Judy Warnick leading in bid for state Senate

MOSES LAKE - State representative Judy Warnick has a commanding lead over Ephrata physician Mohammad Said in the race for the Washington state Senate's 13th District in unofficial results released Tuesday night.

Warnick received 22,972 votes (87 percent) of the district-wide vote as of Tuesday, to 3,492 votes for Said. Updated vote totals will be released late Wednesday.

This will be Warnick's first term in the state Senate. She will fill the seat left vacant by Janéa Holmquist Newbry, who made an unsuccessful run for the Fourth U.S. Congressional District.

"I'm looking forward to working with the majority," Warnick said. (Republicans have formed a coalition that gives them the majority.)

Warnick said she plans to focus on some of the same issues that she worked on in the House, starting with water use. She was among the legislators working on the project to convert some groundwater irrigation in the Odessa aquifer to surface water, she said, and she wants to continue that effort in the Senate. She also wants to ensure the Yakima Basin plan keeps moving forward, she said.

Both projects required her involvement in the capital budget process, she said, and she wants to keep working on the capital budget in the Senate. She said she wants to work on committees and projects involving water and agriculture policy. Traditionally legislators meet and talk about their preferences for committee assignments, she said. "I'm looking forward to being involved there."

The 2015 session will write the biennial state budget, and Warnick said the state will face some budget challenges. That will be true even with a positive revenue forecast in September, which projected an additional $3 billion in revenue, she said.

Prioritizing will be a necessity, she said. "It will be a challenge, but I think we can get there without raising taxes."

She said she appreciated Said's decision to file for the Senate seat. "He gave me an opportunity to listen to a different viewpoint," she said. She was interested in his opinions on subjects like health care and the state Department of Social and Health Services. "I appreciate the campaign that he ran," she said.

Said said he thought his ideas and policy positions would've been to the benefit of 13th District voters. "Indeed I am not really the loser. I feel the district is the loser," he said.

Said, a Democrat, said one reason he ran was to give people a choice. He published a paper detailing his positions, he said, and will publish a pamphlet featuring the interviews he gave during the campaign. He said he hoped other legislators would follow up on some of his ideas.