PORT ANGELES — Connie Beauvais may give the Port of Port Angeles commission its first-ever female majority in 2016 if her strong lead holds in the race for the District 3 seat that represents Clallam County’s West End.

Election Night returns from the Clallam County Auditor’s Office showed Beauvais, 64, of Joyce, leading Michael Breidenbach, 63, a Forks City councilman, 6,564 votes to 4,759 Tuesday night, a roughly 58 percent to 42 percent margin.

The winner will replace retiring Commissioner John Calhoun of Forks and join sitting commissioners Jim Hallett of Port Angeles and Colleen McAleer of Sequim.

“I am very pleased with the numbers and I am anxious to get to work,” Beauvais told Peninsula Daily News.

“We have an airport to open and an executive director to hire,” she said after learning of early tallies at the Clallam County Courthouse.

Breidenbach, reached at his home, called the difference in votes “a little bit of a stretch right now. It will be pretty interesting to see how that ties up.”

Thousands of votes are outstanding.

The Clallam County Auditor’s Office counted 13,761 ballots on Tuesday night out of 47,481 mailed to registered voters, for a voter turnout of 29 percent in the all-mail election, Auditor Shoona Riggs said.

Another 3,998 ballots were processed but not counted Tuesday, and perhaps 2,000 to 3,000 more were placed in drop boxes and await processing, she said.

More ballots are likely to arrive in the mail. The next count will be by 4:30 p.m. Friday. Final results will be certified Nov. 24.

Beauvais had led candidates in the Aug. 4 primary election, capturing about 33 percent of the vote to Breidenbach’s nearly 25 percent, Lee Whetham’s roughly 23 percent and Rick Robinson’s approximately 20 percent.

Each port commissioner is eligible for up to $114 per day for port-related activities for up to 96 days a year, or $10,944, and a salary of $254 a month for a maximum annual monetary compensation of $13,992; plus medical, dental, vision, long-term disability and life insurance.

Commissioners control a general fund budget that in 2015 is pegged at $7.5 million and covers 44 full-time-equivalent positions.

Faces full schedule

As they enter 2016, port commissioners must replace Executive Director Ken O’Hollaren, who resigned Oct. 28 after heading the port staff since August 2013.

He will depart Dec. 31 for a position in private industry. Karen Goschen, the port’s finance director, will serve as interim director.

Commissioners also will supervise restoring and subsidizing passenger air service to William R. Fairchild International Airport on March 1, when SeaPort Airlines is scheduled to provide five flights on weekdays to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, three flights on Saturdays and Sundays.

The port also will continue improvements at its marine terminals, although commissioners largely will relinquish control to a nonprofit corporation of the 25,000-square-foot Composites Recycling Technology Center being finished at the airport.

New industrial area

However, they will continue to seek tenants for the Marine Trades Industrial Park that will result from cleaning up the petroleum-polluted 19-acre former KPly mill site, 439 Marine Drive, also known as PenPly.

The port, which expects to be reimbursed by the site’s polluters and the port’s own insurers, has spent $7.2 million on the cleanup, roughly twice its original estimated cost due to unexpectedly broad and deep deposits of polluted soil which is being trucked to Bremerton, then shipped by rail to an Oregon landfill.

The site is expected to be a prime area to attract marine trades to the Port Angeles harborfront with commissioners anticipating — but not naming — industries that could complement the existing nearby Westport Shipyard and Platypus Marine Inc.

A Beauvais victory likely would come too late to avoid the marina moorage fee increase she opposes. Hallett and Calhoun approved modest rate hikes rate hike a week ago, outvoting McAleer.

Beauvais also may face frustration in her pledge to manage port staff more closely, a position likewise shared by McAleer.

The difficulty with commissioners’ doing so is that any two of them in consultation constitute an official meeting that must be open to the public, making administrative tasks cumbersome.

Beauvais, manager of the Crescent Water Association and co-owner with her husband Jim of an alpaca farm, also served on the Clallam County Charter Review Commission and serves on the Clallam County Planning Commission.

Breidenbach is a retired West Coast senior manager for Rayonier.

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Reporter James Casey can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5074, or at jcasey@peninsuladailynews.com.