‘I’m not a quitter’: Loren Culp doubles down on refusal to concede race for governor

Washington gubernatorial candidate Loren Culp is maintaining his refusal to concede defeat against incumbent Governor Jay Inslee.

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Culp spoke to KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson in his first post-election interview Thursday, intimating that he doesn’t intend to throw in the towel anytime soon, despite numerous outlets — including the Associated Press — calling the race shortly after the first returns came in Tuesday.

“I believe that every vote counts and I’m not a quitter — I’m a fighter, and I’m going to fight,” Culp said. “Just like the people that cast those ballots fought for me, I’m going to fight to have their ballots counted and I’m not going to concede.”

Based on the current vote totals, Culp’s potential path to victory appears to be mathematically out of reach. As of 8 p.m. Wednesday, he trailed incumbent Gov, Inslee by just over 600,000 votes, with the Secretary of State’s office estimating roughly 410,000 ballots left to process.

“Statistically, I just don’t see where you’re going with this,” Dori noted.

Despite that, Culp maintains that he wants to wait for “every one of those votes to be counted,” and is vowing to hold out on a concession until the election is officially certified. According to the state’s election calendar, Secretary of State Kim Wyman has until Dec. 3 to finalize the state’s tallies.

In a video posted to Facebook on Wednesday, Culp also claimed that he believes there are some “irregularities” to how ballots were tallied. As to what those alleged irregularities might be, though, he’s stopped short of offering specifics.

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“I’m not prepared to go into any of that,” he told Dori on Thursday. “We’re going to keep looking at things and we may be back in touch.”

As of Thursday afternoon, after a third round of results were released, Culp trailed Inslee by 606,067 votes. According to the Secretary of State’s office, there are 302,893 ballots left to count.

Listen to the Dori Monson Show weekday afternoons from noon – 3 p.m. on KIRO Radio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.