Tight race for second spot in auditor candidate chase for spot on general election ballot

By Dan Hammock • August 7, 2018 8:45 pm

Republican candidate for Grays Harbor County auditor Joe MacLean has a significant lead over his two Democrat opponents, with 5,264 votes to Chris Thomas’s 3,482 and Jasmine Dickhoff’s 3,402 in early returns from the Aug. 7 primary election.

With 12,148 votes counted so far, this gives MacLean 43.33 percent, Thomas, who was selected by the Democratic Party to fill the position after Vern Spatz retired, 28.66 percent, and Dickhoff 28 percent of the vote.

The top two will advance to the general election ballot in November.

The two candidates in the chase for county clerk are running a tight race. Kym Foster, a Democrat, holds an edge of 6,053 votes to non-partisan challenger Janice Louthan’s 5,273, 53.44 percent to 46.56 percent of the 11,326 votes cast so far respectively.

In other countywide races, only one candidate filed for each office, including Vickie Raines for county commissioner, Dan Lindgren for assessor, Robert Kegel for coroner, Katie Svoboda for prosecutor, Rick Scott for sheriff and Ken Albert for treasurer.

Levies and sales tax measures

The voters in Elma are so far passing the city’s levy to partially fund police services in 2019 through a $175,000 excess property tax at a rate of $0.72 per $1,000 of assessed value. After the first count, 329 yes votes and 157 no votes have been counted, 67.7 percent in favor, 32.3 percent against of 486 votes tabulated.

Ocean Shores voters are split pretty evenly meanwhile on the sales and use tax for transportation improvements measure, with 974 yes votes to 896 no votes, 52.09 percent in favor and 47.91 percent against of the 1,870 votes cast so far.

The South Beach Regional Fire Authority’s excess levy measure is passing pretty handily in the early going. As of 8 p.m. Tuesday 535 yes votes had been tallied to 342 against, 61 percent in favor, 39 percent against in the total of 877 votes so far.

The emergency levy for Fire District 2 is gaining wide support so far, with 1,147 votes in favor, or 79.21 percent, to 301 no votes, 20.79 percent of the total 1,448 votes counted Tuesday. This levy is basically a continuation of the $0.50 per $1,000 assessed value property tax levy passed by area voters two years ago.