News - Local News

POSTED: Wednesday, Nov. 04, 2009

County Council race between McShane, Kershner still close

The Whatcom County Council race between Dan McShane and Kathy Kershner was still too close to call in the second day of vote tallying by the Auditor's Office.

And Bellingham City Council candidate Catherine Chambers has conceded to opponent Michael Lilliquist, who had a 13 percentage point victory margin.

Wednesday's vote count didn't change the leaders in any of the four County Council races. All candidates winning Tuesday, Nov. 3, were still winning the next day. Just 2,911 more ballots were counted the day after the election due to the cumbersome process of reviewing each ballot to ensure it was legitimate and could be read by the machines.

McShane was leading with 50.8 percent of the vote to Kershner's 49.2 percent. It was a difference of just 630 votes.

The progressive Democrat did increase his lead by 73 votes from the Election Day vote count.

"It's better than the other direction," McShane said of his small lead increase. "I guess I could say I'm feeling a little more optimistic now. I know there was a lot of hard work done toward the end by a lot of folks in the (Democratic Party), so that might have helped."

Kershner couldn't be reached for comment by the newspaper's deadline.

McShane acknowledged that it's still too close for "a big, real definitive for sure."

"I can't say I feel real great about it," he said.

The 51-year-old said that his initial focus, if elected, would be the 8,000-acre land swap between the state Department of Natural Resources and Whatcom County in the Lake Whatcom watershed.

In Bellingham, Chambers congratulated Lilliquist in a written statement, saying she looked forward to his "sharp insight as a city councilman."

Lilliquist couldn't be reached for comment by deadline.

Meanwhile, other County Council races were trending the same as election night.

District 2 candidate Ken Mann was defeating Mary Beth Teigrob 54 percent to 46 percent.

District 3 Councilman Carl Weimer was still triumphing over Michelle Luke 52 percent to 48 percent.

For the At-Large seat, Councilwoman Laurie Caskey-Schreiber has already conceded to Bill Knutzen, who had 52 percent of the vote.