Kristin Flickinger, Karol Collymore, Roey Thorpe
As The Skanner News went to press, an exciting election night of close shaves and interesting victories played out in Oregon as a few promising young contenders stepped ahead of older hands.
In the governor's race the November ballot will pit former Gov. John Kitzhaber against former pro basketball player Chris Dudley, who wiped up the floor with his contenders in the Republican field.
Newly-appointed Multnomah County Chair Jeff Cogen stomped his competition for an outright win for the seat; City Commission incumbents Nick Fish and Dan Saltzman will also keep their seats without November races.
City Commissioner District 2 looks like a November contest between Karol Collymore (with 33.72 percent of votes in a very crowded field) and Loretta Smith (18.26 percent). Tom Markgraf was a close third with 14.38 percent of votes cast at presstime.
Metro Council President was also tight, with Bob Stacey pulling ahead of Tom Hughes and Rex Burkholder trailing Hughes by just 2 percentage points
Maria Rubio and her campaign manager, Kevin Easton
Shirley Craddick was at 49 percent in the Metro Councilor 1st District race, dangling on the edge of a possible runoff with Duke Shepard.
In the U.S. Senate and Congress races, every incumbent – they were all Democrats -- effortlessly outpaced all comers. However Reps. David Wu and Kurt Schrader won their primaries with low vote counts overall, leaving open the possibility of strong Republican challenges in November.
Oregon State Treasurer Ted Wheeler, newly appointed to the job from his old post as Multnomah County chair, was burying contender Rick Metsger by a 3 to 1 margin. He'll be facing Republican Chris Telfer, who ran unopposed in the primary.
In the Republican governor's primary, Dudley looked to have almost twice as many votes as the second closest candidate, Pixelworks founder Allen Alley.
The race for state schools superintendent showed incumbent Susan Castillo leading Ron Maurer by a 16,000 vote spread.
Voter turnout overall in Multnomah County reached above 30 percent of registered voters, with 125,495 votes cast out of 404,566 total registered voters.
