Still trailing after Wednesday's vote count, Attorney General Rob McKenna told supporters that he believes the remaining, uncounted votes will swing the governor's race in his favor.
"We believe my advantage among later voters is going to carry me in this election," McKenna told supporters in a video released Wednesday.
Democrat and former Rep. Jay Inslee leads 51.16 percent to McKenna's 48.84 percent with slightly more than 2.1 million ballots counted. State elections officials will release updated totals on Thursday.
McKenna's campaign manager, Randy Pepple, explained that his team's internal data and trend analysis showed that McKenna, a former King County councilmember, was strongly favored by voters who had decided but had not yet cast ballots last week.
“The people that were deciding late were trending heavily in our favor,” Pepple said.
McKenna did close the vote gap in King County in second-day totals, the Seattle Times reported, but Inslee offset that gain with ballots from other counties.
Even without the final count, Inslee appears nearly ready to declare victory. On Wednesday, he announced the formation of a transition team for the move into the governor's office. He said he does not see late votes changing anything.
"I am very confident that we will be in a position to lead the state of Washington for the next four years," he said in a news conference.
Check back with Patch Thursday for additional updates.
Not only is the Puget Sound (PS) region the economic engine of Washington State, it is the tax base that carries the sparsely populated counties. We live in more dense areas, put up with traffic issues, more air pollution, crime, and other dissatisfiers, so why do our brothers and sisters who want to live and work in more rural areas curse us for our sacrifice to help support their arrangements? Do eastsiders really want all of us in the PS region to move eastward to share in their open-spaces lifestyle? (continued...)
It's clear that today's conservative support of marriage between two equal, consenting adults of opposite sexes put us on the slippery slope to marriage between equal consenting adults of any gender.
The wage base in KC for 2011 was $67.8 Billion, nearly half of the State's $136.3 Billion total wages.(Personal Income was only 38%.) King County receives about $0.58 in state tax expenditures for each $1.00 paid in taxes (2008 data). Where do you suppose that $0.42 went? Whitman County received $4.02 for its dollar. Spokane County received $1.33. Stevens, $1.87. Okanogan, $1.47. Lincoln, $2.44. Tell me, please, any self-described conservative parent, what do you say to your children living at home, when they say things like "You never do anything for me; you never get me what I want?"
Perhaps, if those that did not get their way had presented more convincing arguments, or worked harder, or had not called the other side names, shutting down civil discourse, they might have succeeded by presenting a better option. (*Personally, I prefer the informal Navy motto: "Non sibi sed patriae.")
John Sheridan 9:10 pm on Wednesday, November 7, 2012 Don is correct to a vast degree. What happened in the Dino Rossi vs. Christine Gregoire race was King County played the game of waiting for other counties to tally and certify their total votes. Then, King country manufactured enough votes with so-called "provisional voters" - many who were illegal or dead or non-registered - to magically come up with the magic number twice to take it away from Dino winning. Same Reed should not have certified that election. Lesson to be learned: Let King County declare its final number of votes first and then count the remaining counties for a fair an honest election. But no matter who wins, we have serious issues before us, and need to work together and put people ahead of party affiliation and bring out the best ideas from both parties! We are Washington State and can get along. We are not Chicago. C. de, if you have problems reading this I'll try and rewrite it using smaller words.
When it comes to treatment of women, for example, take a look at Deuteronomy 22. I found a handy flowchart illustrating these laws: http://i.imgur.com/cR3Tv.png The Bible is full of misogynistic nonsense like this, and these anachronistic stories are ample evidence of how the idea of marriage has evolved over the millennia. They are also why relying on the Bible for guidance in human morality and ethics is laughable, particularly for Biblical literalists who pick and choose which verses they want to enforce (on everyone else, of course). Finally, how many times did Jesus talk about homosexuality, according to the accounts in the NT? Zero. And how many times did he talk about wealth? Luke 12:15 Luke 14:33 Mark 10:21 Mark 12:43-44 Matthew 6:19-21 (Note: I am talking about the real Jesus here -- not Republican Jesus)
Clearly, Jesus did command his followers in what form marriage is, but also Jesus commanded his followers to charity. We could have an intelighent conversation about what command is to be followed, or if secular laws trump religious law, or if there are two worlds, but proof-texting isn't usually part of those arguments without the narative of Christian teaching and authority.
These so-called experts rely on a combination of tortured interpretation and blatant disregard of "uncomfortable" portions of the full text to try to salvage some kind of coherent message, which is itself usually disputed by other factions who read the tea leaves differently. This is, of course, why there are Christian monks who take vows of poverty, but also mainstream Christian churches that teach that material wealth is a blessing from God. Both schools of thought are justified using interpretations of the Bible that are mutually exclusive, and both will find "theologians" who will stake their reputations on the quality of their scholarship. "A theologian is like a blind man in a dark room searching for a black cat which isn't there - and finding it!"
Similarly, it doesn't matter what Christians *think* the Bible says, because most Christians pick and choose the parts they like and ignore the rest. How can I not have spent time with Christians? Even in a relatively non-religious state like Washington (well, western Washington anyway), Christians are the majority. Most Christians don't get their religion from the Bible. At least, not the whole Bible. They ignore the parts they don't like or don't understand. For example, gay-marriage opponents love Leviticus 18. But they completely ignore the rest of the laws in that book, claiming *those* laws don't apply to them. Because, while they might not like people of the same sex (at least not *that* way), they do like shellfish, and mixing cotton and wool clothing.
It is not mean-spirited to have standards. I love all people.
In our state it would mean king, pierce and Snohomish along with eastern WA get no visits as those are not "swing counties". Southwest WA and maybe Whitman and Spokane counties would get all the attention.