Oregon Public Broadcasting

Two weeks after Election Day, Washington Lands Commissioner Doug Sutherland has conceded defeat.

The two-term Republican Tuesday acknowledged that he won’t be able to close the 20,000 vote gap on Democratic challenger Peter Goldmark. Olympia correspondent Austin Jenkins reports.

Sutherland clearly wanted a third term as Washington’s lands commissioner – managing nearly six million acres of public lands.

He accuses Democrat Goldmark of running a campaign that re-opened battle lines between the timber industry and environmentalists.

Doug Sutherland: “What I saw from my opponent was almost a complete negative campaign and utilizing those kind of environmental issues once again that I thought we had put a lot of that behind us, but obviously not the case.”

Sutherland believes key factors that cost him the election were the Obama surge and a Seattle Times photo of mudslides on a Southwest Washington clear cut.