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Northwest for 19 years, supervising coverage and reporting on local and
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House Speaker Frank Chopp's Democrats outnumber Minority Leader Richard DeBolt's Republicans by a 63-35 margin, thanks to the late 2007 defection of former Republican Rep. Fred Jarrett.
There are a handful of races that could change those numbers, but not greatly.
"Worst case scenario, we lose one; best case, we're +1," said Kevin Carns, executive director of H-ROC, the House Republican Organization Committee. "In a year like this when they're killing Republicans in the street, we're happy with that."
Although he was trailing on election night, Republican Bruce Dammeier pulled ahead of Democrat Rob Cerqui in the race to replace Rep. Joyce McDonald in the 25th District, which encompasses the Puyallup Valley. Dammeier's lead is now 227 votes, or 10,988 to 10,761. So that would be a "hold" for House Republicans.
Republicans are likely to pick up a seat in the 26th District, where Republican Jan Angel now leads Democrat Kim Abel 16,557 to 15,778. Angel is winning in both the Pierce and Kitsap county portions of the district.
But they will lost Rep. Jim Dunn's seat in the 17th District, the Vancouver suburbs. Democrat Tim Probst is leading Republican Joseph James by a lot -- 25,160 to 18,946. James beat Dunn in the primary.
Republicans could pick up another seat over in Eastern Washington's 6th District because Republican challenger Kevin Parker is now ahead of new Democratic incumbent Rep. Kevin Barlow by more than 1,000 votes. It's 24,941 to 23,829.
But they could lose the other 6th District House seat because Democrat John Driscoll is more than 1,000 votes ahead of incumbent Rep. John Ahern, R-Spokane. It's 24,992 to 23,832.
So, it's a wash -- so far.
But Republicans could be jeopardy of losing Republican Norma Smith's seat in the 10th District because she's almost 1,000 votes behind Democratic challenger Tim Knue, 24,327 to 23,398.
That's -1 for the House GOP.
On the other hand, there are a couple of befuddling races in King County that warrant a close watch. There are too few ballots counted to figure out whether incumbent Republican Reps. Skip Priest of Federal Way and Glenn Anderson of Fall City are really in trouble or not.
Priest leads Democrat Carol Gregory 8,706 to 8,400. Anderson has a 310-vote lead over Democrat David Spring with about 27,000 ballots counted.
Most House races should have about 50,000 ballots cast when the dust settles.
