I hope Burner
runs again in 2008:
U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert campaigned on his willingness to buck his Republican Party.
Monday, he eluded the GOP's nationwide losing streak by apparently beating back a fierce, expensive challenge from Democrat Darcy Burner.
"I am a little surprised it was as tough as it was, because of the inexperience of my opponent," Reichert said. "The national environment played a significantly higher role, and had more of an impact, than I expected it to play."
At least 20,000 ballots remain uncounted, but Reichert has steadily padded his lead since Election Day and held a 4,727-vote margin Monday. The Associated Press, based on voting trends, declared victory for Reichert late Monday.
Burner called Reichert on Monday night to congratulate him and will hold a news conference today in Bellevue, her campaign said.
Burner ran an incredible campaign for a first-timer. If she comes back for the rematch, she'll be that much wiser, more battle-tested, with a more mature network of donors, grassroots activists, and netroots supporters.
Meanwhile, in Ohio, Democratic challenger Mary Jo Kilroy battles on:
Just days after the balloting that left her 3,600 votes away from a seat in Congress, Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy has reactivated her campaign to sniff out a few thousand voters who could hold the key to the election.
Kilroy's campaign called about 70,000 voters last weekend and aired television and radio ads asking people who cast provisional ballots to contact the campaign and county boards of elections to make sure their votes in the 15 th Congressional District are counted.
Kilroy came up 3,536 votes short of toppling Republican Rep. Deborah Pryce of Upper Arlington, but she did not concede the election last week. Kilroy and her supporters think she could win after provisional and absentee votes are counted next week.
Attorneys for groups that had opposed new voter-ID requirements were negotiating with state officials last night on how provisional ballots would be counted. The two sides were to resume talks today in the chambers of U.S. District Judge Algenon L. Marbley.
If the voter was wrongly required to cast a provisional ballot -- for instance, he or she had an old address on an otherwise valid driver's license -- the opponents want that vote counted as a regular ballot. That way, the voters would not have to produce additional documentation to make their votes count.
An attorney for Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell said the two sides had agreed on about "94 percent" of the points.
Slightly more than 10,000 people in the 15 th Congressional District cast provisional ballots, which are required when voters cannot produce identification establishing their residency.
Kilroy's campaign thinks that it will capture the majority of those votes because transient voters tend to favor Democrats -- hence the fresh blast of campaign ads nearly a week after the election.
And in CT-02, the two candidates must have ulcers by now.
The roller coaster recount in the 2nd Congressional District took a sharp turn Monday afternoon when officials in one small eastern Connecticut town discovered an error that had given Democrat Joe Courtney 100 extra votes.
By nightfall, though, Courtney had gained back 40 of those votes due to the discovery of another error in another small town that had inflated the vote totals of his opponent, Republican incumbent Rob Simmons.
Later the same evening, a computation error in yet a third town gave Republicans an additional 31 votes, according to the state party chairman.
The stomach-churning ride is expected to screech to a halt late tonight, when every community in the sprawling, 65-town district will have completed its mandated recount. By law, the municipalities have until midnight Wednesday to report their revised tallies to the secretary of the state's office, but 56 had completed the process by Monday night and the final nine will do so today.
Courtney's lead is currently a razor-thin 82 votes.