Last night, despite the SECB's beer goggles—and wine goggles and whisky goggles—that made us swoon for Dow Constantine and Pete Holmes, a few things were extremely clear: People are sick of City Attorney Tom Carr, nobody is fooled by Susan Hutchison’s claim that she’s a “nonpartisan” (look at her "nonpartisan" friends), and, damn, voters are homophobic in Eastern Washington. But between the electoral tallies, there are other winners and losers in this election.

Labor Unions: Organized labor threw stacks of cash into the campaign to oppose Tim Eyman’s Initiative 1033, which had been leading in polls a month before the election. The unions successfully crushed the measure. Unions also provided 100 percent of the funding for Reform the Port, a PAC to put liberals on the port commission. They pushed through one of their candidates, Rob Holland, despite a nasty opposition campaign from conservative David Doud. Unions will have proven muscle going in Olympia next year, where they can tell legislators to capitulate or risk losing their seats next November.

The Sierra Club: The green pedigree of former Sierra Club chair Mike O’Brien was a launching pad to win a seat on the city council. Despite being outspent three-to-one by the campaign of his opponent, Robert Rosencrantz, and Forward Seattle PAC, voters ignored the fear mongering that a green candidate would toll roads and promote congestion. The same enviro credentials helped put Mike McGinn in the driver’s seat of the mayor’s race, controlling the message from beginning to end. Despite being outspent five-to-one—and losing the endorsements of the establishment, who sought Joe Mallahan as their puppet—McGinn still holds a slight lead. Mallahan, who is supported by giant children, is trailing. The next batch of results will be posted at 4:30 p.m. Here’s McGinn last night at the War Room:

The Tunnel: Even though voters like Mike, that’s no referendum on killing the tunnel project—since he’s softened his opposition. But with City Council President Richard Conlin winning a fourth term on the city council, the tunnel is all but certain. The city council is expected to elect Conlin to a consecutive council presidency, ensuring that he’ll be the most powerful man at city hall while the new mayor gets settled—and Conlin wants a tunnel.

Partisan Politics: Passing Initiative 26 last year, which prevented candidates from listing party preference on the ballot, doesn’t mean King County voters really want nonpartisan races. In the latest polls, voters preferred their "nonpartisan" King County Executive mostly down party lines in favor of Dow Constantine. And Dow won. Voters like partisanship—they just want candidates to scrap about issues like abortion to prove their party allegiances.

The Police and Firefighters Unions: The law-enforcement and fire unions threw their weight behind unsuccessful City Council candidate Jessie Israel, a law-and-order type, who lost handily to incumbent Nick Licata. Licata has a record pushing criminal justice reform and pissing off the police union. The fire-union president, Kenny Stuart, also led the Working for Seattle PAC, which backed Mallahan, but got fined $5,000 by the city’s ethics commission for breaking election law. And for all their dirty campaigning, Mallahan is down—he could rise again, sure—and his numbers are low for the mayoral candidate with five times the money of his opponent and the backing of the law-enforcement and fire unions. The Seattle Police Officers’ Guild also threw their weight behind City Attorney Tom Carr, an endorsement that was worth fuck-all in the end. Both unions backed Robert Rosencrantz’s third bid for city council—but the third time was not a charm.

Radical Right: Republicans lost big—both in a big “nonpartisan” race where a Republican's true colors bled across the ballot, and two state initiatives that pitted liberals against conservatives. Tim Eyman’s I-1033, a government-starving measure popular among conservatives, got smashed. Meanwhile, the Christian extremists who put the state's domestic-partnership-expansion law on the ballot hoped that by casting Referendum 71 as gay marriage—claiming it would teach kids about gayness in schools, no less—they would elicit the flood of homophobic votes that passed Prop 8 in California last year and approved Question 1 in Maine last night. But it didn’t work. Voters are narrowly approving R-71—not by much, but approving it nonetheless—and as a result, gay organizing in Washington has never been stronger.

Gay Marriage: Actual marriage is still a long way off. In Maine we lost, and the map below shows where strength lies for approving R-71. The green counties approved the measure; the yellow-bellied counties rejected it.

Opportunism: Candidates who ran because they had a quarter-million dollars laying around didn't win the victories that their money suggests they would, initiative profiteers who tried to dupe the public found that voters aren't that stupid, and folks who think they can hide behind nonpartisanship got trounced.