General election is set for fierce battle after primary

Youth and volunteers pay off big for candidates BY CHUCK TUCK | JOURNAL REPORTER An average turnout for the Snohomish County Primary last week yielded some predictable results at the polls.

With 351,080 voters having the power to make a change only 139,413 or 39.71 percent decided to put their right to vote to work.

Although the voter turnout seems low, it is typical of most primary elections in the past to have fewer than 40 percent participation with more voters voting in the general election in Nov.

Thus far, incumbent Christine Gregoire (D) has 48.37 percent of the votes compared to the nearest challenger Dino Rossi (R) who has 46.52 percent making this a familiar scenario to the last election for Governor of Washington in the upcoming general election.

Closer to home, the 44h District Representative Position 1 brings Hans Dunshee (D) with a comfortable showing of voter confidence at 57.52 percent with his opponent Larry Countryman (R) showing a respectable 42.21 percent.

There is a much closer race happening in the 44th District Representative Position 2 with nearly a dead heat between incumbent Liz Loomis (D) showing a 50.49 percent and hopeful Mike Hope with 49.26 percent.

Both of these candidates hit the campaign trail hard for the primary doing a lot of door knocking, and counting on the support of the youth across Snohomish County.

After the results, each party took a different approach to unwind from the grueling campaign trail before readying themselves for the second-leg of the campaign.

Loomis will continue working toward a win.

“There’s not an opportunity really for a break, you have to work it like it’s a full-time job,” she said.

Hope, on the other-hand, opted to take a little time to breathe and to thank some of his volunteers with a small celebration serving snacks before they head-out next week to repair some of the damaged signage.
Both agree that it will be a close race, and much campaigning is needed to have their views heard.

Hope said he was very happy to see the race so close, especially having spent far less money on the campaign than incumbent Loomis.
“I was glad to see that,” Hope said of the race being so close. “We were out spent I think $120,000 to $40,000 in this primary.”

Hope attributed much of his success to the young volunteers who helped by door-belling in the communities much like Loomis has done, but said that he was really pleased to see that their efforts made a difference.

“I think that’s really paid off,” he said. “We’ve done that for several weekends where we went out like that and would cover 10 to 15 precincts in three-hours and I think that it’s just worked really well with our campaign. People like to see that energy and the youth and excitement, and I think that helps motivate people to vote too; and I think that’s what has been really successful with our campaign so far.”
Hope said that his involvement in the community, along with being a coach could have helped as well.

“I think when you’ve got a lot of young people involved in your life, you know they influence their friends and their families, their neighbors, so I do think that we probably did get a lot of young voters out there,” he said.

Lastly, both candidates shared their appreciation of the volunteers and said that they could not have done it without their help.
“I really appreciate what they have done,” Hope said of his volunteers. “We’re here to represent our community; we’re here to just make it better.”

“I’m very thankful for the support I have received so far and we will see them on the campaign trail over the next 70 days,” Loomis said.

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