Though the results won’t be certified until Nov. 29, and a handful of votes will still be tallied in the coming days, the results of Tuesday’s election are resonating in Clark County.
As has been the trend here in recent years, voters tended to favor incumbents and Republicans, with the prominent exception of the 49th Legislative District. But there are some subtle trends and surprises, too. Here are five takeaways from this year’s election:
1. Delegation still divided?
After Donald Trump’s victory, President Barack Obama reminded the nation that despite the contentious election we are all on one team.
“This is an intramural scrimmage,” Obama said. “We’re not Democrats first; we’re not Republicans first. We’re Americans first. We’re patriots first.”
Coming together as one team could be a challenge for Clark County’s legislative delegation. To do so, both parties must move beyond a divisive campaign season and a long history of personality conflicts, such as the time Sen. Don Benton insulted Sen. Ann Rivers at a Senate leadership meeting.
Democrat Annette Cleveland, who was re-elected to a second Senate term in Vancouver’s 49th District, is optimistic.
“I’ve always viewed campaigns as being distinctly separate from the work of governing and legislating,” she said. “And now we are moving back into our formal role as elected officials and legislators, so I’m confident we can leave the campaign behind and work together.”
During the campaign, Cleveland and Rep. Sharon Wylie, D-Vancouver, threw their support behind Alishia Topper in the race for the district’s other House seat. Despite their support, Topper lost to fellow Democrat Monica Stonier.
Now, Cleveland and Wylie will need to work with a representative they criticized during the election cycle.
Local Republicans don’t always get along, either.
Democrat Kathy Gillespie, who lost to Rep. Liz Pike, R-Camas, in the 18th Legislative District, highlighted a reportedly tenuous relationship between Pike and Rivers, R-La Center, during the campaign.
“I think it’s well known that Sen. Rivers and Liz Pike … aren’t necessarily working well together as a team. There’s been a falling out, and that’s weakening the 18th,” Gillespie previously told The Columbian.
Pike at the time disputed the characterization, saying she works well with everyone. However, Pike, who last session spearheaded an unsuccessful effort to create a bistate bridge coalition, has not been involved in a new round of meetings about the bridge. Rivers is a part of the new group.
Cleveland said she’s committed to getting the entire delegation together this year before the next session to discuss priorities and cultivate stronger relationships.
“All we can do is work hard to build on the fragile trust we’re trying to grow,” she said. “And we do that by being honest and up-front and calling out when we see something that we don’t feel is consistent with the commitments we’ve made to each other about honesty.”
Benton did not seek re-election and will no longer be in the Legislature.
— Lauren Dake
2. Oil terminal in peril
The re-election of “green governor” Jay Inslee Tuesday night would appear to make the approval of a massive oil terminal at the Port of Vancouver less likely.
Under state law, Inslee will have the final say in the Vancouver Energy project, which would receive crude oil by train, store it on site, and transfer it to ships sailing down the Columbia River into the Pacific Ocean.
Inslee’s opponent, Republican Bill Bryant, is a former Port of Seattle commissioner. During a September meeting with The Columbian’s Editorial Board, Bryant was noncommittal about the proposed terminal. Bryant outpolled Inslee in Clark County by a slight margin Tuesday.
Inslee is constrained by law from speaking about the project, which is a joint venture of Tesoro Corp. and Savage Cos. But a look at his record of speaking out against global warming has prompted terminal opponents to feel hopeful.
“The opponents of the Tesoro-Savage project are very, very pleased Gov. Inslee won,” said Jim Luce, a Clark County resident who previously chaired the state Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council, which reviews proposals and makes recommendations to the governor. “He’s taken a strong position on the export of carbon-based fuels, global warming, climate change and the risk to the Columbia River that are otherwise presented by the Tesoro-Savage project.”
Once a recommendation from the environmental siting council is finished, the governor has 60 days to make a decision about the project’s future. In Vancouver Energy’s case, that is expected to happen in 2017.
The Legislature intentionally made the decision long ago to make sure the governor has the ultimate say over large energy projects — they wanted political accountability.
Inslee could approve, deny or send the project back to the siting council with requirements.
“We could have had two different outcomes,” Luce said, adding he’s hopeful Inslee will flatly reject the proposal.
— Lauren Dake
3. Prop. 1 grew from grass roots
The passage of the city of Vancouver’s Proposition 1, which increases property taxes to create a fund to support low-income housing, surprised a lot of people. The fact that it garnered 57 percent support even shocked its campaign leaders.
Though the affordable housing crisis has received a lot of attention, it was a new idea and a new tax.
“Even if we did the best we could, there would be voters learning about it for the first time as they were going to vote,” said Andy Silver, executive director of the Council for the Homeless. His best-case scenario was for the levy to pass with 54 percent approval.
The movement to help the poorest renters in Vancouver didn’t start with the Bring Vancouver Home campaign. Addressing homelessness through policy, not just through services, was an idea built over the last couple of years.
The levy idea came out of Vancouver’s Affordable Housing Task Force, a group of community members addressing the housing crisis.
The pro-levy campaign raised and spent $100,000 for a campaign manager and a handful of other employees, signs, a website, a television commercial, mailers and rent on space for fundraisers and forums.
There was no organized and funded opposition campaign, which certainly helped proponents.
“We were anticipating one, but it never came to fruition,” said Katie Archer, the campaign manager.
She surmises that the message of not helping low-income people would have been hard to spin.
Staff and volunteers with Bring Vancouver Home knocked on 15,500 doors, called 11,200 people and held four forums. Archer talked to any community group that would have her.
At a rate estimated at 36 cents per $1,000 of assessed property value, Prop. 1 will cost the owner of a $250,000 home an extra $7.50 a month, or $90 a year, for seven years. The $6 million raised per year will buy, build and preserve affordable housing in Vancouver.
People will likely see an impact from the levy midway through 2017.
— Patty Hastings
4. Bellwether, barely
If Clark County had any aspirations of becoming a presidential bellwether, they nearly went out the window on Tuesday after Hillary Clinton apparently topped Donald Trump.
While Trump performed well here in the presidential primary in May, he trailed Clinton in the general election’s results by almost three percentage points on election night. But by Friday, he had pulled within 250 votes, and may well emerge as the local winner, burnishing our bellwether status.
Until Tuesday, county voters had picked the winning president in all but four elections since 1900. We last missed the mark in 1988, when Democrat Michael Dukakis eked out a victory over Republican George H.W. Bush.
The county also missed picking the president in 1968, 1956 and 1916, picking the winner in 25 of the 29 presidential elections.
Jim Moore, a political science professor at Pacific University, had predicted the county would vote for Clinton this year. At the same time, though, he and others also noted the county now leans Republican as its demographics have shifted over the past 20 to 30 years.
The county’s Republicans did very well this year. U.S. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Camas, won her fourth term and Republican candidates in the 14th, 17th, 18th and 20th Legislative districts all won. Republicans also captured both open county council seats.
Should Clinton’s lead hold at the final count, local Republicans’ misgivings about Trump could have spoiled our record. Libertarian Gary Johnson captured about 4.75 percent of the vote, and another 3.6 percent of voters, including Herrera Beutler, wrote in their own choice for president. In 2012, Johnson had 1.3 percent of the vote and only 0.5 percent of voters cast write-ins.
Though Clinton won many local votes on Tuesday, she wasn’t the favorite of Clark County Democrats this year. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders topped her in the influential caucuses and the Democratic presidential primary, although she did narrowly win the June primary statewide.
— John Hill
5. Money talks, mostly
Money talks. But does it win elections?
That’s a question left lingering in the wake of two Clark County elections that saw heavy independent expenditures yet remained competitive. In the end, they produced different outcomes.
In the race for the District 3 county council position, Republican John Blom raised $65,000, slightly more than the $61,000 raised by Democrat Tanisha Harris.
But the big money behind Blom came from outside his campaign. The Washington Realtors Political Action Committee and the Building Industry Association of Clark County poured a combined $324,673 to support him.
However, on election night neither candidate had a commanding lead, with Blom ahead by less than 200 votes. The race remains close, though Blom is still ahead.
A lot of outside money was also spent in the 49th District House race between Democrats Monica Stonier and Alishia Topper.
Stonier raised about $125,000 to Topper’s $143,000. However, Stonier received a $440,000 boost from the Washington Education Association, the state’s teachers union.
In the end, Stonier defeated Topper by approximately 10 percentage points, according to the most recent count.
— Jake Thomas
