BOCC races neck-and-neck

SANDPOINT — Bonner County GOP assessor nominee Donna Gow built a sizable lead early on in Tuesday’s general election county, while county commission candidates found themselves in close footraces.

Gow had gathered 4,472 votes, putting her far ahead of independent Wendel Bergman, who had amassed 1,440 votes, according to tallies posted by the Bonner County Clerk’s Office on Tuesday night.

Incumbent Republican District 3 Commissioner Dan McDonald held a wafer-thin lead over Democrat nominee Steve Lockwood. McDonald had 3,286 votes to Lockwood’s 3,279, a difference of only seven votes.

The race for the District 1 seat on the board was also neck-and-neck early on in the ballot tally. However, by press time Republican nominee Steven Bradshaw was leading Democratic nominee Steve Johnson by 427 votes. Bradshaw had 3,477 votes compared to Johnson’s 3,050 votes.

In the race for two seats on the Bonner Soil & Water Conservation District, Dale Van Stone and Terry McGuirk were leading Allen R. Banks and Thomas E. Clark. Van Stone had 7,741 absentee ballots cast in his favor, while McGuirk had 2,085 votes. Clark had 1,380 votes and Banks had 1,261 votes.

As of late Tuesday evening, the county’s tally of ballots accounted for approximately 26 percent of the total registered voters in Bonner County, according to the clerk’s office. Of the 25,842 registered voters, 6,766 ballots had been counted by press time.

Bonner County’s polling places bustled on Tuesday. A handful of voters in the Humbird precinct were on hand to cast ballots before the polls even opened at 8 a.m. The Blue Lake precinct, meanwhile, got busy and stayed busy, as did the Washington precinct in Sandpoint, where voters used all available space on hand to mark their ballots.

Keith Kinnaird can be reached by email at kkinnaird@bonnercountydailybee.com and follow him on Twitter @KeithDailyBee.