Fleetwood
Smith
The County Councilman has 83 percent of the vote to Smith’s 17 percent so far, according to second-day vote returns. Wednesday, Nov. 4 was the first day that Smith’s write-in votes were counted.
Fleetwood wins Bellingham City Council seat
November 4th, 2009 7 PM PST by - The Bellingham Herald
With 68 percent of the write-in votes counted, conservative write-in candidate Orphalee Smith will not surpass Whatcom County Councilman Seth Fleetwood’s lead in the Bellingham City Council At-Large seat race.
Fleetwood is winning the race with 9,889 votes to Smith’s 2,061, showing that despite a large money advantage for Smith late in the game, having your name on the ballot likely is a big factor for some votes.
November 4th, 2009 at 9:44 PM
My compliments to Orphalee, for promoting a debate about the issues, and my compliments to Mr. Fleetwood, for his victory.
November 5th, 2009 at 8:35 AM
You don’t promote debate by entering a race through the back door.
Especially when you don’t take part in any debate or address any issues.
November 5th, 2009 at 10:54 AM
Citizen, if you remember at the start of this race there were two candidates for this seat, then one dropped out and backed Fleetwood. One of Orphalee’s reasons for mounting a write-in campaign was to at least provide some semblance of choice in this race. Also, Orphalee did take part in debates and address issues. Her and Fleetwood were both on KGMI and she did an AWESOME job in my opinion in her answers to the questionaire posted by the Tea Party group that Seth did not provides answers to. Check out the Bellingham City Council questonaire at the following link. http://bhamteaparty.blogspot.com/2009/07/local-candidates-our-questions-their.html
If anything it seemed like Seth Fleetwood checked out this election cycle and assumed he could cruise to victory as the only candidate listed. Ok, so he was correct about that.
November 5th, 2009 at 11:30 AM
Mounting a write in campaign takes a lot of guts (with the odds being what they are), and if you ever get the opportunity to meet and speak with Orphalee you will soon find out that is not something she is short on.
It was a pleasure to be able to say I worked along side her (for some moments in this campaign) and I know to the tip of me toes that, that women in her life has made a difference and will continue to do so!
AFY!!thesheepdog!!!
November 5th, 2009 at 12:28 PM
I do think it’s important for people who intend to represent the people to follow the most basic rules of our system. They need to file to run for office.
Then there can be a real debate! Yay!
I don’t think Seth checked out, he simply didn’t have a viable, real opponent. A write-in is just not a real candidate.
The one who filed, then dropped out, was from the Salmon Yoga party. It’s possible - I’m going out on a limb here - that Orphalee had views that differed from the Salmon Yoga party. She should have filed in a timely fashion in order to run for office.
November 5th, 2009 at 12:36 PM
Suzie - you’re mixing up two elections. Timothy Stoddard sought the state Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Harriet Spanel in 2008 under the Salmon Yoga Party banner. He’s from Mount Vernon.
Fleetwood initially was vying for the seat against local poet Yoshe Revelle, who is quite liberal, but in the past ran as a Republican in a challenge against state Rep. Dave Quall, D-Mount Vernon.
Revelle dropped out of the City Council race to focus on volunteering. Here’s my blog post from June 10:
http://blogs.bellinghamherald.com/politics/bellingham/breaking-yoshe-revelle-drops-out-of-city-council-race/
November 5th, 2009 at 12:55 PM
Mounting a write-in campaign takes guts,
but it’s too little too late to be taken seriously and most voters won’t be bothered to add you to the ballot no matter how brave you are.
Congrats to you! if you saw any substantive answers to the issues in a public forum.
I never did.
November 5th, 2009 at 2:59 PM
Sam - I thought when Yoshe announced he also mentioned the Salmon Yoga party? No?
November 5th, 2009 at 3:29 PM
I don’t recall that, Suzie. I checked my records and notes and can’t find a reference.
November 5th, 2009 at 7:30 PM
$20K just doesn’t buy what it used to . . . .