Benton Elections–New Faces Ready to Sweep Out Incumbents

According to the first tally of Benton County voting results, it appears big changes coming for Kennewick City Council, KSD School Board.

In Richland two new faces could land on RSD Board, and a couple of tight races.

Here's Kennewick City Council so far:

Gretl Crawford appears to be sending incumbent Don Britain to defeat, leading 58-41 percent. 

  Loren Anderson is (so far) crushing incumbent Steve Lee by a margin of 67-32 percent, while incumbents John H Trumbo and Bill McKay are leading Jason Lohr and Ken Short by margins of 17 and 15 percent respectively. 

For KSD school board, it's Micah Valentine leading Scott E. Rogers 56-43 percent, and Gabe Galbeath leading Erin Steinert 60 to 38 percent. Steinert had comments from 2020 resurface just prior to the election, where she called COVID stay-at-home opponents "pricks" and said Police should be used to enforce such policies.

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In Richland, Michael Alverez, a conservative political activist and strong commmunity leader is leading in his council race against Kurt H. Meier with over 71 percent of the vote.

Ryan Lukson might have benefitted from recent negative publicity generated by his opponent Ginger Wireman, as he leads her by 58-41 percent. She had recently said on social media posts that unvaccinated persons who get sick from COVID should be denied medical care.

Elsewhere in Richland Sandra Kent is leading in her city council race by 72-27 percent over Larry Stanley. also Theresa Richardson leads Marianne Boring in council race 56-43 percent.

For Richland School Board, Misipati Semi Bird sees his campaign with a 52-47 percent lead over Elizabeth "Liz" Vann-Clark while Audra Bird is leading Danica Garcia by the same margin. So far incumbent Rick Jansons appears to be hanging on by a margin of 53-46 over Ben Griggs. But he's the only incumbent who is leading for the most part.

The Benton County Auditor's site says the next vote count is 4 PM Wednesday, they say about 10,000 votes are left out of about 38,000 that were received. A lot of ballots came in today.