EVERETT — Even though Mayor Frank Anderson trails Ray Stephanson by only 195 votes in Tuesday’s election, and several thousand votes are still left to tally today, a Herald analysis shows that the only way Anderson can win is if several key voting trends are reversed.
The Snohomish County Auditor’s Office is scheduled to count up to 30,000 absentee ballots this afternoon. An estimated 4,000 will be from Everett.
Of the ballots counted in the general election Tuesday, Stephanson did best in areas along the north waterfront and off Mukilteo Boulevard, where voter turnout was much higher than in other parts of the city.
Anderson’s strength was in south Everett, where turnout was generally lower than in Stephanson’s strongholds.
For example, Stephanson carried a northwest Everett precinct that includes many expensive view properties by a nearly 2-to-1 margin. Turnout was a muscular 53 percent; 251 votes were cast overall.
Anderson won a precinct off Casino Road by a 3-to-2 margin. But turnout in that precinct, which includes apartment complexes with below-average incomes, was only 15 percent. Only 47 votes were cast there.
Turnout citywide was 28 percent, not counting the remaining absentee ballots.
Overall, Stephanson owed his election night lead to a stronger performance than Anderson north of Casino Road. He led there by 245 votes. Anderson narrowed the gap to 195, however, by snaring 50 more votes than the challenger in south Everett.
County Auditor Bob Terwilliger said The Herald’s findings "suggest that Stephanson is in good shape. Statistically, they would logically suggest that by the end of the day (today), we’ll see a wider spread between Stephanson and Anderson."
Terwilliger said one of the only ways that that wouldn’t occur is if the Anderson campaign had been more effective in reaching last-minute voters. Anderson had only one mailing in the last week of the campaign. Stephanson had three.
There is no way to know exactly how many absentee votes for mayor are left to be counted and where those ballots were cast. But Terwilliger said "logic tells me" that higher-income voters are more likely to vote absentee than lower-income voters — another advantage for Stephanson.
As of Tuesday, Stephanson had a 243-vote lead among absentee voters, compared with his 195-vote margin overall.
Mary Hale, co-chairwoman of Anderson’s campaign, said that actually could be heartening news for Anderson, because it shows that Stephanson did better among voters who made their decision early than among those who made up their minds in the last day or two. The absentee ballots to be counted today were those that didn’t arrive in the auditor’s office by Tuesday morning.
As of Tuesday, Stephanson was leading Anderson 5,817 votes to 5,622. There could be 4,000 votes left to count, county elections manager Carolyn Diepenbrock said.
Don Hale, the co-chairman of Anderson’s campaign, attributed the closeness of the race in large part to Stephanson’s barrage of mailings, most of which were highly critical of the mayor. The Stephanson campaign did 11 mailings. Anderson did only five.
Those mailings, as well as phone calls and home visits by volunteers, were key to Stephanson’s strategy, said Lisa MacLean, Stephanson’s political consultant.
"That was critically important," she said. "You need to contact an undecided voter at least seven times to even get that voter to remember a candidate’s name."
Stephanson’s campaign manager, Deborah Wright, said the many mailings helped counter Anderson’s built-in advantage of being an incumbent.
"It’s really hard to run against an incumbent," she said. "He’s got all that exposure and publicity."
Like Anderson’s campaign, Stephanson sent the most mailings to those who had voted most often in the past.
Stephanson could afford the extra mailings. According to the latest reports filed with the state Public Disclosure Commission, Stephanson raised almost twice as much money as Anderson, $185,441 vs. $95,335.
"He had a ton of money, a lot of special-interest money," Don Hale said, referring to thousands of dollars that developers contributed to the Stephanson campaign.
According to the PDC, Stephanson’s top contributors were the Bellevue-based Master Builders Association of King and Snohomish Counties, which gave him $6,000, and Everett-based Pacific Rim Development, which contributed $5,000. In addition, Henry, John and Martin Robinett contributed a total of $6,000 either through personal checks or through their Everett real-estate companies.
Although Anderson didn’t receive as much money from developers as Stephanson, he received $622.35 from Skotdal Real Estate and a combined $11,000 from four members of the Skotdal family. His third-largest single contributor was another developer, Larry Hillis, who gave him $2,000.
Anderson’s top donors were two unions, the Washington State Council of County and City Employees, which gave $5,300, and Everett Firefighters Local 46, which gave $5,000. The firefighters’ local also made $3,250 in in-kind contributions, and individual firefighters wrote personal checks for at least $1,900 more.
Reporter David Olson: 425-339-3452 or dolson@heraldnet.com.
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