State lands, schools races too close to call

Two statewide races — for lands commissioner and Washington's top schools official — remained too close to call Wednesday afternoon, suggesting it could be at least another day, and possibly Friday, before the winners are known.

In the race for state lands commissioner, King County voters gave Democrat Peter Goldmark a lead in his bid to unseat Republican state Lands Commissioner Doug Sutherland. As lands commissioner, Sutherland has headed the state Department of Natural Resources for two four-year terms.

The race was one of the most fierce and costly in the state, pitting environmentalists against timber interests in the battle for oversight of 5 million acres of state-owned forest, farmland and aquatic lands. The department also regulates logging on private forests.

Goldmark, an Okanogan County rancher, was guardedly optimistic. He said in every major county, he was running ahead of the targets they needed to win.

He said his growing lead partly reflected the "overwhelming effect" of King County's huge population and his vast lead in the county. Goldmark also was carrying Snohomish, Whatcom, Jefferson, Cowlitz and Okanogan counties.

But Wednesday it was still not clear if his big advantage in those counties would cancel out losses in most other counties around the state.

Sutherland backers remained hopeful other counties would put him in the lead as the final ballots are counted.

Todd Myers, a campaign consultant for Sutherland, said Sutherland appeared to be gaining ground as later-arriving ballots are counted. Even in King County, Goldmark's percentage of the total vote fell slightly, Myers noted.

Sutherland took a slim lead in Spokane County on Wednesday, after trailing there election night. He also leads in Pierce and Thurston counties and most of rural Eastern Washington. More results from King and Pierce counties were expected Wednesday evening.

In the race for the state schools chief, Terry Bergeson was disappointed to be trailing challenger Randy Dorn but was not ready to give up.

Given the number of ballots yet to be counted, "Friday is about the earliest we could make a reasonable decision," said Alex Hays, her campaign consultant.

Dorn is ahead in the statewide tally, with strong leads in large counties such as Snohomish, Pierce and Thurston. He's the executive director of Public School Employees of Washington, a union that represents 26,000 teacher aides, bus drivers, janitors and other school employees.

Dorn also captured a narrow lead in King County on Wednesday afternoon — a place where Bergeson was leading earlier in the day.

Dorn's campaign was confident the overall vote count would continue to go in his favor.

If he wins, it would be a big upset for Bergeson, who has spent three terms in office and hasn't had a tight race since she first ran for the post in 1992 and lost.

This year, Dorn benefited from strong financial support from the parent union of the Public School Employees, the Service Employees International Union. It poured about $400,000 into a political committee that ran ads for Dorn and against Bergeson. Counting that money, Bergeson staffers said, three times the dollars were spent on behalf of Dorn than for Bergeson.

Bergeson sought a fourth term to continue work she's done since the mid-1980s to set new, higher learning standards for students, and to develop tests to judge whether they've reached them. If re-elected, she said, this four-year term would be her last.

As a state representative from 1987 to 1994, Dorn helped write the education law that Bergeson has implemented, but he says she's taken it in directions that he and others never intended. If elected, he pledged to work to get rid of the state test, known as the Washington Assessment of Student Learning or WASL, and replace it with a shorter, less expensive exam.

Warren Cornwall: 206-464-2311 or wcornwall@seattletimes.com and Linda Shaw: 206-464-2359 or lshaw@seattletimes.com.