Tag Archives: Mark Baughman

Ghassemieh, Indapure led fund raising, expenditures in City Council races

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Minal Ghassemieh and Rituja Indapure raised more and spent more money than any other candidate for Sammam City Council, to mixed results.

Ghassemieh was defeated in her bid to advance to the general election for Position 3. Her opponents, Karen Howe and Karen Moran, raised less than half and spent about one third of the money in their winning bids to advance to the November election.

Indapure swamped her opponents in fund raising and spending in Position 5 but had a poor second place finish against Chris Ross, who through Friday had 47% of the vote to Indapure’s 31.5%. The third candidate, Ryika Hooshangi, trailed Indapure by 10 points.

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Election day for Sammamish City Council primary

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It’s election day for the Sammamish City Council primary.

Mail-in ballots must be post-marked today; there is a drop-in ballot at the Sammamish City Hall.

The first results will be posted by King County Elections about 8:15  8:30 pm; Sammamish Comment will post shortly afterwards. It takes about three weeks for all mail-in ballots to be received (allowing for overseas and military ballots to arrive) and the votes certified. History shows that election night results are within 1%-2% of the final results.

Our final readership tracking of candidate questionnaires is below. We don’t know if election results will follow the readership interest; it’s the only “polling” available.

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As City Council vote nears, does readership predict outcome?

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As Sammamish’s City Council primary heads into the final weekend before Tuesday’s vote, Sammamish Comment tracked the reader views of the questionnaires to gauge interest in the candidates.

There is no polling of a City Council election that we know of, so the readership of the questionnaires is the only solid evidence of interest in candidates.

Facebook has had a lively discussion of some of the candidates, but the participants are tilted decisively into a no-growth camp.

The readership interest in the candidate questionnaires is not scientific, but it’s the only thing we have to go on.

The question is, will this be a predictor of the outcome Tuesday night?

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Good candidates, good answers, rookie mistakes

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  • Sammamish Comment recommendations for City Council candidates to advance to the November general election begins tomorrow.
  • A full report of the Candidates Forum is in the next post, below.

Commentary

Sammamish residents have an unusually good set of candidates this year from which to choose for the Aug. 1 primary, and from this, the November general election.

This hasn’t always been the case. In some years, some very weak candidates, or some with clear and self-evident personal agendas, ran. In several years, at least some incumbents were unopposed or had token opposition.

There are nine candidates seeking three Council seats, requiring a primary. These are in Positions 3, 5 and 7.

Position 3 candidates are Minal Ghassemieh, Karen Howe and Karen Moran.

Position 5 candidates are Ryika Hooshangi, Rituja Indapure and Chris Ross.

Position 7 candidates are Melanie Curtright, John Robinson and Pamela Stuart.

Position 1 candidates, Mark Baughman and Jason Ritchie, go straight to the November election; they are not on the Aug. 1 primary ballot.

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Position 1 City Council Candidate Questionnaires today

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Today Sammamish Comment publishes the candidate questionnaires of Position 1 for City Council.

Note that because there are only two candidates seeking this position, they do not appear on the Aug. 1 primary ballot. However, Sammamish Comment believes it is only fair that all candidates respond to the questions at the same time.

Position 1

The candidates for Position 1 are Mark Baughman and Jason Ritchie.

The candidate responses are printed verbatim. The Comment only checked their responses for spelling and grammar. Each response is in its own post, so scroll down on The Comment’s Home Page to see each response.

The responses were reviewed and processed by Scott Hamilton.