Monday, November 13, 2006 at 10:58 pm by Darryl
WA-08 Race is Over
The 6:00 pm report today from King County Elections turned things around. Instead of Darcy holding a slim lead, Reichert was up by 8 votes. He is also leading by a wide margin in Pierce County.
Apparently this most recent vote tally was enough to convince Darcy Burner that the race is over:
Burner did not publicly concede the race Monday night, but Reichert spokeswoman Kimberly Cadena said she conceded in a phone call to Reichert. Burner will hold a news conference Tuesday at her Bellevue campaign office, said campaign manager Zach Silk. He declined to say whether or not she would concede at the event.
Daniel Kirkdorffer has the information on the news conference.
Although Darcy has apparently lost this contest, let’s put this in context. Darcy went from a political unknown to narrowly losing to an incumbent with wide name recognition—an incumbent who began this election season with every reason to believe his race would be a cake walk. Although Reichert had a couple of disadvantages (he is a Republican in a bad year for Republican incumbents, he is a freshman, and he willingly allowed himself to be photographed with George W. Bush), it was Darcy who started out this election season as the underdog.
And for an underdog, she was stunningly effective in mounting a challenge, with accomplishments like raising a remarkable $3 million dollars for the race (and from a political unknown, no less) and being the only Democrat ever to come close to winning the 8th CD.
Unquestionabally, Darcy’s strong challenge caused the Republicans to sink much more money into this race than they anticipated. Therefore, her loss was a win for Democrats in other congressional districts.
Thank you, Darcy.
Tuesday, November 14th, 2006 at 6:19 am
Man, I wish these damn Democrats would challenge the election results on grounds of potential electronic voting machine irregularities that favor the Republicans.