McGinn's lead dwindles to 462 votes in Seattle mayor's race

The winner of the Seattle mayor's race was no clearer Wednesday as the gap between Mike McGinn and Joe Mallahan narrowed to 462 votes.

McGinn, a former Sierra Club leader, maintained his lead over Mallahan, a cellphone company executive, with about 20,000 additional votes counted Wednesday. But votes were trending in Mallahan's direction. King County Elections has counted about 105,000 votes, about half the expected total.

After celebrating his small lead over Mallahan on Tuesday night, McGinn decided to take a break from the campaign Wednesday and Thursday, planning to spend both days with his family. His campaign released a one-line comment: "We're waiting and watching the results like everyone else."

In Tuesday night's count of 85,000 Seattle ballots, McGinn had 50.03 percent of the votes. But he received only 48.67 percent of the 19,879 ballots added Wednesday. Mallahan received 50.92 percent of the Wednesday count.

Mallahan punched the latest vote totals into his BlackBerry on Wednesday and spoke with reporters at his campaign office at 14th Avenue and Yesler Way.

"If this trend continues, we're solid," he said.

"We had a real expectation that the first day would be his [McGinn's] best day," Mallahan said, citing McGinn's late campaign announcement that he no longer would try to block the $4.2 billion tunnel project planned to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct.

Still, the margin was extremely close. An automatic recount is triggered if the candidates are separated by fewer than 2,000 votes and one-half of 1 percent of the total votes cast.

While McGinn's volunteer army received a lot of attention, Mallahan said he, too, had a major get-out-the-vote effort that peaked in the closing days.

The Mallahan campaign had 50 volunteers a day calling voters and reached as many as 20,000 in the final week, said Rory Steele, Mallahan's campaign manager.

McGinn volunteers made more than 26,000 calls during the campaign and spoke personally to 9,000 voters in the general election alone, volunteer Derek Farmer said.

Mallahan raised about three times as much money as McGinn, allowing Mallahan to hire professional campaign staff while McGinn relied on full-time volunteers.

Even on Election Night, McGinn supporters turned their Capitol Hill party into a makeshift phone bank after results were posted. They passed out cellphones and call sheets to partygoers and began calling undecided voters.

The campaign posted volunteers in five QFC parking lots to collect last-minute ballots and drive them to a late-night post office. Campaign volunteer Aaron Pickus said 200 ballots were delivered to the post office just before midnight Tuesday.

The tactic drew criticism Wednesday from Secretary of State Sam Reed.

"It kind of violates the sense of fair play to wait until after the results are announced and then launch an effort to manipulate the outcome," Reed said. "It just doesn't sit right with me."

The effort was legal but troubling, he said.

Reed has been pushing legislation that would require all ballots to be in hand by 8 p.m. The proposal didn't get much traction last year, but Reed said he hopes the Legislature will take action next session.

By law, ballots have to be postmarked by Election Day. This was King County's first all-mail general election. Polls used to close at 8 p.m.

Even if McGinn doesn't win, his campaign proved wrong a lot of Seattle insiders, said Christian Sinderman, a local political consultant.

Specifically, he said, when McGinn softened his position on the waterfront tunnel, insiders said it was a "flip-flop."

"It does show that what insiders viewed as a spectacular flip-flop ... was really crazy like a fox. ... He did successfully remove some barriers for people to support him and that, at the end of the day, consistency wasn't as important as simply showing engagement on issues."

Emily Heffter: 206-464-8246 or eheffter@seattletimes.com

Staff reporter Justin Mayo contributed to this report.