Legislature

6th District

In a close race hinging on thousands of absentee ballots, Republican Brad Benson maintained a slight lead Tuesday in his bid for the 6th Legislative District’s open Senate seat.

The conservative lawmaker was ahead with 51 percent of the vote against Democrat Laurie Dolan, a retired educator.

“It’s going in the right direction, so I’m overjoyed,” said Benson, who left his 6th Legislative District House seat to run for state Senate. “Ultimately, you just need 50 percent plus 1 vote.”

Benson, 45, was among the leaders in the area’s 15 races for the state Legislature. Except for the 3rd District, which is a Democratic stronghold, the Republicans have either won or are leading in the 6th, 4th, 7th and 9th district races.

With a significant number of absentee votes yet to be counted, Benson hesitated to claim victory. Dolan, 52, also said the race was too close to call.

“We knew all along that this would be a really tight race, and I think we’re going to have to play it out for the next few days until we get the ballots counted,” said Dolan, who ran for the same seat two years ago but lost to Jim West. “Brad Benson has run a really fine campaign. I believe we have, too.”

If Dolan comes through in the end, she will be the first Democrat since before World War II to be elected to the 6th.

Benson said he felt confident going into the general election, despite a tough primary in which he defeated the incumbent, Brian Murray, who was appointed to the seat when West became Spokane’s mayor.

“If I win, I hope the big difference would have been that I ran a positive race,” Benson said. “I hope people were refreshed because I wasn’t saying bad things about my opponent. I just talked about what I believed in and what I hope to accomplish.”

For the open Position 1 race for state House of Representatives, Republican John Serben, an insurance agent, was winning with 51 percent of the votes against Democrat Don Barlow, a Spokane school board member. With 60 percent of the ballots cast in his favor, Republican John Ahern has already defeated his Democratic rival, Doug Dobbins, a former program manager at Microsoft. Ahern, 69, is the two-term incumbent for the Position 2 seat.

3rd District

Democrats in the 3rd District jumped out to big, but not surprising, leads Tuesday in one race for the Senate and two races for the House.

Incumbent Sen. Lisa Brown, an associate professor at Gonzaga University, was polling well ahead of GOP challenger Mike Casey, a dentist, in her run for a third term. She previously served two terms in the House.

About the only question up in the air for Brown was whether Democrats statewide would regain control of the Senate and set her up for becoming majority leader. They needed a net gain of one seat and were running strong races in three districts currently held by Republicans.

“I think this is a good year for Democrats,” Brown said because of her party’s message of building good schools and providing health care.

In the Position 1 House race, four-term incumbent Alex Wood had a commanding lead over Republican challenger David Stevens, a deputy prosecuting attorney for Spokane County.

In Position 2, Democrat Timm Ormsby appeared headed to election in his first race for the House seat over Republican Ryan Leonard, a telephone service representative. Ormsby, a Spokane labor leader, was appointed last year to fill an unexpired term of former Rep. Jeff Gombosky, who stepped down. Leonard ran two years ago against Gombosky and lost.

4th District

The Republican incumbents in District 4 will keep their jobs.

State Sen. Bob McCaslin and Reps. Larry Crouse and Lynn Schindler overcame their challengers by 18 percentage points or more.

Democrat Tim Hattenburg, 51, led an energized campaign against McCaslin, who has occupied the District 4 senate seat since 1980. Hattenburg, a retired teacher, personally visited 10,000 homes since his campaign kicked off in February. Despite the efforts, he earned 41 percent of the vote while McCaslin, 78, captured the rest.

Crouse, 59, defeated Democrat Jim Peck, 60, by 24 percentage points and Schindler, 60, topped Democrat Ed Foote, 31, by 32 points in the district’s two House races.

The wide margins are similar to those the same House incumbents nabbed in 2000, the last time either representative was challenged.

During the campaign, the Democrats pledged to be fiscally conservative. They raised concerns about education, health care and other social programs and offered ways to make medicine more affordable and jobs more plentiful. Meanwhile, the Republicans promised to hold back spending, improve the business climate, lower health care costs and stand up for the conservative social values of the district.

7th District

Republicans Bob Sump and Joel Kretz had commanding leads in their races for the 7th Legislative District’s two House seats.

Even with only partial election night results available in Stevens County, it was apparent the conservative rural district was not inclined to choose a Democratic legislator, much less a Libertarian.

Sump, a Ferry County resident, faced Libertarian Dave Wordinger as well as Democrat Jack Miller, both Spokane County residents, in his bid for a third four-year term, but Wordinger wasn’t a factor in the election. Wordinger drew no more than a few hundred votes in any of the six counties that make up the sprawling district.

For the position being vacated by state Rep. Cathy McMorris, Okanogan County resident Joel Kretz was far ahead of Nespelem resident Yvette Joseph.

The 7th District includes all of Stevens, Pend Oreille, Lincoln and Ferry counties and portions of Spokane and Okanogan counties.

With final results in all counties except Stevens, where about 40 percent of the total had been counted, Sump had 64.4 percent of the vote, followed by Miller with 32.8 percent and Wordinger with 2.7 percent.

Kretz had 65.1 percent support to Joseph’s 34.9 percent.

9th District

Like a combine clearing a wheat field on the Palouse, Republicans swept District 9 on Tuesday.

Rep. Don Cox, the sole incumbent in the District 9 legislative races, will return to Olympia next year after beating Democratic challenger Sean Gallegos by 32 percentage points.

David Buri, 41, won the other House seat over Democrat Eileen Macoll, 49, with 61 percent of the vote.

In the Senate race, former Rep. Mark Schoesler rode a 67-33 victory over Democrat Gail Rowland.

This will be Cox’s fourth term in the House. The 65-year-old former teacher and superintendent is considered an authority on education by many of his Olympia colleagues. Gallegos, who is 29 and owns a computer consulting company, shared many of Cox’s views, including an opposition to charter schools.

Buri, a legislative aide since 1999, will fill the seat Schoesler vacated to run for Senate. During his campaign, Buri said he’d protect the district’s agricultural base and make the state more business friendly. Macoll, former chairwoman of the Whitman County Democrats, pushed better higher education funding and improved health care for everybody.

Schoesler, 47, pointed to his 12 years of state-government experience while courting voters. The fifth-generation farmer from Ritzville vowed to protect rural communities by lifting tough regulations on businesses, among other goals. Education and health care were key issues for Rowland, 56.