Kinzer, Handy race coming down to the wire

Whitman County Commissioner Dean Kinzer was in an all-out battle Tuesday in his bid for a third term as the commission’s District 2 representative.

Initial election night results showed Kinzer trailing challenger Tom Handy by 63 votes, or less than 0.5 percent.

“It looks like it’s going to go down to the wire,” he said, shortly after the vote was posted around 9:50 p.m.

Kinzer received 6,683 votes, or 49.49 percent. Handy, the owner of Paradise Creek Brewery, received 6,746 votes, or 49.96 percent.

“It’s amazingly close,” Handy said. “I looked at the precincts, and was happy with Pullman. But everywhere else it was like I didn’t exist.”

The Whitman County Elections Office estimates that 3,000 mail-in ballots remain to be counted. The next count is scheduled to take place Thursday evening. Whitman County Auditor Sandy Jamison said the elections office didn’t have any technical problems. The reason the results were posted relatively late was simply because they had so many ballots to count.

Nearly 15,000 ballots were counted Tuesday evening, or about 60 percent of the total number of registered voters in the county.

“That was probably the highest number of ballots I’ve see us download at one time,” Jamison said.

Commissioner Art Swannack, the District 1 representative, was unopposed in his bid for a third term.

The election results won’t be officially certified by the county until Nov. 24. Overall results will be certified by the Washington Secretary of State’s Office on Dec. 3.

Spence may be contacted at bspence@lmtribune.com or (208) 791-9168.