It's almost a wrap.

Tonight's results make at least a couple of my cliffhangers safe to call. I may be the last to admit it - I almost can't believe it - but Referendum 71 has opened a five point lead and looks sure to pass. My home state is the first in the nation to expand civil rights for gays and lesbians at the ballot box. That's something. Of course, it took a better than two to one vote here in King County to make it happen, but it happened. Huzzah!

In the local races I'm tracking, it's going to be Will Hall for Shoreline City Council Position 3, having expanded his lead by a couple hundred more votes overnight. The trend has been consistent enough to be convincing. I voted for Will, happily, but Patty Hale was a worthy candidate for the Council as well, a dedicated community volunteer and neighborhood activist. It's a shame she got caught up in controversy during the campaign, but it was a controversy of her own making because of her apparent inability to simply say "I was wrong" and get on with it when she was reprimanded for discussing her campaign with an English class while she was on the clock as their substitute teacher. I'm sympathetic to the value of student involvement but it seems to me that Patty was in a perfect position to cadge a couple of invites to speak to social studies classes as a candidate, off the clock. It didn't help that she didn't seem to understand the difference.

At any rate, Will comes with his own record of community involvement and relevant professional experience to boot. He picked up a late endorsement from the local Democrats after incumbent Councilmember and Party favorite Janet Way came in third in the primary. Janet, who I voted for then, endorsed him as well. I didn't use the Party sample ballot as a template for my own picks, but his willingness to identify with the Democratic Party, a requirement for the endorsement, does count as another point in his favor. Congratulations are in order and extended.

Challenger Shari Tracey continues to hold a slim lead over Position 5 incumbent Cindy Ryu, with a margin of about 400 votes. A margin of one, of course, is sufficient, and it seems that Shari will likely win. I'd like a bit more certainty than "likely," though. (Insert grumble about mail ballots and glacial counts here.) The replacement of Ryu, appointed to the essentially honorary position of mayor by the current Council, will be a major shift in the power center and culture of city government. Ryu, a Democratic State Committeewoman, is a local landlord and developer with close ties (she's on the board) to the Chamber of Commerce, where the ill-fated write-in effort against Keith McGlashan was spawned. Based on the vote totals, Keith appears to be the most popular politician in town this week. I see the election of Shari Tracey, which, though not yet written in stone is growing more likely by the day, as the neighborhoods giving notice that they don't like their city being run by the Aurora corridor business community. I think that's a healthy thing.

So, I'm down to one I won't call. Happily, I don't have a horse in that mayoral mess in the big city to the south. I'm sure Slog and Goldy can keep you up to date on that.

Brilliant prognosticator or influential pundit?

You make the call, but if current trends hold, my city council picks will go 4 for 4. At least two of those look pretty solid right now.

Keith McGlashan's was the only name on the ballot for Position 1, but there was an active write-in candidacy against him. That could have presented a couple of problems. Since no opponent was named, some voters might have skipped over the race, thinking their vote would have no influence. It was also the first write-in campaign conducted via our new vote by mail elections, and I wondered if voting at the kitchen table might make it easier for folks to write in an alternative choice.

Well, there was a drop-off, but it didn't accrue to the benefit of Keith's late-entry opponent. The well funded write-in campaign, beneficiary of a third-party smear via an anti-McGlashan independent expenditure, picked up less than 20% of the first ballot count, while Keith posted the highest vote total of any council candidate, despite a drop-off of more than 1000 votes for the Position 1 race.

The other one that looks done is in Position 7, where Chris Roberts holds a 57%/42% lead over incumbent Ron Hansen. Hansen brought some troubles to the race - his CPA license was suspended, then revoked because he didn't observe the conditions of the suspension, which led to his Municipal League rating being revoked, which, well, it was a messy business. The real credit should be given to Roberts, who teaches political science at U-dub while working on his doctorate. On top of that, he's practically a full time Democratic activist and he devoted that time and activity to this race. With a margin of over 1000 votes on the first drop, all his efforts seem to have paid off. Electing young, smart, energetic liberal Democrats to public office seems to be an unqualified good thing to me.

For Position 3, Will Hall's about 400 votes ahead of Patty Hale. Again, although Hale stumbled, both when she used her position as a substitute English teacher to recruit student volunteers for her campaign, and again in her response to the reprimand her recruiting drew from the school district, but it was really a combination of Hall's experience as a legislative analyst for Snohomish County and the fact that I just like the guy that tipped me in his favor. It's a slim margin, but it's a small electorate, and it should hold up. I hope it does.

The closest race is for Position 5, where my choice, Sheri Tracey, starts out a scant 152 votes ahead with the first drop. If that expands tonight, Sheri will likely win. If it shrinks sharply or disappears, it could be days before we'll have a clear picture. The closest thing we had around here to the classic downtown v. neighborhoods battle that's a regular feature of politics in the big city down south, this one will be worth a closer look as it develops.

So, it's a ways from done but so far, so good.

Howdy.

Logging in from the internet cafe down the road while we take a brief hiatus from phone service at Upper Left World Headquarters (yep, things have been that dire.) My fifteen free minutes with a cup of coffee is running out, but on Shoreline City Council, I'm voting for:

Position 1: Keith McGlashan

Position 2: Will Hall

Position 3: Shari Tracey

Position 4: Chris Roberts

My brilliant rationale for each of these choices will have to wait. Oh, yeah, and Debi Ehrlichman for school board.

Oops, the timer...see ya! Put that ballot in the mail!