Republican Snohomish County Councilman Gary Nelson was edging Democratic challenger D.J. Wilson in the race for the District 3 seat on the council, bucking the trend that the area has seen of putting Democrats in office.
If ballots continue to fall Nelson’s way, Republicans will keep their three-vote majority on the five-member council.
Nelson has served on the council for eight years, and it looks like he will return for a third term. Wilson, an economics teacher at Edmonds Community College, was being defeated in his second try at elected office. He ran unsuccessfully for a 21st Legislative District seat in the state House in 2001.
The candidates were waiting Tuesday night for more votes to be counted before saying the race was over. Wilson said he didn’t expect a winner to be known until later in the week.
“I think this reflects what we’ve been planning on, that it was going to be close,” Wilson said. “Gary’s been in office a long time, and it takes a heck of a campaign to get this close.”
Different issues may have meant voters went to the polls for different reasons, Nelson said. In Edmonds, the big issue was the Brightwater sewage treatment plant. But in Lynnwood, it was transportation, and in the south Everett area of District 3, it was jobs and the economy.
If Nelson wins, he will be the only Republican elected to office in his district’s area. Nelson said all nine elected officials from the 1st, 21st and 32nd legislative districts included in his area are all Democrats.
But Nelson said the County Council hasn’t been working along party lines.
“We’ve basically not had a partisan-orientated County Council,” he said. “I don’t intend that it will be in the future.”
Nelson’s margin was thin early in terms of the vote count, but roughly maintained its 52-48 percentage as votes trickled in. Nelson said he wasn’t concerned early on, citing what he said was a campaign by pro-labor, Democratic-leading Initiative 841 opponents to get out the vote among the early absentees.
Wilson campaigned on the theme of change, while Nelson highlighted his more than 30 years of public service for Snohomish County residents.
In the final days of the election, both sides bickered about who did more to fight Brightwater, with each side sending out numerous mailers to voters that claimed the other guy in the race hadn’t done enough to prevent King County from putting its new wastewater treatment plant in Snohomish County.
Wilson said he thought some of the pamphlets that recently landed in mailboxes may have inspired voters to go to the polls.
“I think the mail that came over the weekend is going to move some voters, because it was so negative,” Wilson said.
Wilson wasn’t ready to concede as of Wednesday morning, estimating that as many as 16,000 more votes could come in.
“I’m always the optimist,” he said.
Wilson attributed his strong showing to hard work on the campaign by himself and volunteers. He said he knocked on 16,000 doors, his volunteers 8,000, and said they made 18,000 phone calls.
In the other race for a County Council seat, Democrat Kirke Sievers ran unopposed for the District 2 position.
Edmonds Enterprise Editor Bill Sheets contributed to this story.
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