Widening gaps in vote counts Tuesday morning have put most area incumbents in comfortable leads as the first week of ballot counting ended.

Fifth District State Representative Jay Rodne (R) has emerged from what looked to be a close race with Jason Ritchie (D) in the race for House seat Position 1 and in Position 2, Paul Graves (R) is the apparent freshman legislator with an increasing lead over opponent Darcy Burner (D). In the Senate, Mark Mullet (D), continued to edge out his opponent, Chad Magendanz (R).

Votes for Mullet totaled 33,438, or 50.6 percent. Votes for Magendanz totaled 32,531, 49.3 percent.

Votes for Rodne totaled 33,497, or 51.7 percent, while Ritchie’s total was 31,206, 48.2 percent; for Position 2, Graves received 34,724 votes, 53.3 percent, to Burner’s 30,398, 46.6 percent.

After gaining a lead of about 4,000 votes, Graves said he was proud of the way he campaigned and is excited to become a Representative of the Fifth District.

“I ran a positive campaign on a straightforward platform of issues like excellent schools, getting traffic moving and holding the line against income tax and I think that really resonates with the voters,” Graves said. “It’s a district that wants to choose the most quality on the ballot, wants our kids to be able to get to schools and wants our tax money to be used wisely. Those are the kinds of things I want to work on.”

Graves said one of the big issues in the next year will be funding education in accordance with the McCleary Decision and fixing the highways and traffic concerns in the district.

“The biggest thing is going to be crafting a responsible budget that prioritizes things we really need to be focused on, in particular education funding,” he said. “There are some other particular things in the district, fixing the highway 18 and I-90 interchange and expanding Maple Valley Highway.”

Local issues continued their trends from early ballot counts, with all ballot measures passing except the proposed merger of Fire Districts 10 and 38, which needed a 60 percent supermajority to pass.

Snoqualmie voters have approved a city levy to hire two more police officers and one additional firefighter, with 3,139 votes in favor of the city’s Proposition 1, to 2,248 against. Voter turnout on this issue is more than 75 percent; the city has 7,718 registered voters.

Snoqualmie Mayor Matt Larson said he is relieved and pleased that people voted for the proposition, which will alleviate some of the pressure on the police and fire departments.

“We are grateful for support from the public and confidence in what we are doing,” Larson said. “Had this not been approved we would be seeing some degradation of safety services.”

The proposition will be implemented in January. The city will begin looking for candidates for the fire and police positions then.

“Both police and fire are eager to get under way,” Larson said. “It takes anywhere from three to five or six weeks, depending whether it’s a lateral move or someone coming in to the position at the beginning of their career.”

The maintenance and operations levy proposed by Fire Protection District 27, covering Fall City, also required only a simple majority to pass. As of Monday afternoon, the votes in favor of the levy were 1,699 to 836 against, with a turnout of 72.8 percent. The district has 3,803 registered voters.

In Duvall, the city’s proposition to raise the levy lid for a combination of projects, including ball field improvements, a school resource police officer and technology upgrades is passing by 66 votes. Votes in favor were 1,685, to 1,619, with a 74 percent turnout. An advisory vote on banning fireworks got 1,998 no votes to 1,350 in favor of the ban. The city has 4,611 registered voters.

The proposed Eastside Regional Fire Authority ballot measure appears to be failing. Nearly 16,500 ballots, of 22,472 registered voters, have been counted in this race; the measure needs a 60 percent majority to pass. The proposition, put forth by Fire Districts 10 and 38, proposed a merger of the two districts and the implementation of a fire benefit charge on District 38 residents; District 10 residents are already paying a benefit charge. Votes on the issue were 8,522 in favor to 6,023 opposed, or 58.6 percent to 41.4 percent.

In Legislative District 45, incumbent Representatives Roger Goodman, Position 1, and Larry Springer, Position 2, will both be returning to Olympia for the next session. Springer (D), unopposed except for 1,706 write-ins, now has 47,583 votes and Goodman (D) received 38,750 votes. His opponent, Ramiro Valderrama (R), received 23,175 votes.

For the first time in his career Springer ran unopposed in the 45th District. He has been elected to serve his seventh term. He said he didn’t expect to run unopposed, but is focused on continuing his work as a business liaison for the House Democratic Caucus and the local business community and continuing to work on funding education.

“There is one overriding concern in the upcoming session which is the number one issue, funding for K-12 education in order to meet the McCleary act,” he said. “That will be job one, two, three and four. That will dominate everything.”

In order to fund education, Springer said the tax code will be under scrutiny during this next session.

“We can’t meet the mandate without additional revenue,” Springer said. “That’s why we were taking a look at our tax code. I will spend probably the majority of my time working on tax policy.”

In the U.S. Congress, the three area incumbents, Senator Patty Murray (D), 8th District Representative Dave Reichert (R) and 1st District Representative Suzan DelBene (D) also enjoyed commanding leads. Murray led opponent Chris Vance (R) 646,625 to 238,430. Reichert led with 93,805 votes, to his opponent, Tony Ventrella’s 73,913. DelBene (D) received 81,095 votes in her district, over her opponent’s 43,737.

Results will be updated on valleyrecord.com; final results are certified Nov. 29.