PORT ANGELES — Clallam County Prosecuting Attorney Deb Kelly held a healthy margin over challenger Larry Freedman Tuesday night, receiving 52.74 percent of the vote.
Port Angeles Republican Kelly, 57, who is seeking a third four-year term to the $121,877-per-year position, had 9,494 votes to the 8,508 votes, or 47.26 percent, won by Sequim attorney Freedman, a Democrat.
A total of 18,889 ballots in the all mail-in election were counted Tuesday night. All of those ballots had been received by Friday night.
The Auditor’s Office had 8,531 uncounted ballots on hand. Auditor Patty Rosand said that she expects to receive about 5,000 more properly postmarked ballots today and will count more ballots by 4:30 this afternoon.
“I’m very appreciative of the voters,” Kelly said. “We tried to run a positive campaign.”
She said that she felt the results would hold up over the next few days as more ballots are counted.
“I think that is a good, strong number,” she said.
“It was a very negative campaign on [Freedman’s] part.
“I’m glad to see that the voters could see through that.”
Freedman said that with about 13,000 ballots left, he wasn’t ready to call the race.
“She is leading by a little bit — close to 4 points — but there are still almost half the votes left to be counted,” he said.
“It is an uphill battle, but we’ll keep on with it until all the votes are counted.”
The prosecuting attorney candidates extensively debated conviction rates and office management throughout the election.
Kelly said she had a 91 percent conviction rate based on information from the Office of the Administrator for Washington Courts.
Freedman said that Kelly’s rate of conviction on an original charge was 39 percent, with 37 percent convicted on a lesser charge and 24 percent acquitted based on data he analyzed himself.
The two also sparred over Kelly’s management of the office, with Freedman saying Kelly’s management had caused 27 people to leave the 21-person staff in the past four years.
The county prosecuting attorney budget is $1.64 million in 2010, which covers 24 employees.
The Auditor’s Office had received 27,152 ballots, or 60.13 percent, out of the 45,852 mailed by Tuesday night.
Tuesday’s ballot count included one over vote, which is when a person votes for more than one person, and 886 under votes, which means the voter didn’t select either candidate.
The election will be certified at 11 a.m. Tuesday, Nov. 23.
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Reporter Paige Dickerson can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at paige.dickerson@peninsuladailynews.com.
