­ry saw gains, where­as Lam­bert didn’t.

All the evi­dence we have sug­gests that Lam­bert is head­ed for defeat this autumn. It’s not a giv­en because any­thing can hap­pen in an election.

But it’s the most like­ly sce­nario con­sid­er­ing the dynam­ics: an entrenched Repub­li­can incum­bent, an increas­ing­ly Demo­c­ra­t­ic dis­trict, and a strong Demo­c­ra­t­ic chal­lenger in Sarah Per­ry, who her­self is the epit­o­me of “smart” and “hard work­ing.” We saw this kind of cam­paign play out six years ago in the 6th with Jane Hague and Clau­dia Bald­duci. Now it’s the 3rd’s turn.