King Co elections director race - an update

We now have three filed candidates for the position, all Democrats: Ross Baker, Lloyd Hara, and Jason Osgood. A fourth candidate, Ted Maroutsos, has the skeleton of a campaign site up but has yet to file.

Newly-speculated candidates since my last post on this subject include Ellen Hansen [D], elections director under Randy Revelle in the 80s, Julie Anne Kempf [D], elections superintendent until 2002, and businessman/past GOP state house candidate David Doud. Kempf earned a dual endorsement for the spot along with David Irons from Toby Nixon's Citizens for Accountable Elections group.

Not sure yet if Senator Roach will be running, as it seems she's currently too busy trumpeting bullcrap on the O'Reilly Factor with Ken Hutcherson. Not to go off on a capitol display-tangent, but much as I usually oppose Gregoire I totally support her on that.

Regarding the outlook on the race, as I said in the discussion on the last topical post I think Lloyd Hara is the most likely to end up on top at this point. Democrats aren't reeling in the netroots here and that means Osgood will surely stay in, and with as much courthouse support as Baker has I'd imagine he stays in as well. Hara's almost certainly got the most name recognition of the group and that's probably going to be enough to get him to 25% or whatever the winner will end up getting.

I'd be inclined to support Hara personally, though I'm no longer registered to vote in King County. He's probably the most moderate out of the three declared Democrats and has oodles of local government experience. I still like Fain and Hemstad on the GOP side but figure that neither has the organization to win and if either are going to run they need to get in the race ASAP.