Kym Foster still leads Janice Louthan in the race for Grays Harbor County Clerk after a second count of ballots on Wednesday afternoon. Foster has widened her lead and is now more than 500 votes ahead, 11,929-11,383.

Foster thinks the lead will hold and said she was excited to get to work.

“Now I just have to figure out when I can do some shadowing of the clerk and figure out who my deputy clerk is,” she said. “I’m really thankful for all the support and excited.

“To the percentage that didn’t vote for me, I’m excited to get in and prove to them that I can do it.”

Louthan is hoping the count will swing in her direction.

“I’m a little bit surprised, but it’s very close,” she said. “We’re all together celebrating a clean campaign run to the best of our ability. We’re excited to see a closure to it. And we’re hoping to get a few more votes and look forward to being the county clerk.”

After the primary, Foster, a newcomer to politics without experience in the Clerk’s Office, had a 818-vote lead over Louthan, a longtime Clerk’s Office employee and the current deputy clerk. There were 17,026 votes cast in that election.

While campaigning, Foster pledged to make the office a less foreboding place for the legal and law enforcement community — along with regular old citizens — to do business.

Some Harborites say the office has developed a reputation as off-putting and sometimes unhelpful. An incident two years ago, when the current Clerk Cheryl Brown took advantage of her position inside the office and helped get the word to her pastor that police had an arrest warrant for him, was often a talking point for Foster.

Louthan said Brown’s choices shouldn’t reflect on her and pointed out her decades-long experience in the Auditor’s Office as well as her ability and history working most jobs in the office as strong points.