Lawmaker's Write-In Campaign Falls Far Short

Capitol Currents:

Earlier this month I wrote about how GOP state representative Matt Wand was trying to win both the Republican and Democratic nomination in his east Multnomah County district. Wand was encouraging Democrats to write his name in on their primary ballot. If enough people did so, Wand would effectively seal his re-election without ever going head-to-head against Democrat Chris Gorsek. It appears as though Wand's quest fell far short. According to the unofficial election results from the Oregon Secretary of State, there were just 88 write-in votes on the Democratic ballot in HD-49. We won't know for a few weeks just what those names are. But needless to say, even if every last one of them is "Matt Wand" it would be far less than the vote total for Gorsek--which currently stands at 2,326.In fact, Gorsek's Democratic primary total far exceeds Wand's Republican primary total, which is currently 1,806. You can't really predict a general election outcome based on the number of votes in an unopposed primary (more Democrats may have voted due to the contested Attorney General's race further up the ticket, whereas the GOP had a dearth of contested races elsewhere on the ballot). But registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans in HD-49 by nearly 5,000 voters. And Wand surely knows that the district is not safe for incumbents. He was first elected to the Oregon House in 2010, ousting then-representative Nick Kahl, a Democrat.

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