SAN FRANCISCO -Washington's assistant state treasurer, Allan Martin, will face lawmaker Jim McIntire this November in the race for the treasurer's office.
The winner will succeed Michael J. Murphy.
Martin led in early voting with more than 44% of the vote. McIntire received 40.6% in the "top two" primary, which sends the top two finishers to the November general election regardless of party affiliation.
| Allan Martin |
The general election will pit Republican Martin against Democrat McIntire.Murphy, a Democrat, is endorsing his Republican deputy. Murphy is retiring after serving three four-year terms. He is known for his steadfast support of selling bonds on a competitive basis.
Third-place finisher ChangMook Sohn, the longtime executive director of the Washington Economic and Revenue Forecast Council, was eliminated from contention.
Tuesday marked the first deployment of Washington's "top two" primary system, created as a way to keep an open primary system after courts overturned the state's previous blanket primary, which allowed all voters to participate in each party's primary.
The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the top two system in March.
| Jim McIntire |
The new system could allow two members of the same party to face off in the general election, but Tuesday's primary results mean that the races for all eight statewide partisan offices will feature traditional Democrat versus Republican contests.The governor's race will be a rematch of the 2004 contest, in which Democrat Christine Gregoire was declared the winner over Dino Rossi by a mere 113 votes after weeks of controversy and vote recounting.
In preliminary results Tuesday, Gregoire had an edge of 49% to 45%.
It will take several weeks to determine the final tally, as the primary was conducted on a vote-by-mail basis, which required ballots to be postmarked by Tuesday, according to Secretary of State Sam Reed.
