Well, looks like big oil canāt buy this election. Despite the fact that mega Texas oil company Tesoro gave Kris Greene the largest direct donation to any Washington state candidate in 2017, the people of Vancouver have spokenāand they are saying āHells noā to Tesoroās plan to build the largest oil terminal in the country at the Port of Vancouver.
Don Orange, who based his campaign on opposing the terminal, won by landslide. Initial results last night showed Orange leading with 64.2 percent and Greene trailing (significantly) behind with only 35.2 percent.
āIām shocked, but Iām so God dang proud of our campaign that worked so hard for this,ā Orange told The Columbian on Tuesday night as the early results came pouring in. āWe are Americaās Vancouver, and weāve been heard from tonight. I never imagined any numbers like this.ā
Orangeās opponent Greene received 90 percent of his campaign donations from Tesoro and Vancouver Energy, who are backers of the terminalāthe largest corporate donation in the history of Vancouverās port, according to the Sightline Institute.
But it looks like Orangeās victory will seal the oil terminalās fate once and for allāheās almost certainly going to vote to cancel Tesoroās lease on the facility, along with fellow anti-oil terminal commissioner Eric LaBrant.
Even though there are only 18,000 votes left to be tallied in the county and it is pretty darn clear Orange is the winner, Greene still has not conceded:
āWe still have a lot of votes that havenāt come in yet, so itās not over until itās over,ā Greene said at his watch party last night.
Greene, baby, Iāve got some news for youāitās over.
Itās over like Kevin Spaceyās career. Over like the Republican control of the Senate in Washington state. Over like last weekās macaroni salad, which has been rotting in the back of my fridge for over a week. I better go take care of that.