From the primary election, the bad news:
Darcy Burner: 46,144 votes (44.84 percent)
Dave Reichert: 49,325 votes (47.93 percent)
This is a deficit of 3181 votes. That works out to 3.33 percent of the total votes shared between the two candidates, or, to put it another way, 48.33 percent for Burner and 51.67 for Reichert.
However, these were not the only two candidates competing to represent Washington’s 8th Congressional District. There were four others. I have crunched the numbers from the primary, and, in order to surpass Republican incumbent Rep. Dave Reichert in overall votes, Democratic challenger Darcy Burner would have had to acquire a daunting 71.36 percent of all the other votes cast in this election.
To put that in perspective, these other votes amounted to 7.23 percent of all votes cast in this contest. There were four other candidates in all, two Democrats and two who stated no party preference. Let’s compare the ideology of these four candidates to that of Burner and Reichert to see how likely it is that their supporters will vote again in November, and for whom.
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John Orlinski stated no party preference. He received 1014 votes, 0.99 percent of the total. He is an immigrant from Poland and lists people like Ron Paul and Lou Dobbs as his supporters. (Ron Paul is the right-wing anti-government nutcase who ran for president this year on the Republican side. Lou Dobbs is a television personality in economics known for his virulent xenophobia.) He opposes the Iraq war. He wants companies to bear the burden of expanding healthcare coverage. He seems center-left on the contentious social issues. He has a liberal economic bent, desiring to benefit workers everywhere with luxuries such as mandatory paid vacation, and college students with tax exemptions. He favors additional federal laws and regulation of the private sector. He is at odds with the doctrine of immediate profits practiced by controlling shareholders and businesspeople in the financial sector. He is very opposed to illegal immigration. He favors environmental policies.
From these positions, I think it is a fair bet that most of the people who voted for him who would be willing to vote for either Reichert or Burner will break for Burner. Except for illegal immigration, Orlinski and Burner share a generally agreeable political ideology. My assumption, therefore, is that 25 percent of his voters will abstain from voting in the next race, while another 60 percent will vote for Burner, leaving 15 percent to vote for Reichert. Let’s add 608 votes to Burner’s column and 152 to Reichert’s.
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Richard Todd also stated no party preference. He received 1492 votes, 1.45 percent of the total. Apparently a laissez-faire capitalist to the extreme, Todd is against government spending in general, and prefers individual accomplishment as a means for citizens to achieve things like healthcare and economic security. He wants to privatize education in America. He is hawkish on foreign policy, but not necessarily a warmonger in the neoconservative mold. On social issues he seems less passionate, but, notably, he opposes embryonic stem cell research, and advocates for what he calls the "religious center," which he describes as an electorally more viable successor to the Religious Right. His decision to run as an independent seems motivated more out of a desire to break two-party rule for its own sake than a doctrinaire conflict with both major parties; his stances are generally compatible with those of the Republicans.
Based upon this, I read Todd’s supporters as slightly less likely than Orlinski’s to vote in the general, but I think those who do are likely to break even more heavily for Reichert than Orlinski’s did for Burner. I am going to predict that 30 percent of his voters will abstain from this race in the general election, while 65 percent will hold their noses and file into Reichert’s column, leaving 5 percent for Burner. Let’s add 970 votes for Reichert, and 75 bizarre votes for Burner.
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James Vaughn came in third in the primary, winning 3568 votes or 3.47 percent of the total. Vaughn ran not merely as a Democrat, but as a conservative Blue Dog Democrat, and we all know how significant that is. In Washington State, this by itself may be enough to damn Burner’s chances at winning the general election. Simply put, there are just not many conservative Democrats in Washington. Most of our state’s conservatives vote Republican, or Libertarian. James Vaughn might have been able to win over some of those right-leaning voters to the Democratic Party, but the liberal Darcy Burner wouldn’t stand a chance.
Vaughn is pro-business, fiscally conservative, and socially center-left or what we would call "moderate," were that word not presently being co-opted to refer to the vestigial fringe of non-lunatic Republicans. Most who voted for him will probably go on to vote in the general. Of these, I think the split between Burner and Reichert will be pretty even. Let’s assume that she gets the edge, simply because Vaughn is a Democrat, after all. I would estimate that 15 percent of his voters will abstain, 45 percent will go to Burner, and 40 percent will go to Reichert. Thus, we add 1606 votes for Burner, and 1427 for Reichert.
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Last is Democrat Keith Arnold. He won 1371 votes, or 1.33 percent of the total. He’s a hardline liberal who is very upset with the Bush administration’s misrule of America. I hate to shortchange his description, but ideologically he is quite similar to Burner. Most of his voters will go on to the general, and all of these will vote for Burner. Let’s say that 90 percent vote for him, in which case we can add 1234 votes for Burner.
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Let’s add up those totals. If you recall at the beginning I said that Darcy Burner would have needed to win 71.36 percent of all the votes cast for the four second-tier candidates in order to edge Reichert. Sadly, but not surprisingly, she wouldn’t have been able to do it. Adding it all in, my guesswork suggests that Burner would have gotten 49,667 votes, or 48.9 percent of the total, while Reichert would have gotten 51,874, or 51.1 percent.
That is a deficit of 2207 votes. This is the margin of votes by which, to the extent my guesswork is valid, Darcy Burner will need to find in the general election. Can she do it? I don’t know. Honestly, I am feeling very pessimistic about it. If this were any other year, I would say she’s going to lose unless she pulls a rabbit out of her hat in the next couple of months. However, with Obama running for president this year, he may help people down the ticket—especially by attracting those unreliable young voters who are more willing to be troubled to vote in a general election, i.e., "THE election," than in a primary.
Realistically, the odds are against Burner succeeding. If she does win, it will only be by hundreds of votes or even dozens, whereas if Reichert were to enjoy a similar degree of good fortune he would win by several thousand votes. Everything points to a close Burner loss...just like 2006.
The 8th District wants change, but Reichert has a maddeningly good brand. National observers would point to his party-line voting record, yet people who actually live in the 8th are more interested in his image of moderateness and also in his career in law enforcement.
Burner is an excellent candidate. She is one of us. She would make a fine United States Representative. Alas, it looks as though she won’t be able to pull it off. Despite all we have already done to help her win, it has not been enough. If we want to send her to the other Washington next year, now is the time for her supporters to hit the streets on her behalf, empty their piggy banks, and do whatever else they can to excite and convince Washingtonians in the 8th to send Darcy Burner to Congress.
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(Note: All vote counts cited in this article were current as of the afternoon of Aug. 21, 2008. The actual vote totals will change, as Washington votes primarily by absentee ballot and counts any valid ballot so long as it is postmarked by election day—meaning that ballots will trickle in for days after the election. However, at this point most ballots have been counted and the ratios should remain similar even though the numbers will change.)