Sarah Perry, a former Seattle University executive, has won a seat on the Metropolitan King County Council, ousting longtime incumbent Kathy Lambert.
Perry led with more than 55% of the vote after Thursday’s count, in the district representing the suburban and rural northeast corner of the county.
The percentages have barely budged since Tuesday, even as thousands more ballots have been counted. The Seattle Times called the race for Perry on Thursday afternoon.
Lambert’s campaign was upended last month when a political mailer she sent out was widely condemned as racist, including by a majority of her colleagues on the council. She initially defended the mailer, made by a national Republican consulting firm, before apologizing and being stripped of her committee chairmanships as her endorsers fled.
Lambert has rarely drawn serious challengers since first winning her seat in 2001, but this year she was out-fundraised by Perry.
County Council seats are technically nonpartisan, but Perry is a Democrat and Lambert a Republican. The results mean the council will shift further left, from a 6-3 Democratic majority to 7-2.
Perry campaigned heavily on transportation and the environment, saying she’d work to improve public transit in the largely suburban and rural Council District 3, which stretches from Redmond and Sammamish to the Cascades.