District's Strategic Shift in Question After 40 Year Win Streak Ended in Nov. '24

After decades of running measures in February without a loss, the district chose to run in November, in what appeared to be the worst environment in memory. A predictable loss occurred. Why?

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LAKE STEVENS - With Lake Stevens School District’s Prop. 1 bond measure over 2,800 votes short of validation on the eve of the election, J425 reached out to contacts in the political, campaign and education community to gauge the urgency of the situation and to seek a breakdown of the situation from the viewpoint of strategy, execution and planning.

First, in an attempt to gauge the likelihood of the measure overcoming reaching validation at this late date, J425 spoke to two veteran political strategists with a strong grasp of the region and the subject matter.

Both viewed the prospect of failure to validate as a red-alert, all-hands-on-deck problem.

“In the U.K. if you fail twice the whole government resigns,” one consultant quipped.

Another said that after viewing Friday’s numbers, the effort required round the clock phone banks working over the weekend, with volunteers contacting voters who’d yet to return ballots one-by-one via phone and door knocking.

“Did that happen?” he asked.

The other doubted that the district had even bothered to pick up the list of outstanding ballots from County Elections.

“No one’s contacted me, and I’m a five of five (a voter that participates in all elections – a high-propensity voter) with an outstanding ballot,” the political veteran said.

The list the consultant referred to is published daily in the approach to election day and is a common tool used by campaigns to track and chase ballots.

In summary, if an exhaustive ballot chasing effort isn't already underway — and this is PoliSci 101 for a matter of this magnitude — the bond will struggle to approach validation and the decisions that – in two short months – turned a 25-year-record of uninterrupted victories at the ballot box – into back-to-back losses…will come under intense scrutiny. For now, there’s still reason to hold out a glimmer of hope that such questions are turned into trivia by a ballot win.

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Inexplicable Departure from Strategy after Four Straight Decades of Winning Campaigns

The main question at hand is why the district broke a 40 year run of 100% success with ballot measures based around a February, off-year election strategy. This is no small thing. The margins are slim