Good News from WA-8 and WA-5

Lynn Allen on Evergreen Politics, quoting Ivan Weis on Kos:

The Washington Legislative races came out very nicely for the Democrats this year as well. Ivan Weiss, irrepressible Chair of the 34th LD and one of this year's winners of the Maggie Award for Democrat of the Year, has a great post at DailyKos on the 7 seats gained in the House and the 6 gained in the Senate (with a couple more possibilities to come). He begins by talking about how important the spirited campaigns of Darcy and Peter were. A couple of excerpts:

Nowhere was this more evident than in the Districts where Peter and Darcy were on the ballot. In the State Senate race in the 6th Legislative District (Spokane County), Chris Marr upset the odious homophobe and Wal-Mart lackey Brad Benson, heretofore considered a "rising young conservative star." and Democrat Don Barlow took out Incumbent Republican John Serben to capture a House seat in the 6th. In the Legislative Districts that make up the 8th Congressional District, the "coattails" were even more pronounced. We scored clean sweeps in the 45th, 47th, and 48th Legislative Districts, and made serious inroads in the 31st.

Results in the 48th were especially sweet. Former Republican State Representative Rodney Tom, who could no longer tolerate his party's reactionary drift, made his Democratic electoral debut a smashing one, capturing the Senate seat from the closeted gay homophobe and reactionary ideologue Luke Esser, crippling the political hopes of another "rising young conservative star." Former Kirkland Mayor Deb Eddy won Tom's former House seat handily. Incumbent Democratic Representative Ross Hunter, who had orchestrated much of this activity, cruised to victory with two-thirds of the vote.