If there was ever a year for Democrats to snatch the Eastside’s 8th Congressional District from Republican hands, this was the one. Democrat Darcy Burner knew this, and as a wave of anti-Republican sentiment built across the country in the lead-up to the November 7 election, she carefully positioned herself as the suburb-friendly alternative to conservative incumbent congressman Dave Reichert, whom she cast as a one-term lackey for the Bush administration.
But while the anticipated Democratic wave did materialize, producing Democratic pickups around the nation and sweeping the House and Senate into liberal hands for the first time in 12 years, Burner, a political newcomer and former Microsoft manager, wasn’t lifted high enough to win. “The voters in the 8th District have spoken,” Burner said Tuesday morning at her Bellevue headquarters, conceding that she wasn’t going to pull out a victory, even though the race was so close that it took six days of counting to deliver a clear winner.
As of press time, with tens of thousands of mail-in ballots still to be tabulated, Reichert led Burner by 4,727 votes and was holding 51 percent of the total vote. It wasn’t the four-point lead that the former King County sheriff had walked away with in 2004, when he ran against liberal radio talk-show host Dave Ross. But by early Monday evening, with late votes breaking Reichert’s way in King County (perhaps as a result of a last-minute commercial he ran mocking Burner’s lack of experience), Reichert’s margin was wide enough for him to declare victory.
Burner suggested that despite her loss, the race was not going to mark her exit from the political scene. “This isn’t an end,” she told a room full of reporters and cheering supporters. “It’s a beginning.”
Reichert used his post-concession media attention to reiterate one of his main campaign themes—that Burner lacks public-service credentials. “I am a little surprised it was as tough as it was, because of the inexperience of my opponent,” Reichert told the Seattle Times, in a post-election attack that Burner’s campaign manager Zach Silk described as “rude.”
Dwight Pelz, the chair of the state Democratic Party, admitted that Burner “came out of nowhere” to challenge Reichert. He added, however, that Burner’s strong showing and prodigious fundraising demonstrated Reichert’s “tenuous” hold on the 8th District, which has been trending Democratic in recent years, voting for John Kerry in 2004 and this year replacing a number of its Republican state legislators with Democrats.
Asked why Burner didn’t do better in such a Democrat-friendly environment, Pelz tried to shut down the line of questioning. “No second-guessing,” he said. “That district is going to have a lot of Democratic successes in the years ahead and we’re going to continue to run strong candidates against Reichert.”
But one clear area of failure for Burner was connecting with the southern part of the district, which stretches into rural, conservative Pierce County. Her campaign had made a point of trying to improve on Dave Ross’s showing in that region, and in fact, Burner did improve on Ross’s tally, getting 43 percent of the Pierce County vote as of press time, compared to Ross’s 40 percent in 2004. But it wasn’t the improvement the Burner campaign had hoped for.
There are no doubt other answers to the question of why Burner lost, among them the millions spent by Republicans to keep the seat, Burner’s relatively low name recognition, and, perhaps, the local Republican Party’s rural get-out-the-vote effort.
If Burner’s loss comes to be seen as a result of her lack of experience, there will be pressure on her to start over, this time a few steps lower down the political ladder. If, on the other hand, her loss comes to be seen as a result of Republican attacks and a district that was almost-but-not-quite ready to elect its first Democratic House member, then Burner’s chances of a second shot at Reichert get much better.
“We have a year to talk to Darcy and others about running for office, and we think she’s definitely a rising star in our party,” Pelz said. “There are candidates who come out of a race losing, and everybody knows they’ve got a bright political future. Darcy’s one of those candidates.”
Burner, for her part, said she hadn’t made any decisions about next steps. “I need to have a lot of conversations with a long list of people first,” she said. 
