YAKIMA, Wash. -- A rematch of last year’s hotly contested 14th District state House election could be brewing; Democrat Vickie Ybarra is pondering another run.

Last year Ybarra, the president of the Yakima School Board, lost to State Rep. Norm Johnson, then a Yakima city councilman. The 53 percent to 47 percent result was the closest a Democrat had come to winning in the 14th in since 1994.

I wrote a story late last week about Michele Strobel, who owns a Selah cosmetics company, considering challenging Johnson as a Republican. I called Ybarra at the time to see whether she’d given another run any thought -- called all five of the other candidates from last year’s primary, actually.

She didn’t get back to me in time for that story, but she left a message.

“Let’s see, the question was, ‘Have I given any thought to running?’ Yes I have,” Ybarra said in the message. “That’s an option that I’ve considered since last run.”

I checked back with her late this morning, and she still feels that way. A lot of factors -- particularly whether she wants to try juggling family life, school board duties and her job as a Yakima Valley Farm Workers Clinic administrator -- will go into her decision. She expects to decide sometime after the first of the year.

She has previously mentioned a desire to finish her term on the school board, which expires in 2011 and would have to be cut short by a year if she were elected to the Legislature.

Also, the conservative-candidate sweep in this year’s Yakima City Council elections could dampen her prospects. But Ybarra said she wants to break down that election’s voter patterns before deciding how much stock to put into that.

“Certainly, looking at the current political landscape is important,” she said.

- Pat Muir