Will Mari has this late-night report from Tim Burgess' victory party:

Soon after new results were posted at 11 p.m., Burgess made a preliminary victory speech. After hearing what Della had said, Burgess called his supporters to attention.

"Sixty-one percent ain't bad. I look forward to being your city council member for the next four years."

He acknowledged that his final vote tally may dip slightly from where it was late tonight. But he was being treated as the clear winner. Council members Tom Rasmussen, Peter Steinbrueck, Jean Godden, Jan Drago and Sally Clark stopped by to pass along congratulations, along with former Seattle mayor Charles Royer.

"He was saying for days that he was going to lose," said Burgess' daughter Kim, who works for the United Way of New York.

But that doesn't appear to be the case.

"Drinks are on Tim!" yelled a man from the crowd.

"I'm not sure about that," Burgess said.

I had originally written that two incumbents on the board of Public Hospital District No. 1, Valley Medical Center, were trailing. The incumbents had been tagged by opponents with not providing oversight as hospital administrators misspent public money on a hospital election campaign.

But returns show challenger Anthony Hemstad trailing incumbent Chair Carole Anderson while challenger Sue Bowman leads incumbent Gary Kohlwes.

I talked with Democratic Party Chairman Dwight Pelz about 30 minutes ago at the Westin. He was reading the early results as bad news for Bill Sherman's run for county prosecutor.

"We weren't given much of a chance when Norm Maleng died and we took a hard run at it."

Sherman, who has not conceded, may have been hurt by a general conservative bent to the low-turnout day. I asked Pelz, though, if he had any second thoughts about the strong emphasis Sherman and his Democratic supporters put on the partisan nature of the prosecutor's race.

"The 46 percent demonstrates that partisanship matters."

And Pelz said that many Democrats are unhappy with Democrats who backed Republican Dan Satterberg instead of Sherman.

"There was a lot of attention paid to a few rogue Democrats who deserted the party."

Two names immediately came to my mind, Sen. Adam Kline, D-Seattle, and Jenny Durkan, the prominent Democratic attorney. But Pelz said party members he's heard from are upset about "elected Democrats." There's no interest, though, in trying to get the party to reprimand Kline or any other official.

"We think the party label means something. We want Democrats to respect the term 'Democrat.'"

"Governors don't take a position on county races."

This report comes from UW student election-night stringer Will Mari:

The mood is celebratory at Bricco della Anna Regina, a posh Italian restaurant on Queen Anne Hill. The candle-lit interior of the restaurant resounds with congratulatory small talk, helped along by copious amounts of red wine and finger-foods.

Initial results from King County show Tim Burgess ahead of Seattle City Council incumbent David Della with 61 percent of the vote. He's busy fielding TV interviews and high-fiving supporters.

Still, Burgess says the night isn't over.

"If the 10:30 batch is strong, we're good," he says, referring to the next round of results. "Anything can happen."

But he's optimistic and appears a little taken aback by his apparently strong lead, a sentiment echoed by his wife, Joleen.

"We're ecstatic," she says. "We didn't expect anything like this."

Katie Burgess, a junior majoring in business communication and marketing at the University of Portland, is on hand to cheer on her dad. And she's not as shy as her parents about declaring victory.

"He was hoping for, like, 55 percent," she says. "I was so nervous. I heard earlier today that it might be really close."

Meanwhile, Della is already talking about what's next for him. Our UW helper Cailin Magruder reports that Della told his suppporters at the China Gate restaurant:

"Public service to me is about making a difference in people's lives and you can do that outside of public office."

And in an interview, Della told Magruder:

"I think we worked hard and had a solid plan. I'm proud of my accomplishments on the city council. The voters spoke and I'll accept it."

That's what Eyman called it, though it doesn't strike me as quite so bad. Eyman is in the back room at Mick Kelly's. A woman walked up and was standing at the perimeter of his crowd. Eyman thought it was the waitress and announced her arrival to his chums and asked them to order up.

"I'm not the waitress," I heard her say. She soon left. Eyman told me the woman told him she was a writer for The Stranger.

Nicely played, Tim.

King County Councilwoman Jane Hague got a good first count on the absentee ballots. But it'll be interesting to watch the write-in votes in her race against newly minted Democrat Richard Pope. With the early count, there were more write-ins than in the races with unopposed candidates or, shall we say, lightly opposed as in Dow Constantine's race against Republican John Potter.

As I drove up to Mick Kelly's in downtown Burien the bright lights were on out front and the TV trucks had their antennas up. Never mind that it was 15 minutes before the polls closed, Tim Eyman was out front declaring victory for his latest initiative, I-960.

The rest of us will have to wait to see if voters approve his latest tax-fighting measure. Eyman has got his act down so pat he says it doesn't really matter whether it wins or loses on the ballot.

"Thanks to the campaign for I-960, the people forced the government and its representatives to explain themselves," he said, reading a prepared statement to the small knot of reporters. And he explained, as I've heard him say before, that initiatives can have "a political message and a legal message." The legal message actually requires the initiative to pass. But the political one, he says -- and there is some evidence of this -- can live even without approval by the voters.

There's no better example of that than Eyman's first success, I-695. The courts threw it out and Democrats who had opposed it on the ballot were quick to adopt the key pieces of the measure through legislation, signed by a Democratic governor.

Eyman said he will have another initiative next year, though he wouldn't say what that will be. He was surrounded by a group of supporters, including Michael Dunmire, his financial patron.

The big crowd at the Irish pub is sporting a lot of "Satterberg" stickers. This really is his party. The first results just came in and -- though only a handful of votes have been counted in the first tally of absentees -- Satterberg was glad to see they went his way, 54/45.

Satterberg's band, the Approximations, will play later. Satterberg plays bass.

The New York Times has a great interview with Joseph Cummins, author of Anything for a Vote: Dirty Tricks, Cheap Shots, and October Surprises.

Q: Has campaigning gotten any more civilized over time? How have mudslinging and other forms of negative campaigning evolved throughout U.S. history?

A: I think the mudslinging definitely is still a big part of our election process, but it's less broad and vulgar. For instance, there is less aimed at other people's physical attributes. The 19th century was very big on that. In the election of 1800, one of the dirtiest in American history, the venomous hack writer James Callendar (secretly hired by Thomas Jefferson) assailed then-President John Adams as a "repulsive pedant" and "a hideous hermaphroditical character," whatever that means. Later in the 19th century, Martin Van Buren was accused of wearing women's corsets (by Davy Crockett, no less) and James Buchanan (who had a congenital condition that caused his head to tilt to the left) was accused of have unsuccessfully tried to hang himself. Oh, and Abraham Lincoln reportedly had stinky feet.

because when you get ticked off you can un-endorse. And Seattlest found something wrong with every candidate.

I voted at the comfort of my dining table and once again did not miss that bit of old school democracy known as the polling place. I'll be away from the blog for most of the day and will return about when the polls close, or -- as they say on KIRO radio -- whenever news breaks.

Tonight I will be assisted by a group of my UW students. They will be hitting the campaign parties and trolling for good quotes. So if you see them, help them out, point them to the important people and say something pithy.

A note to those who may end the day as a losing candidate or campaign manager: All is not lost. Hold on to those campaign signs, they could be a future collectible.