John Laird Nov. 16: Has Clark County lost its redness?

Stop the presses! Clark County has turned blue! Barack Obama carried Clark County on Nov. 4! This proves that our county has come to its senses and no longer should be considered a red county in a blue state!

Whoa, Sparky! Tossing four exclamation points into the first paragraph doesn’t necessarily make it the truth.

For years, conventional wisdom has been that — extenuating circumstances aside — Republicans can count on about a 2-percentage-point edge in Clark County. But as popular as that theory is, it should be ignored for two reasons. Every election has extenuating circumstances, and that 2-percentage-point projection is about as unscientific as my contention that 51 percent of local golfers couldn’t break 100 if they had 18 mulligans.

Many of us have friends and relatives in distant states who ask what it’s like to live in a blue state, right? And many of us respond that this political condition is balanced by living in a red county, right? Well, there was a relatively obscure race for a statewide office this year that pretty much upholds these two beliefs.

The best way to measure the red-county, blue-state theory is to look at an open race, where no candidate enjoys the power of the incumbency. For state treasurer, the two candidates were Republican Allan Martin — a Republican assistant treasurer who was endorsed by the outgoing Democratic treasurer, Michael Murphy — and Democrat Jim McIntire. (The Columbian endorsed McIntire but was also impressed with Martin’s candidacy.)

It could be argued that many Clark County voters — in fact, voters statewide — knew relatively little about this race for several various reasons. (In my opinion, state treasurer should be a nonpartisan race anyway, like state school superintendent. Counting beans has nothing to do with being conservative or liberal.) Look what happened in this race: Martin the Republican carried Clark County by 1.78 percentage points (in accordance with the 2-percentage-point theory) and McIntire the Democrat carried the state by 1.76 points. This indicates that the county is about as red as the state is blue.

Local Republicans will remind you that Dino Rossi again carried Clark County, this time by 2 percentage points. Democrats will argue that this was down from 2004 when Rossi carried Clark County by 8 points.

Another open race, this one local, that helps define Clark County’s redness is the battle between Democrat Pam Brokaw and Republican Tom Mielke for county commissioner. Despite a strong advantage in campaign funds and a slew of endorsements, Brokaw (as of Friday) was trailing by 190 votes and headed for a recount. Even some Republicans were surprised at Mielke’s strong showing.

Still, if Clark County is red, how do we explain Barack Obama carrying the county by 6 percentage points? That question is easy to answer. This result doesn’t say nearly as much about Obama or about Clark County as it says about President George W. Bush. In fact, I suspect a lot of America’s breathless infatuation over Obama might actually be — deep down — an opinion about Bush.

If my theory is correct, then Bush’s drop in local popularity has been dramatic, almost pathetic. He carried the county by 5.4 percentage points in 2004 and by 4 points in 2000.

And lest local Republicans start feeling too uppity about their standing in Clark County, I should remind them that on Dec. 15 every one of the 83,856 votes they cast for John McCain (in fact, every one of the 1,194,074 votes Washingtonians cast for McCain) will be figuratively shredded and cast upon the political compost heap sown by our nation’s Founding Fathers. For on Dec. 15, by state law, all 11 of Washington state’s electoral votes will be cast for Barack Obama. Suddenly, every other vote for president in this state will no longer matter.

The cruel irony here is that Republicans — fueled by their certainty that the work of the Founding Fathers must remain immutable — seem to be the strongest supporters of the idiocy that the Electoral College has become.