UPDATE: Council Race Too Close to Call, But Nixon Still Likely to Unseat Greenway

UPDATE, Nov. 16, 8:30 A.M.: Vote totals released Tuesday night by King County Elections showed very little change in the close race between former state representative Toby Nixon of Kingsgate and Kirkland City Council Position 4 incumbent Jessica Greenway of the Norkirk neighborhood. Greenway picked up 16 votes, and now trails Nixon by 237 votes, with 47.5 percent of Kirkland's 47,873 registered voters counted, and a likely turnout of less than 50 percent.

Another update in the count will be released Wednesday afternoon. Kirkland Patch has already declared incumbents Dave Asher and Bob Steroff the winners of their council races, for Positions 6 and 2 respectively.

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ORIGINAL story:

Former state legislator and challenger Toby Nixon gained votes on Kirkland City Council member Jessica Greenway in the latest counts by King County Elections Monday, reversing a trend in her direction, and now appears on his way toward unseating the incumbent.

Nixon, from the annexation neigborhood of Kingstate, has led narrowly in all the counts since the Nov. 8 general election, but Greenway, a Norkirk area resident, gained votes in the last two counts and had been just 198 votes back in the latest. In the counts released Monday evening, Nixon was ahead by 253 votes, 9,075 to 8,822, with 50.5 percent of the vote to Greenway’s 49.1 percent.

Statistically, Greenway remains undefeated, but the likelihood of overcoming Nixon’s lead for Position 4 now appears slim.

"I'm feeling pretty comfortable that we're done," Nixon said. "But it all depends on how many ballots are left to be counted. If you look at the numbers, we should have about 1,678 ballots left. She'd have to get 57.5 percent of them. I think that's unlikely.

"Right now it looks pretty good."

Greenway was not conceding a thing Monday evening.

"Today's count was not what we'd hoped for, but we're still in the race, still optimistic, and we're in this until the last vote has been counted," she said. "We still think we can win it."

In the other race that remained undecided after last Thursday’s vote totals, Patch is now declaring Position 2 incumbent Bob Sternoff of the Moss Bay neighborhood the winner over newcomer Jason Gardiner from Kingsgate.

In the counts released Monday, Sternoff led Gardiner with 51.6 percent of the votes counted to 47.7 percent, or 9,018 votes to 8,380 -- a lead of 638 votes.

“I am not declaring victory yet,” Sternoff said. “I have not gotten a call, nor a smoke signal, nor a flaming arrow, from my opponent. Right now we’re just waiting.”

Patch has a call into Gardiner and will update this story when he responds.

Patch declared Position 6 incumbent Dave Asher of Rose Hill the winner last week of his race against James Hart of the Lakeview neighborhood, who ended his campaign early due to family health issues. On Monday, Asher had captured 65.5 percent of the votes counted to Hart’s 34 percent.