No one was conceding defeat after first returns were released Tuesday in two Clark County council races.
In the race for the District 3 council seat, Republican John Blom led Democrat Tanisha Harris by less than 200 votes. The winner will represent east Vancouver.
In the race for the District 4 council seat, which represents large swaths of rural Clark County, Republican Eileen Quiring was confident she will maintain or expand her 20 percentage point lead over Democrat Roman Battan. But Battan said he won’t concede until all the ballots are counted.
That may well be the case in the Blom-Harris race, too.
“It looks like we are going to be chasing ballots,” said Harris shortly after the initial results showed Blom received 16,369 votes to her 16,175.
Harris, a program specialist for YWCA Clark County’s Court Appointed Special Advocate Program, campaigned with the backing of labor unions and other Democratic-leaning groups. She said that while her district typically has close legislative races, she expected the results for her county council race to be clearer.
Blom, a real estate agent and member of the county planning commission, said that while he was cautiously optimistic about his lead, more ballots need to be counted before a clear winner is declared.
“We expected this to be a really close race,” he said.
Blom and Harris both topped incumbent Republican County Councilor David Madore in the August top-two primary. Although Blom was opposed in that race by the Clark County Republican Party, he had heavy financial backing from political action committees associated with the real estate and building industries as well a political action committee founded by investor David Nierenberg.
After losing in the primary, Madore unexpectedly endorsed Harris.
“You didn’t quite know what those voters were going to do,” said Harris of Madore’s supporters.
In the other race, to succeed Republican Tom Mielke, Quiring was ready to declare victory on election night.
Quiring, a Realtor and former Oregon state legislator who serves on the county planning commission, received 23,531 votes to Battan’s 15,406.
“As far as my race goes, I am delighted; I am elated and I’m ready to go to work,” said Quiring. “It is a conservative district and I am a conservative, and I believe that’s why I was chosen.”
Battan, the owner of a marketing firm, said, “I think there are still a lot of ballots. We’ll see how it goes.”
Council Chair Marc Boldt said Quiring appeared to have won a victory while the race between Blom and Harris is “going to be a nail-bitter.”
Boldt said that conservatives tend to vote later in Clark County, which will give Republicans an advantage if it holds true this time. Regardless of the results, he said he would work with whomever is elected.
“I could be the best-looking guy on council,” said Boldt jokingly at the prospect of being the sole male on the five-member board.
More results Wednesday
Another batch of results in all county races are expected Wednesday afternoon. County Auditor Greg Kimsey, who oversees elections, said he expects another 65,000 to 70,000 ballots to be counted in the coming days. Any ballot postmarked on or before Election Day will be tallied. He said that election workers will work through Veterans Day counting ballots, and he expects clear winners to be established in close races by the end of the week.
Already 154,673 ballots, more than half of the ballots his office initially anticipated receiving, have been tallied.
