by David Mendez

Election night’s early vote returns show that two of the three State Legislative races representing Shoreline are still too close to call. Meanwhile, Proposition 1, the funding mechanism that would allow the city to build a new pool center, may be sunk.

Early returns show voters rejecting Prop. 1, 55.04% against the proposition versus 44.96% votes in favor. So far, Shoreline has seen a 38.52% turnout of its 42,268 total registered voters. If Prop. 1 hopes to overcome the current gap, it would need to win about 53% of remaining ballots — but that’s if every registered voter in Shoreline were to cast a ballot.

Proposition 1 seeks to create a Metropolitan Pool District, a special tax district that would have financed $100 million to design and build a new pool on city-controlled land just north of City Hall. Supporters believe that the city needs to replace the long-demolished Shoreline Pool with a new facility that can be a cornerstone of a new civic district. Opponents believed that residents just can’t afford the property tax increase that would pay for the pool, much less any other parks or facilities that might follow it.

At an election night watch party, Councilmember Chris Roberts told The Osprey that Shoreline voters just might not see the pool as a valuable enough asset.

“I would say that the people of Shoreline might prefer that the council focus on basic issues — fixing potholes and making sure there are sidewalks on the streets, rather than building new infrastructure,” Roberts, a Prop. 1 supporter, said of the early results. “It seems like the voters want to make sure that we’re providing good services to the Shoreline community.”

Roberts has had a front row seat to the Shoreline pool saga since he was elected to the Shoreline City Council in 2009. He was there as the city poured money into the old pool to keep it operational, and as the city asked voters for a bond to build a new pool, and as the city figured out how to move forward after voters defeated the bond and as the old pool was finaly closed down during COVID-era lockdowns. He thinks this might be the city’s last bite at this particular apple.

“I’m not ready to concede,” Roberts said, noting that this was just the first night of results. “But…if the measure fails, I do not think that we’re going to have another opportunity, in the near future, to go out for a pool.”

As for Shoreline’s representatives at the Washington State Legislature, two of the three races were very close as of Tuesday night. The other, for Legislative District 32’s House Position 2, already has a likely winner. Incumbent Rep. Lauren Davis has a substantial lead with 73.32% of the vote against challenger Imraan Siddiqi, with 24.97%. Davis also triumphed in the August primary election, finishing with 75.3% of the vote to Siddiqi’s 22.3%.

In the race to hold Legislative District 32’s House Position 1, former SEC anti-monopoly attorney Danica Noble (50.08% of the vote) leads the race to hold LD 32’s House Position 1, outpacing Shoreline City Councilmember Keith Scully (48.10%) by 766 votes.

“Right now, I don’t feel more confident than before I saw any of the numbers,” Noble told The Osprey at her election night party in Mountlake Terrace’s Hemlock State Brewing Co. “Like, this race is still too close to call.”

Noble attributed much of her campaign’s success to the groups she was able to draw together, from mothers concerned about artificial intelligence and education, to college students, to senior citizens, all of whom hit sidewalks and rang doorbells in support.

Running an effective campaign, she said, takes a vastly different skill set than being an effective legislator. But knocking on 14,000 doors across the district and talking to thousands of neighbors has been invaluable.

“To be in these communities, to knock on those doors, to talk to that many people…it is essential to be a good representative, I’m sure of that,” Noble said.

Noble and Scully both were very complimentary of one another throughout the campaign, and the two seem to respect one another a great deal. (“I think either of us would make a good legislator,” Noble said.)

But Noble has vowed, whether or not she ultimately wins the race, to work on AI and monopolies — a stance that crystalized earlier on Tuesday, when search and tech giant Google posted new plans for tools it offers to schools.

“Google announced that, for any school that doesn’t affirmatively opt into their suite of AI, they will cut off their research access. That’s a monopoly leveraging its monopoly to coerce a group to do something it doesn’t want to do. Google has twice been declared by a federal judge to be a monopolist,” Noble said. “What that meant to me is that, in or out of the legislature, I’m working on this.”

In the Legislative District 32 Senate race, outgoing House legislator Cindy Ryu, with 49.57% of the vote, has a 352 ballot lead over incumbent Senator Jesse Salomon (48.68%).

At her watch party, Ryu told The Osprey during her election night party at Jersey’s Bar & Grill in Shoreline that she was feeling nervous for the first time since her election to the State House in 2009.

“Well, I wasn’t until about 20 minutes ago,” Ryu laughed.

The race between the two Democrats has been contentious since Ryu threw her hat into the ring to challenge Salomon, who Ryu said has been incommunicative with constituents and indifferent to allies in the House. Though Salomon dismissed her attacks during the primary campaign, Ryu finished that election with a 513 vote lead over the incumbent.

During the general election campaign, Salomon turned up the heat, accusing Ryu of legislative votes seeking to legalize narcotics and weaken public safety. This time, Ryu ignored Salomon’s attacks — though the barrage of attack mailers sent from Salomon’s campaign, as well as from PACs supporting him, were hard to miss.

“I mean, they were so bad, right? They made it so incredible that no one, I think, paid attention to them,” Ryu said. “I don’t think I really did anything that bad to deserve that kind of rancor but they must have felt desperate if they’re willing to spend that kind of money against me. I kind of feel like I arrived, I must mean something!”

So, despite the nerves — and the “hit pieces,” as she called them — Ryu was feeling confident. Her time canvassing voters and knocking on doors was spent seeking out unidentified and independent voters, to see if she could draw them to her brand of progressivism.

“About 20% were Republicans that would never vote Democrat, whether for me or Jesse,” she said, while the other 80% were “very concerned about Trump, very concerned about their neighbors and themselves and the homeless, about people losing their benefits and going without, or becoming homeless. Based on those conversations, I am confident.”