Republican incumbent state Sen. Ann Rivers appears to have prevailed over Democratic challenger Rick Bell, according to the first ballot return Tuesday night for Washington’s 18th Legislative District.
The first round of results showed Rivers with 55.15 percent of the vote against Bell’s 44.85 percent. The initial results are based on a countywide count of 220,476 ballots, according to the Clark County Elections Office. An estimated 70,000 ballots still need to be counted. The next round of results is scheduled to be released today.
Rivers faced dual challenges in this election from Bell and former Clark County Councilor Tom Mielke, who staged a write-in campaign for the Senate seat.
Mielke told The Columbian in October that he views Rivers as too moderate and sought to deny her a third term by either winning his write-in effort outright or splitting the Republican vote so that Bell would win.
The latter scenario would have echoed the results of the August primary election, in which Bell received a plurality of votes and the larger remainder was split between Rivers and Republican primary challenger John Ley. Rivers and Bell advanced to the general election runoff.
The write-in vote total stood at 2,162 in the first ballot return, a small amount compared with the 74,292 ballots cast for Rivers and Bell as of Tuesday night. The initial results do not specify the write-in names, so it’s not yet known precisely how many of those votes went to Mielke.
Reached for comment Tuesday night, Mielke said the write-in campaign didn’t do as well as he’d been expecting. He speculated that some voters may have been confused about the write-in because he was separately running for the Charter Review Commission, and his name appeared on the ballot in that race.
“I had a few phone calls about that,” he said.
Incumbent Republican Reps. Brandon Vick and Larry Hoff were both ahead Tuesday night in the races for the 18th District’s two seats in the state House of Representatives.
Early results showed Vick with 58.14 percent of the vote and Democratic challenger Kassandra Bessert with 41.86 percent. Hoff’s total stood at 53.85 percent against Democratic challenger Donna Sinclair’s 46.15 percent, making it the closest of the district’s three races.
“I’m pretty comfortable with the early returns,” Hoff said Tuesday night. “The split now is about 6,000 votes, and that’s going to be tough to overcome — but there’s more votes out there, so we’re not taking anything for granted.”
Rivers, Bell, Sinclair, Vick and Bessert could not be immediately reached for comment Tuesday night.
