The McGinn party at the War Room.
The King County and State election departments have posted early results from the ballots received so far. Given that the state votes by mail now, we’re going to have to wait days to see who the official winners are.
The county has reported a turnout of 35% so far, with an expected final turnout of 56% — so the county expects that 38% of the expected turnout were mailed in recently but not yet received by the county. That could have a significant impact on the final results.
Early reports show Tim Eyman’s I-1033 failing big, Dow Constantine showing a large lead in the King County Executive race, and Mike McGinn leading in the race for Mayor by less than a thousand votes. Over-all, a pretty exciting night for supporters of transit.
Initial Results
(Our endorsements are in bold.)
I-1033 (WA SOS)
Yes – 299,021 – 43.22 %
No – 392,802 – 56.78 %
King County Executive (KC Elections)
Constantine – 139501 – 57.01%
Hutchison – 104622 – 42.76%
Mayor of Seattle (KC Elections)
McGinn – 42563 – 50.03%
Mallahan – 41653 – 48.96%
Seattle City Council Position 2
Conlin – 56540 – 75.40%
Ginsberg – 18232 – 24.31%
Seattle City Council Position 4
Bagshaw – 51952 – 68.58%
Bloom – 23611 – 31.17%
Seattle City Council Position 6
Licata – 45062 – 57.73%
Israel – 32808 – 42.03%
Seattle City Council Position 8
O’Brien – 44040 – 57.91%
Rosencrantz – 31835 – 41.86%
Lookin’ good!!
People are beyond stupid. The fact that this pack of drooling idiots in Washington don’t even have the sense to force their government to quit taxing them to death and throwing their money in the garbage is only evidenced by the fact that this pack of mouth breathers very nearly voted equal rights away from a minority of American Citizens. It makes me insane that all of those who gave us the best chance at economic sense in this nation were beatin because they were too busy trying to push their primitive religeous views down other people’s throats. If they had had the sense to worry about supporting 1033 instead of worrying about who other people want to get married too, we might not have just given our gov the green light to tax us into poverty while they flush our money down the toilet. Liberals are only matched in their self destructive ignorance of the state by the stupidity of right wing zealots and their desire to regulate bedroom behavior. In the end, chalk another win for big gov and a loss for the once-free people of this nation.
Sorry, but we Washington voters like our socialist nightmare of free public schools, public health services, functioning higher education, etc.
Except for Bellevue council races.
Looking like a clean sweep for Kemper. Bad news for East Link.
Not really. Just a lot of pouting. Remember that a lot of them are incumbents.
How would this affect East Link??
As Sherwin says, mostly pouting. The Sound Transit board has a lot of power here.
oh right right. How could I forget how the Tukwila City council threatened to block Central Link if the line didn’t go to Southcenter? Well it didn’t and it still got built how ST wanted!
Jojo, that’s not exactly true (your recounting of the Tukwila story), but I’m with you in spirit. Hopefully, the public’s desire for a light rail *system* will empower the ST board and overwhelm local opposition in Bellevue’s Council.
Hutchison just took the podium at the Bellevue Hyatt and she’s choosing her words very carefully appearing to avoid anything that may imply victory. In fact, most of her words are just qualifying statements that seem to cover up the clear fact that it looks like a loss.
I wonder if the Port of Seattle doesn’t buy the Eastside Rail Corridor soon if BNSF will simply piece off the land. At this point I am assuming that the corridor will be sold piece by piece thus eliminating the B7 alignment.
Anywho, it’s disappointing that Bellevue is a lost but it’ll still be several days before we really know what will happen.
It’ll be a surface route for sure…tunneling? Eh, we’ll see.
Remember that if Kemper can’t stop East Link, he’ll turn his efforts into getting a tunnel. The only thing we agree on!
I don’t think he will. I think he’ll push it to B7 and try to force it to skip downtown entirely.
Point taken, but I really hope you’re wrong, Ben.
Could he really, with a straight face, argue from a small-government, libertarian point of view for a rail alignment with the least ridership and the worst farebox recovery? His pushing it to B7 would seem like irrational, disingenuous spite toward ST and nothing else.
(I walked the BNSF alignment from Renton to Bellevue last week, and it’s a corridor that does need saving for future Eastside service, but the torn-up section between the I-90 bridge and the Wilburton Trestle is really useless from a transit perspective. Further, it’s a depressing, dangerous, pedestrian hell to walk from the tracks at 116th Ave NE and NE 8th St to downtown Bellevue. I can’t see any meaningful densification there in the next 20 years.)
He knows there’s no chance of it happening. He just needs something to fill his hands.
According to the Seattle Times, it appears that Constantine is up almost 15%.
Can we start an initiative to ban Tim Eyeman from WA forever?
How about pay for performance for Eyman? I’m convinced he does all this for a paycheck – take away the paycheck and all this B.S. goes away…
Just ban paying to people to collect signatures and raise the number of signatures required. If it’s important enough for a people to vote on, volunteers and signatures should be easy to get.
Kenneth,
Actually paying signature gatherers used to be illegal here in Washington. Court challenges here and elsewhere determined it to be a first amendment issue.
Just pay them by the hour, rather than by the signature.
Now that, Kaleci, is in an initiative I would support.
I guess congrts are in order to the new King County Executive for the city of Seattle Dow Constantine.
Dow Constantine already represents more than just a Seattle district in his current Council job. This anti-Seattle grousing is a bit tiresome.
this is not anti-Seattle it is anti-King County attitudes. I feel that most of King county Goverment, that includes the Executive-elect, think that the people who live outside Seattle are second class citizens.
Seriously, Mathew, you keep saying that, but I haven’t seen you back up your rhetoric.
Constantine said that he would not give in to Seattle’s influence repeatedly. He bashed Seattle in an East King County forum, even.
And the KC Exec has been pretty much working against Seattle for years.
Suzie didn’t win, it’s over, take down your sign.
I never put a sign up. I have backed it up with examples of how King county over taxes South King County properties by over assessing the values of the properties. The King County Goverment does not care. When they finially admit that they over taxed they will not give a refund. Why? Because they feel that the goverment needs the money more than the people who earn it.
Whereas Ref. 71 seems sharply divided between the Puget Sound region and Everyone Else, 1033 is being shot down from a broader base. Aside from the Tri-Cities, Vancouver, and Tacoma (?!?), most of the counties of any significant population size are voting down 1033.
Three (preliminary) cheers for Spokane, Walla Walla, Ellensburg, Yakima, all of Puget Sound save Tacoma, and the Olympic Peninsula (except Shelton).
The white house urban affairs office recently visited Seattle!
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2009/11/03/a-community-cutting-edge-science
[...] In the other races we’ve endorsed, the early returns are not good. Apparently the power of the STB endorsement (in bold below) does not extend much past the Seattle City limits. Other results are here. [...]
How anti-transit is Licata? I was torn here because LTB and the Stranger had opposite endorsements. But in the end I felt we couldn’t lose somebody who consistently stands up for ordinary people even when the entire council is against him, and that whatever anti-transit sentiments he had would hopefully be neutralized by the others.
Licata’s not anti-transit, it’s just that Israel would have been better.
He’s fairly anti-rail. He didn’t have nice things to say about prop. 1 in 2008 and is very anti-streetcar
He’s very anti-rail. Whenever he’s in streetcar or Link discussions, he looks for the bus alternative. He just doesn’t get it.
Still he’s a “majority of one” on most rail transit related things. There are signs he may be coming around, witness the recent First Hill Streetcar vote.
Oops, should have clarified. Yeah, he’s not generally in favor of streetcars, but he can be convinced.
So does the County Council appoint someone to serve the remainder of Constantine’s term on the Council or will there be a special election?
Interesting, as of this afternoon the number of votes difference between McGinn and Mallahan is half the number of “write in” votes. I wonder how many regrets people are going to have over their “throw away” vote?
[...] for Mayor is going to down to the wire. Mallahan has slowly gained on McGinn’s 910 vote lead last night to a narrow 462 vote lead [...]