Two Kitsap County Incumbents Trail as an Appointed Sheriff Heads to the Ballot Too

Two incumbent Kitsap County officials are trailing challengers after the Aug. 4 primary, and the county's next sheriff will likely take office before a single general-election ballot from this cycle is counted. Initial returns released by the Kitsap County Auditor's office put Republican Assessor Phil Cook behind Democratic challenger Michael Simonds, roughly 48% to 52%, and Democratic Prosecuting Attorney Chad Enright trailing former deputy prosecutor Joe Lombardi by a little more than 1,300 votes, according to the Kitsap Sun. Both races, along with a five-candidate primary for Washington's 6th Congressional District and an open sheriff's contest, will be settled in the Nov. 5 general election. But the sheriff's office is running on a faster clock than the ballot box: state law requires the county commissioners to appoint an interim sheriff by the end of August, filling the vacancy left by former Sheriff John Gese's retirement, regardless of what November eventually decides. The primary's top vote-getter in that race, Brandon Myers, has already interviewed for the interim post. What voters chose this week and who the commissioners pick within weeks are, for now, moving on separate timelines.

Randall Cruises to November While Two County Incumbents Stumble

U.S. Rep. Emily Randall, a Bremerton Democrat finishing her first term after replacing longtime Rep. Derek Kilmer, took nearly 60% of the vote across the 6th District's four-county footprint, which stretches from Kitsap through the Olympic Peninsula into parts of Mason, Pierce and Thurston counties. She advances to a rematch-style November contest against Republican Teresa Fox, also a Bremerton resident, who finished with nearly 26%. Trailing them were Leon Lawson, who described himself as a Trump Republican, at just over 9%; independent Brian Lawson at 3%; and Macy Jones, who filed with no party preference, at just over 2%. Randall's margin was the largest of any contested race on the Kitsap ballot this cycle, and it stands in sharp contrast to what happened one level down the ticket, where two sitting county officials, one Republican and one Democrat, both opened the general-election stretch behind. No other contested race on the Kitsap portion of the ballot came close to Randall's margin, which makes the two tight county races that follow stand out even more.

Cook, the Republican assessor seeking another term, trailed Simonds by roughly 2,000 votes out of the initial count. Enright, the Democratic prosecutor, trailed Lombardi, a former employee of his own office, by more than 1,300 votes. Neither margin is a landslide in either direction, and Washington's vote-by-mail system means late-arriving ballots, which have historically skewed more Democratic as counting continues past election night, could still narrow or widen both gaps before certification.

The Sheriff's Race Is Actually Two Races at Once

Kitsap voters are choosing a sheriff for November, but the county commissioners are choosing one first. Myers, who was ranked the top choice by the Kitsap Democratic Party and has already interviewed to become interim sheriff, led the primary field with just over 58% of the vote against Republican Rick Kuss's 42%, per the Kitsap Sun. That primary result carries real political weight, but it isn't what fills the badge. Former Sheriff Gese's retirement left the office vacant, and state law requires the county commissioners, not the voters, to name a replacement to serve out the remainder of the term until whoever wins in November is sworn in. KCSO Chief of Corrections Penny Sapp is currently serving as acting sheriff while the commissioners work through that selection, which they are expected to complete by the end of August.

That timeline means Myers' primary showing functions less like a formal nomination and more like a strong signal to the five commissioners choosing his potential interim successor. A candidate who wins the party's informal ranking and then leads the primary by 16 points arrives at that interview with momentum a commission majority will find hard to ignore, even though nothing on the primary ballot legally binds their decision. If the commissioners appoint Myers, Kitsap County will spend the fall watching an incumbent interim sheriff defend the job in a general election he already led by double digits. If they don't, whoever they choose will be running as an appointed incumbent against a primary winner, an awkward position in county law enforcement races nationally.

The Down-Ballot Contests Nobody Expected to Be Close

Beyond the marquee races, Kitsap's primary produced a mix of blowouts and near-misses. County Commissioner Katie Walters led Republican challenger Kevin Tisdel with nearly 60% of the vote, a margin wide enough that the seat is unlikely to change hands in November barring a major shift in turnout. County Clerk David Lewis, defending his seat against fellow Democrat Brian Kennedy, took nearly 63%, an even larger cushion in a race that, like Enright's, pitted two members of the same party against each other. County Auditor Paul Andrews and County Treasurer Pete Boissonneau are both running unopposed this cycle and need no general-election contest at all, meaning two of the county's row offices are effectively already decided. Those are comfortable margins by any measure, and they suggest most of Kitsap's county government will look the same in January regardless of what happens in the closer races.

The Assessor and Prosecuting Attorney races were not comfortable. Both are within single-digit percentage points, both involve an incumbent trailing, and both remain legally undecided until Washington certifies primary results and the top two finishers face off in November, meaning Cook and Enright are still on the ballot despite trailing, since Washington's top-two primary system advances the leading two vote-getters in each race regardless of party or margin. Cook faces Simonds again in the fall; Enright faces Lombardi. Neither incumbent is eliminated by a primary loss the way they might be in a closed-party system elsewhere. Both are simply starting the general election from behind, in margins narrow enough that local campaigns in vote-by-mail Washington have overcome before, given how many ballots typically remain to be cured or counted after an initial primary-night release.

What a Democrat-on-Democrat Prosecutor Fight Signals

The most unusual result on the Kitsap ballot isn't the closest one. It's the one where party affiliation explains nothing. Enright and Lombardi are both Democrats, and Lombardi previously worked inside the office he's now trying to lead, which means this contest was decided entirely on record and personnel, not partisan lean, in a county where that distinction rarely gets tested this directly. A challenger beating a sitting prosecutor from the same party, using experience inside that prosecutor's own office as the pitch, is a different kind of vulnerability than a Republican-versus-Democrat fight. It reads as a verdict on management and casework rather than ideology, and it is much harder for an incumbent to counter by nationalizing the race the way Cook still can.

Cook's race reads differently. A Republican assessor trailing a Democratic challenger by a similar margin, in a county where Randall just cleared 60% at the top of the ticket, is closer to what a straightforward partisan lean would predict in a low-turnout August primary. Put together, the two closest county races on the ballot arrived at similar-looking margins for almost opposite reasons: one a partisan tilt, the other a professional referendum. That is the kind of distinction that gets lost if a reader only sees the topline percentages, and it means the two incumbents heading into November need very different campaigns to survive.

Certification, the Interim Sheriff and the Road to November

Primary night totals in Washington are never final. The state counts mail ballots as they arrive and as signatures are verified, a process that routinely shifts vote-by-mail results by hundreds or thousands of votes over the days following an election, well past the point when initial returns are first released, before county auditors certify the results. That means the Cook-Simonds and Enright-Lombardi margins reported here, drawn from returns as of the Kitsap Sun's Aug. 4 update, are a snapshot rather than a final word, and either gap could tighten or widen as county elections workers finish processing ballots that arrived close to the deadline. Under Washington's top-two system, though, both trailing incumbents will still appear on the November ballot regardless of how the count settles, since the outcome that actually matters for advancement, two candidates moving on per race, is already effectively locked in barring an extraordinary swing.

Separately, and on a much shorter clock, the Kitsap County commissioners are expected to name an interim sheriff by the end of August, weeks before certification and months before the Nov. 5 general election. Whoever they choose will serve as a sitting sheriff on the campaign trail for the rest of the year, a dynamic that will shape how the Myers-Kuss race is covered locally between now and November regardless of what the current primary numbers show. Kitsap voters, in effect, will spend the fall deciding whether to keep an appointee the elected commissioners picked in August, not simply choosing between two outsiders on equal footing.

What a Low-Turnout Primary Says About Kitsap's Mood

August primaries in off-year, non-presidential cycles draw a fraction of the electorate that shows up in November, which means the numbers above describe the county's most engaged voters, not necessarily its full electorate. Read that way, the results still tell a coherent story. Kitsap's most reliable voters gave a Democratic congresswoman a commanding margin, gave a Democratic county commissioner and a Democratic county clerk comfortable leads, and then split almost evenly on whether to keep a Republican assessor and a Democratic prosecutor in office. That is not a county moving uniformly in one partisan direction. It is one making distinct, race-by-race judgments about specific officeholders, which is a harder story to tell than a simple red-versus-blue shift but likely a more accurate one.

What happens between now and November will test whether that mixed verdict holds once a much larger, more casual slice of the electorate weighs in. General elections in Washington routinely draw well over half of eligible voters, far above what August primaries typically pull, and the voters who show up only in November tend to be less locally informed and more likely to vote a straight party line than the primary electorate that just delivered these split results. An appointed interim sheriff already sitting in the job, a re-energized general electorate, and two down-ballot rematches between an incumbent and a same-party or opposite-party challenger will all land on the same Nov. 5 ballot at once, and Kitsap's county government for the next four years hangs on how that larger, less predictable electorate resolves the questions this primary left open.