The Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty’s three high­est pro­file 2022 can­di­dates each man­aged to build on their strong Elec­tion Night per­for­mance today, putting more dis­tance between them­selves and their opponents.

With most coun­ties’ sec­ond-day reports in (though not all), Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray’s advan­tage over Tiffany Smi­ley increased from 241,581 votes to 267,763 votes.

Mean­while, in the 8th Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Kim Schri­er’s lead over Matt Larkin increased from 11,067 votes to 11,357 votes.

And Sec­re­tary of State Steve Hobbs’ lead over Julie Ander­son went from 50,938 votes to 53,370 votes. The num­ber of write-in votes increased by 13,172.

There will be at least two more sig­nif­i­cant counts. After that, the num­ber of bal­lots left to process will be fair­ly small and unlike­ly to alter any outcomes.

Mur­ray, Schri­er, and Hobbs all spoke to an upbeat crowd of Demo­c­ra­t­ic activists and par­ty lead­ers last night in Belle­vue, a mere two blocks away from where Smi­ley and Repub­li­cans had gath­ered for their elec­tion night party.

Since Chair Tina Pod­lodows­ki took over, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty has held its big elec­tion night gath­er­ing in Belle­vue rather than in Seat­tle, rep­re­sent­ing the par­ty’s com­mit­ment to go on offense and care about every race, every place. The par­ty con­gre­gat­ed at the Belle­vue Hilton four years ago and was at the West­in this year.

Democ­rats won the 8th Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict for the first time two years ago and held it last year. If Schri­er wins again this year, the par­ty will have won the dis­trict three con­sec­u­tive times, with two of those elec­tions being midterm cycles.

And that’s despite the 8th being an even­ly-divid­ed “tossup” district.

Mur­ray, mean­while, has now won six con­sec­u­tive times (1992, 1998, 2004, 2010, 2016, and this year), dis­patch­ing a num­ber of well-fund­ed Repub­li­can oppo­nents. Smi­ley, recruit­ed by McConnell to go up against Mur­ray, received plen­ty of sup­port and assis­tance from nation­al Repub­li­cans and became a fundrais­ing jug­ger­naut, pulling togeth­er more than $14 mil­lion for her chal­lenge to Murray.

Smi­ley has thus far refused to con­cede, despite the elec­tion hav­ing been called prompt­ly for Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray after the dead­line to return bal­lots passed.

“It ain’t over, it ain’t over,” Smi­ley said on elec­tion night.

“I am an eter­nal opti­mist,” she told Repub­li­cans. “We’re con­fi­dent that when every legal vote is count­ed, that we could turn the tide here in Wash­ing­ton State.”

That, of course, is wish­ful think­ing. Smi­ley is get­ting sound­ly beat­en and has no path to vic­to­ry. She isn’t even win­ning Clark Coun­ty, long a Repub­li­can bas­tion. Nor is she win­ning sev­er­al of the coastal coun­ties that turned to Trump.

Oper­a­tives for Smi­ley’s cam­paign con­tin­ue to furi­ous­ly send emails, even though the vot­ing por­tion of the elec­tion has come to an end. There’s still an oppor­tu­ni­ty to part fools from their mon­ey, and the Smi­ley team intends to take advantage.

“Bal­lots are still being count­ed in Wash­ing­ton,” declared one appeal trans­mit­ted a few hours ago, non­sen­si­cal­ly adding: “This elec­tion is far from over, so I’m hop­ing you can step up and chip in just $5 to help me fin­ish this fight!”

“I know you’ve done so much to sup­port my cam­paign, and I can’t thank you enough. But right now, the sit­u­a­tion is crit­i­cal. Votes are being count­ed as you read this, so your sup­port has nev­er been more needed.”

“Look, Friend,” it went on, “if there’s just one thing you do today to help save our coun­try, make it chip­ping just $5 or $10 to my cam­paign. Please take this call to action. Help make his­to­ry in Wash­ing­ton and turn cri­sis into hope for all.”

Anoth­er one begged: “I need your sup­port to ensure that we have all resources nec­es­sary to make it through and secure vic­to­ry! The future of Wash­ing­ton hinges on what’s to come. I am ready to serve you. I am ready to make a dif­fer­ence in Wash­ing­ton. In order to do that, our momen­tum can’t slow down!”

You would­n’t know from read­ing Smi­ley’s emails that Elec­tion Night had come and gone, or that Smi­ley was hun­dreds of thou­sands of votes behind, or that the cam­paign was los­ing every major coun­ty in west­ern Wash­ing­ton, or that the state had already been called for Mur­ray by major mass media outlets.

Nope… as far as Smi­ley’s oper­a­tives are con­cerned, it’s busi­ness as usu­al. Fundrais­ing time! They’re gonna keep grift­ing until they can’t.