Sal Mungia, a Tacoma trial attorney, has defeated Dave Larson, a Federal Way Municipal Court judge, in a razor-close race for an open state Supreme Court seat.
Mungia led with just over 50% of the vote Tuesday afternoon, to 49.4% for Larson, a difference of about 21,000 votes out of more than 3.2 million counted. The Seattle Times is calling the race because, while counting continues, the Secretary of State's office estimates only about 24,000 ballots remain to be counted.
Larson led by about 1,000 votes in ballots counted on election night, two weeks ago, but Mungia took a narrow lead the next day as more ballots were counted. He has maintained or grown that lead every day since.
Supreme Court races are nonpartisan, but Mungia has the endorsement of a wide array of Democrats, while Larson has the endorsement of the state Republican Party.
It's the first time since 2012 that Washington has had a contested race for an open Supreme Court seat.
Five of the nine current justices were appointed to fill open seats and subsequently won elections to keep those seats. Three of the nine were appointed by Gov. Jay Inslee. Two justices on the ballot this year, Chief Justice Steven González and Justice Sheryl Gordon McCloud, ran unopposed.
Mungia will replace Justice Susan Owens, who is stepping down after nearly 25 years on the court because she reached the mandatory retirement age of 75.
Mungia was recruited to run by González and was endorsed by eight of the nine current justices. Larson ran for the state Supreme Court in 2000, when he lost in the primary, and in 2016 and 2020, when he advanced to the general election but lost to incumbents.
The state Supreme Court, in recent years, has been one of the most aggressive judiciaries in the country in pushing to address issues of institutional racism it sees as long-standing in the courts.
Mungia is fully on board with the effort, while Larson is a little uneasy with some of the court's methods.
Mungia, a graduate of Pacific Lutheran University and Georgetown University Law School, clerked for a state Supreme Court justice and a federal judge immediately after law school, but other than that has worked in private practice his entire 40-year career.
A partner at the Tacoma firm Gordon Thomas Honeywell, he focuses on civil lawsuits, largely personal injury work. He is a past president of the Washington State Bar Association, the Western States Bar Conference and Legal Aid of Washington. He has argued cases in both the state Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Larson is a graduate of the University of Puget Sound and Seattle University Law School, and worked in private practice on civil litigation, largely representing insurance companies, for about 20 years. In 2008, he was appointed a judge in Federal Way Municipal Court, and has served as that court's presiding judge since 2009.
