Kitsap voters sent a message, but what was it?

It’s always a tricky business to draw conclusions about elections, given that doing so requires making generalizations about the personal decisions made by hundreds, thousands or even millions of individuals.

But the region’s voters were sending a collective message during Tuesday night’s primary. The only problem is deciphering exactly what it was.

In the case of the race for the open Kitsap County Superior Court judge seat, for example, the voters were presented with some pretty clear choices — much clearer than is normally the case in judicial elections — and opted for one candidate firmly entrenched within the local legal establishment and one who revels in thumbing his nose at it.

Jeannette Dalton, the top vote-getter at the end of the day, thought so highly of her own endorsement by local attorneys that, flush with victory on Tuesday night, she cited it as perhaps her principal qualification for the job.

“The Bar Association has spoken,” she proclaimed, as though that closed the argument.

Fortunately for Port Orchard attorney Bruce Danielson, who finished second and thus earned the right to face Dalton in the November general election, it’s the voters, and not other attorneys, who elect judges.

Danielson, who makes no secret of his contempt for the Bar’s pretensions, nonetheless scored points with the voters when he pointed out the obvious conflict of interest presented by his opponents accepting political contributions from attorneys who could one day find themselves practicing in his or her court.

It will be interesting to see in November whether Dalton or Danielson is correct in their respective estimation of the Bar’s blessing.

As for the South Kitsap commissioner race in which former commissioner Charlotte Garrido won a surprising victory over Monty Mahan despite the latter’s perceived popularity and middle-of-the-road stance on most of the issues, the most logical explanation is anger directed at his father, Port of Bremerton Commissioner Bill Mahan.

Given the port commission’s much-lamented (at least in South Kitsap) decision to hike local property taxes in order to upgrade Bremerton’s marina and its vote just this month to support the city of Bremerton’s bid to annex the South Kitsap Industrial Area (SKIA) in defiance of Port Orchard’s wishes, it seems reasonable to assume the voters decided to visit the sins of the father upon the younger Mahan.

For his part, Monty Mahan took pains during the campaign to distance himself from his father’s positions, but it seems the voters couldn’t help making the connection — particularly since one of the first major decisions the Kitsap commissioners will make after the election is whether or not to plunk down $1 million of the taxpayers’ money to subsidize the port’s controversial Sustainable Energy and Economic Development (SEED) project — a proposition the elder Mahan enthusiastically supports.

With Monty Mahan not a factor in the general election, it remains to be seen how much of his support Garrido inherits and how much shifts to Republican Tim Matthes, who outpolled both Democrats individually but whose 41 percent of the vote is less than their aggregate total.

Given Garrido’s polarizing voting record, it’s no cinch she’ll get all — or even a statistically meaningful number — of her fellow Democrat’s votes.

“Charlotte has a strong constituency in South Kitsap, but she has a history,” Matthes said. “I expect we will examine some of the votes she made as commissioner.”

Let the battles begin.

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