Snohomish County on track to get a new Sheriff: Susanna Johnson leads Adam Fortney

Wash­ing­ton’s third largest coun­ty appears on track to make a big change in its exec­u­tive depart­ment. With 110,799 bal­lots tab­u­lat­ed so far, dec­o­rat­ed law enforce­ment vet­er­an Susan­na John­son has a sol­id lead over right wing incum­bent Adam Fort­ney in her bid to become the new top cop in Sno­homish County.

It’s an encour­ag­ing ini­tial result that pro­gres­sive activists across Sno­homish Coun­ty have been ener­get­i­cal­ly work­ing to get for more than three years.

John­son’s lead must hold up in the late bal­lots for Fort­ney to be shown the door, but her cam­paign team and sup­port­ers are opti­mistic that she’ll prevail.

Election Night returns: Snohomish County sheriff

	Susan­na Johnson Oth­er | 56,675 votes	52.25%
	Adam Fort­ney Oth­er | 51,680 votes	47.64%

A big crowd of John­son sup­port­ers and vol­un­teers gath­ered in down­town Sno­homish (the city!) to await the Elec­tion Night tal­ly and enjoy refresh­ments togeth­er. The atmos­phere was bright and live­ly both before and after the announce­ment of the first tab­u­la­tion. Peo­ple rem­i­nisced about their expe­ri­ences door­belling, phonebank­ing, and writ­ing let­ters to the edi­tor for Johnson.

John­son her­self stepped to the micro­phone to read the first num­bers aloud to the room, elic­it­ing applause and cheers. Big smiles and many hugs followed.

Over the course of the last four years, Fort­ney has become one of the most promi­nent right wing elect­ed offi­cials in Wash­ing­ton. He made waves ear­ly on by re-hir­ing deputies his pre­de­ces­sor had ter­mi­nat­ed for mis­con­duct and order­ing the removal of devices used for mea­sur­ing offi­cers’ dri­ving from police cars.

Not long after that, Fort­ney began denounc­ing Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee’s COVID-19 emer­gency direc­tives and declar­ing that he would­n’t enforce them.

Fort­ney is a reg­u­lar at events orga­nized by the Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty and right wing orga­ni­za­tions. (The state par­ty made a $15,000 dona­tion to Fort­ney last month.) Fort­ney has also orga­nized events of his own to pro­mote the ultra MAGA agen­da of fear and divi­sion. For one of his cam­paign fundrais­ers this past sum­mer, he brought mil­i­tant extrem­ist Mark Lamb to Sno­homish County.

Under Fort­ney, the Sno­homish Coun­ty sher­if­f’s office lost its hard-earned accred­i­ta­tion, award­ed by the Wash­ing­ton Coun­cil of Sher­iffs & Police Chiefs.

John­son cam­paigned for the job with the sup­port of all of Fort­ney’s liv­ing pre­de­ces­sors and respect­ed law enforce­ment pro­fes­sion­als like Sue Rahr, a for­mer King Coun­ty Sher­iff. John­son even had the sup­port of ex-Con­gress­man Dave Reichert for a while, though Reichert switched his alle­giance to Fort­ney after decid­ing to run for Gov­er­nor of Wash­ing­ton State as a Republican.

John­son opened her elec­tion night par­ty to the media; most Seat­tle tele­vi­sion sta­tions sent cam­era crews. Fort­ney, on the oth­er hand, did not.

The Her­ald on Everett made repeat­ed unsuc­cess­ful efforts to reach Fortney.

“On Tues­day night, a call to Fort­ney went to a voice mail­box that was full,” The Her­ald’s Jor­dan Hansen report­ed. “He did not respond to an email request for com­ment and had not post­ed on his fre­quent­ly updat­ed cam­paign Face­book page as of 9 PM.” Speak­ing of that Face­book page, the most recent post on it, as of press time, was a noisy, slight­ly blur­ry pho­to that showed Fort­ney sit­ting alone and hold­ing a phone, cap­tioned Tak­ing a sec­ond before the crazy 🙂

One Fort­ney sup­port­er, Jes­si­ca Wolf, wrote: “Hop­ing these ear­ly indi­ca­tors aren’t a reflec­tion of the out­come. Going to bed hope­ful your num­bers con­tin­ue to climb through­out the evening. You have made so much pos­i­tive impact for our coun­ty! We’re so incred­i­bly grate­ful for all your ser­vice thus far. We believe in you!!!”

Fort­ney has yet to respond.

If Fort­ney los­es, John­son will take over for him once 2024 arrives.

The 2023 gen­er­al elec­tion is due to be cer­ti­fied on Novem­ber 28th.