The Clark County auditor oversees elections, audits county agencies and issues marriage licenses, making the race to succeed Greg Kimsey a contest over a broad county office. Mitchell Kelly, a longtime staffer in the auditor's office, held an early lead Tuesday over former county councilor Eileen Quiring O'Brien in the county's first open race for the position in nearly three decades, according to OPB.
Early returns Tuesday night showed Kelly ahead. At 9:30 p.m., OPB reported Kelly with more than 56% of the vote to Quiring O'Brien's 43%; The Columbian reported a 57%-to-43% split. Clark County election results were expected to be updated Wednesday as more ballots were counted.
Kelly is a financial reporting manager in the auditor's office, while Quiring O'Brien is a former Clark County councilor and Oregon state lawmaker, according to OPB.
The office's budget and responsibilities
Clark County's 2025 General Fund baseline operating budget listed the Auditor at $4,895,122, or 2.35%, according to the county's adopted-budget presentation. That figure provides a funding measure for an office with election, auditing and licensing responsibilities, but it does not give a staffing count to compare with those duties.
Two Very Different Pitches to Voters
Kelly has framed his candidacy as continuity with a communication upgrade, saying he hopes to improve how the auditor's office talks to the public so residents can better understand the election process. It's a pitch built on his years inside the department rather than a promise to overhaul it.
Quiring O'Brien took the opposite approach, campaigning on a promise to reform the auditor's office and pledging to lead an outside audit of it if elected. She also said the county's voter rolls needed to be cleaned to remove excess voters who had moved or died, per the same account from OPB.
Election Anxiety Shadowed the Campaign
The race played out against a backdrop of real unease about how smoothly Clark County's elections actually run. The auditor's office faced concerns that ballots might not be counted because of USPS mail-processing delays, a worry that hung over the contest even as both candidates campaigned on restoring confidence in the office itself.
That scrutiny followed a 2024 incident in which an incendiary device damaged hundreds of Clark County ballots after it was dropped into a Vancouver ballot box shortly before the election, according to The Seattle Times. The stakes of close elections in the county are also reflected in Democrat Adrian Cortes' 172-vote win to flip Washington's 17th Senate seat that year.
A separate ballot-box fire in Portland
A ballot-box fire at Southeast Morrison Street in Portland on Oct. 28, 2024, was a separate incident from the Vancouver fire. KATU, in a report published by KPIC, reported that three ballots were damaged in Portland and most of the ballots were recovered.
Statehouse Races Add Scrutiny
Clark County includes some or all of the 17th and 18th Legislative Districts, where four statehouse seats were being targeted by Democrats this year, adding extra scrutiny to how the county's elections office performs. The auditor's race itself was far from a foregone conclusion heading into Tuesday: August primary results had shown Kelly and Quiring O'Brien separated by less than 1 percent of votes cast, a margin that made Tuesday's wider early lead for Kelly notable.
Whoever ultimately wins inherits an office that now sits under a brighter spotlight than it has in years, overseeing not just the mechanics of voting but the public trust that comes with it. Final results were expected to firm up as Clark County continued tallying ballots into the following days.
