Votes counted since election night appear to be trending slightly conservative, but not breaking sharply enough yet to lift candidates behind on  Tuesday.  The races drawing national attention continue to show Democrat congressional candidates holding slim leads in the races in the 3^rd and 8^th congressional districts.

In the special election to determine who will be Washington’s Secretary of State for the next two years, Democrat Steve Hobbs is currently (Thursday morning) leading Independent Julie Anderson by 53,000 votes, though that lead also narrowed Wednesday. There are 65,000 ballots with write-in votes, which are most likely for Brad Klippert who mounted a write-in campaign for the position after he came in fifth place in August’s 4^th Congressional District primary. If the numbers hold for Hobbs, then it will appear that this important office which oversees our state’s elections will remain in the hands of an extreme partisan, breaking a long tradition.

Nearly all state legislative vote totals remain near the same percentage as they were on election night.  One would expect to see later votes break more for Republican Greg Gilday in the 10^th Legislative District House contest, since it can be assumed the later-arriving ballots were filled out after Shift broke the story that Democrat candidate Clyde Shavers’ father wrote a letter confirming that his son repeatedly lied to voters about his military record, work experiences, family history, and residence.

In the closely watched contest in Spokane County’s 5^th Council District, Republican Al French is currently ahead by 3% (1,050 votes) over Democrat Maggie Yates.  This race will determine which party controls the council, which was recently expanded from three countywide elected councilmembers to five members elected from districts.  Current Director of the Washington State Department of Commerce and career liberal politician Lisa Brown spent some of the $137,000 remaining from a 2020 rebate from her campaign’s media consultant during her failed 2018 congressional campaign collecting political chits (for her expected run for Spokane mayor in 2023) on efforts to help Democrat County Council candidates take control of the new council.  (Washington Secretary of State election results, Shift article, Spokane County election results, and Lisa Brown 2018 Congressional Campaign receipts and disbursements)

New estimations from the Washington State Caseload Forecast Council assert that the state’s public schools will not return to their 2016 enrollment figure (approximately 1,079,000 students) until 2026.  It is noteworthy that the population of the state will have grown 12% during those 10 years (from 7,237,000 residents to an estimated 8,100,000 people). The starting point of 2016 enrollment was also 22,000 students lower than 2019, when it was at its peak of 1,101,000 students.

There was a 41,000 student decline during the 2020 – 2021 school year, as parents became extremely frustrated by the education their children were receiving during Governor Inslee’s mandate to keep students in very unproductive distant-learning settings.  Enrollment in the state’s public schools dropped an additional 3,500 students during the 2021 – 2022 school year, as teachers’ unions selfishly refused to safely return to in-person classes in a timely manner.

Since the state estimates that there will still be 20,000 fewer students in public schools three years from now then there were in 2019, it would logically follow that schools would have fewer employees.  Yet, as we saw from teacher strikes last September,  the unions are demanding more employees. Sometimes these new union dues-paying employees are mental health specialists whose role is to help students who were negatively impacted by the prolonged shutdown of in-person classes.

Thus the teachers’ unions stand to financially benefit from the student mental health crisis they helped create.  Yet since school districts will be receiving less financial assistance from the state and federal government (since funds are calculated by student enrollment), more school districts will likely be running severe deficits (like the Seattle Public Schools, which is facing an estimated $190 million budget shortfall) and they will be asking the state legislature for even more money. (Washington State Forecast Council November 2022 report, Washington State Office of Financial Management population by year report and projection, MyNorthwest, and KING5 News)

Lorena Gonzalez, the failed 2021 Seattle mayoral candidate and leading proponent of the city’s disastrous anti-police policies, announced on Twitter that she will continue to push to make the city and Washington State a more comfortable place to be a criminal by starting a job this week as the “Legistlative (sic) Director” for ACLU Washington. As the Seattle City Council President in 2020, Councilmember Gonzalez led the council to defund the Seattle Police Department as she showed the way in caving into the radical demands of the liberal activists rioting in Seattle. This has led to nearly 500 Seattle police officers leaving the department and skyrocketing crime rates. In her new position with the ACLU, Gonzalez will undoubtedly attempt to inflict Seattle’s weak public safety policies onto the rest of Washington.  Her attention to detail remain strong, though we imagine Gonzalez is wishing Elon Musk had already implemented his plan to allow edits of Twitter posts after she embarrassingly misspelled her new title in her announcement. (M. Lorena Gonzalez Twitter)

Democrat Everett Mayor Cassie Franklin continues to point out Democrat state policies which create problems in her city.  Mayor Phillips was prominent in a widely distributed video produced by the Snohomish County Sheriff’s office last month which called for the legislative repeal of the Democrats’  police pursuit restrictions and lethal drug possession decriminalization.  Now the mayor is in a battle with the Inslee Administration over the state moving homeless individuals from throughout the region into Everett hotels. Specifically Mayor Franklin is concerned that the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) is cleaning up many encampments on their properties near freeways and then placing the transients in hotels in her city.  The mayor wrote a public letter to WSDOT officials demanding an immediate termination of the state’s efforts to move encampment residents into her city.  She wrote, “Everett is undertaking way too much responsibility for the homelessness crisis facing our region.” (KIRO7 News and Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office/YouTube)

Auto dealerships in Parkland (just north of Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Pierce County) say that up to 90% of their employees are carrying guns due to the high number of automobiles and catalytic converters that are stolen from their properties.  Since Democrats in the state legislature restricted the ability of police to pursue criminals (even if they see them driving a known stolen vehicle), the number of vehicle thefts has skyrocketed throughout the state.  One of the Parkland dealership owners summed up what many area car dealers are feeling by stating, “It is a helpless feeling” seeing numerous cars stolen or damaged on their property. Thus, because of Democrats’ soft-on-crime policies, there are more people who feel the need to arm themselves.  (Q13 Fox News)

Judges from Chelan County District Court disagreed with the rulings from Kitsap and King County on how DUI breathalyzer equipment is calibrated and whether it should cause the automatic dismissal of DUI cases.  Earlier this year, a Kitsap District Court judge ruled that since the Washington State Patrol did not calibrate its breathalyzer equipment in accordance with state law, dozens of DUI cases were thrown out. A King County court soon agreed with the Kitsap Court. Yet the Chelan County District judges in Wenatchee ruled the difference between the method described by law and the method used by the WSP was not significant and refused to throw out 30 drunken driving cases.  In their ruling the judges state, “The court is at a loss to conceive of how truncating, rather than rounding, could materially affect a test.”  The State Supreme Court has agreed to hear the appeal of the Kitsap County cases. (Wenatchee World)

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