Clark County Councilor David Madore’s fate was sealed with the release of new election results Wednesday afternoon.
Madore, a Republican, gained only a little ground in Tuesday’s primary election, picking up 828 new votes, or about 30 percent of the 2,693 newly counted ballots in his race for Clark County council District 3. That lifted his percentage to 24.06 percent.
Madore had conceded defeat late Tuesday via a post on his Facebook page.
Republican John Blom did not fare as well as Madore in late ballots, taking 735 of the new votes for an overall total of 30.51 percent support in the district.
Democrat Tanisha Harris maintained her comfortable lead, picking up an additional 1,130 votes in the east Vancouver district.
Only the top two finishers advance to the November election, and Madore now trails Blom by 944 votes.
Auditor Greg Kimsey estimates — and generously so, he said — that another 15,000 ballots will come in countywide, including 3,500 in the east Vancouver county council district.
Columbian calculations, assuming those proportions hold, predict Madore will lose his bid for a second term by about 800 votes.
The results in other races remained unsurprising after Wednesday’s new ballot totals. Republican Eileen Quiring surpassed Democrat Roman Battan in the race for Clark County council District 4, where Tom Mielke did not seek re-election. Quiring was in second place Tuesday night, but the change is largely a technical one that at this point only determines whose name appears first on the November ballot. Both she and Battan surpassed Republican Jennifer McDaniel and will move on to the general election.
Democrat Tim Probst maintained a tiny lead over Republican Lynda Wilson in the race for retiring Republican Sen. Don Benton’s seat in the 17th Legislative District. Probst has 49.99 percent of the 19,469 votes, edging Wilson by 46 votes.
And former Battle Ground school board member Sam Kim solidified his spot on the general election ballot in the race for Wilson’s House seat.
Kim, who ran as an Independent Democrat after initially announcing he’d run as a Republican, received 4,127 votes, or 21.37 percent of the 19,311 votes counted in that district. The new votes advance Kim’s lead over Democrat Don Orange, who took 18.66 percent of the votes.
Republican Vicki Kraft’s lead in that race stayed strong; she has 33.02 percent of the vote.
The Mount Pleasant School District’s maintenance and operations levy was still passing by a slim margin as of Wednesday night. The levy for the small school east of Washougal has 41 votes in favor and 30 against. If it passes, the three-year levy would raise $155,000 per year for the district to pay for educational programs, facilities and maintenance starting at a rate of about $3.53 per $1,000 of assessed property value in its first year, according to the district. In 2018, the expected rate is $3.48 per $1,000. In 2019, the expected rate is $3.43 per $1,000.
The school has four teachers offering kindergarten to seventh grade, and had 49 students enrolled at the state’s last count. It’s made up of students in Clark and Skamania counties. As of Wednesday, the levy was receiving unanimous support in Clark County, with all three votes supporting the levy.
Adam Littman of The Columbian contributed to this story.
