Emily Randall widens her lead over Marty McClendon in tight 26th District Senate race

Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­ate con­tender Emi­ly Ran­dall gained a lit­tle bit of breath­ing room today in her bid to become the next State Sen­a­tor in Wash­ing­ton State’s 26th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict, widen­ing her lead over rival Mar­ty McClen­don — a Repub­li­can — to eighty-eight votes. That might not sound like much, but yes­ter­day, the gap between the two was only twelve votes, so this is a sig­nif­i­cant bump.

Ran­dall led dur­ing the first few days of count­ing before sud­den­ly giv­ing up the lead to McClen­don on Fri­day, Novem­ber 9th. This week, she rebounded.

On Tues­day, she erased most of the lead McClen­don had tak­en with Fri­day’s drop, which was lop­sided in his favor. Yes­ter­day, she over­came McClen­don’s lead entire­ly and took a tiny lead of her own. And today she has main­tained her ;ead and gained a lit­tle breath­ing room. It’s still an extreme­ly close race, no ques­tion about that, but from Ran­dal­l’s per­spec­tive, it’s bet­ter to be out front than trailing.

With today’s updat­ed returns in, Ran­dall has 34,606 votes, or 50.06%, and McClen­don has 34,518 votes, or 49.94%. As before, Ran­dall is win­ning the Kit­sap Coun­ty por­tion of the dis­trict and McClen­don is win­ning the Pierce Coun­ty portion.

Incred­i­bly, Ran­dall and McClen­don’s race in the 26th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict, as tight as it is, is no longer the clos­est Sen­ate race in the state.

At least for until tomor­row, that hon­or belongs to the 42nd Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict, where only fifty-eight votes sep­a­rate entrenched Repub­li­can incum­bent Doug Erick­sen (one of the co-chairs of Trump’s 2016 cam­paign in Wash­ing­ton State) from his Demo­c­ra­t­ic chal­lenger Pinky Var­gas, a Belling­ham City Councilmember.

What­com Coun­ty did not update its returns in that race today and no fur­ther update is planned until Novem­ber 26th, the Mon­day after Thanksgiving.

Kit­sap and Pierce coun­ties both plan to release updat­ed returns tomor­row after­noon, so the num­bers in the 26th are bound to change again.

Nei­ther coun­ty reports hav­ing many bal­lots left to process. In Kit­sap, an esti­mat­ed five hun­dred are left, while in Pierce, there are fif­teen hun­dred. Those totals include bal­lots from neigh­bor­hoods with­in each coun­ty that aren’t in the 26th.

We will keep you post­ed on developments.