Absentees may decide mayor race in Seattle

Associated Press

SEATTLE — The identity of Seattle’s next mayor won’t be known until Friday at the earliest, elections officials said Wednesday.

In the meantime, King County councilman Greg Nickels held 54 percent of the vote to Seattle City Attorney Mark Sidran’s 46 percent. Sidran was hoping for a repeat of the September primary, when absentee ballots lifted him to a last-minute victory.

Sidran has performed strongly among the absentees counted so far, but those were early absentee ballots, which tend to be more conservative, said Julie Anne Kempf, King County’s elections superintendent.

"That’s not necessarily an indicator of how he’ll do in the later absentees," she said.

Nickels said he remained confident, but refrained from celebrating.

A partial tally of absentees received Tuesday, Wednesday and today was to be announced Friday afternoon. The ballots had to be postmarked by election day.

When most of the early absentees and polling-place primary election ballots had been tallied on Sept. 18, Nickels led by just over 1,000 votes. The rest of the absentees pushed Sidran over the top by 400 votes.

The primary was a three-man race in which incumbent Mayor Paul Schell finished third, becoming the first Seattle mayor voted out of office since 1956.

This time, with more votes cast and just two candidates, Nickels leads by about 7,200. A projected 90,000 votes remained to be counted.

"These next few days will be nerve-racking to say the least," Sidran said Wednesday.

Schell’s term was marred by World Trade Organization and Mardi Gras riots and Boeing’s decision to move its headquarters to Chicago.

The general election pitted a traditional, consensus-building, Seattle-style politician — Nickels — against a candidate who promised to make tough, unpopular decisions when needed. It was also a referendum on light rail as a solution to the region’s traffic woes, as Sidran strongly criticized Nickels’ work with Sound Transit.

As such a referendum, it’s provided no answers so far.

"We’ve got to wait till Friday," said David Olson, a University of Washington political science professor. "That makes it very difficult to talk about in a meaningful way."