No opponents yet for State Rep. Ryu

By Evan Smith

As candidate-filing week ended May 16, Democratic State Rep. Cindy Ryu had no opponents for the Aug. 5 primary or Nov. 4 general election.

Ryu has no opponents – Republican or Democrat – in the 32nd District, which includes Shoreline, part of northwest Seattle, Lynnwood, Woodway and nearby unincorporated areas of southwest Snohomish County, and parts of Edmonds and Mountlake Terrace.

All candidates for partisan offices appear on the Aug. 5 primary ballot, with the top two vote getters, regardless of party, qualifying for the Nov. 6 general-election ballot.

An opponent still could qualify for the November ballot by registering as a write-in candidate and placing second in the primary with at least 1 percent of the primary vote.

Candidates have until July 18 to register as write-in candidates for the primary. They must pay the same filing fee that ballot candidates pay.

Registered write-in candidates have their votes counted despite minor misspellings or incorrect or missing party preference.

Unregistered write-in candidates can qualify for the November ballot by placing second in the primary with at least 1 percent of the primary vote, but they appear on the general-election ballot with no party preference.

An incumbent Democrat in the nearby 21st Legislative District had appeared to have the primary ballot to herself as the last day of filing started, but a Green Party candidate took advantage of the opening by filing Friday morning, only to have a Republican and an independent make it a four-way primary later in the day.

Libertarian candidates have taken advantage of such openings in other parts of Washington, but the chairman of the Washington Libertarian Party said last week that recruiting candidates was hard because potential candidates were frightened by the $421 filing fee.

Evan Smith can be reached at schsmith@frontier.com.