Council election results unchanged after recount

The raw numbers have changed somewhat, but the results of the Long Beach City Council election remained the same after a Nassau County Board of Elections recount on Tuesday.

After the board rechecked the voting machines and counted approximately 467 absentee ballots, Republican incumbent John McLaughlin remained the top vote getter in the at-large election, with 3,764. Democrat Mike Fagen kept his second-place spot with 3,723 votes, and Democrat Len Torres remained in third with 3,655.

Democrat Fran Adelson, who originally trailed Torres by 20 votes, ended up 11 votes behind him, with 3,644. Republican Maureen Doherty, garnered 3,593 votes, putting her 62 behind Torres, and Republican Marvin Weiss had 3,503.

Don Steinert, the board’s assistant to Republican Commissioner John DeGrace, said that registered Democrats returned 265 of the absentee ballots, registered Republicans submitted 142 and a mix of independents and members of the Conservative and Working Families parties returned just over 50.

With McLaughlin’s victory, the Republicans retained a 3-2 majority on the council that includes Thomas Sofield Jr. and Mona Goodman. “This is now the third time in the past four elections that the voters have maintained the Republican-endorsed coalition majority in the city,” said Long Beach Republican leader Jim Moriarty, “which is a pretty amazing feat in a Democratic town.”

Democratic leaderMichael Zapson, meanwhile, is maintaining that his party will challenge the recount. “Every vote counts,” Zapson said. “We have to make sure it’s right. There’s certainly enough votes for Len Torres to overtake McLaughlin and get a four-year term, and there’s enough votes for Adelson to overtake McLaughlin. So we’ve got to challenge them all and see how it goes.”

Zapson estimated that there may be another 150 ballots that have yet to be opened because objections have been raised for one reason or another. For his part, Moriarty said he does not believe the Democrats have a chance to recapture the majority. “Clearly, McLaughlin has a significant enough lead that the recount won't change anything,” he said. “A Democrat would have to get literally every single one of those votes ... And we don’t know yet how many number of challenged ballots there are. It would be different if there were actually 75 or 100.”

As the Herald went to press on Wed. Nov. 18, the Board of Elections said that there were 200 challenged ballots Nassau County-wide.

It is also counting more than 8,000 paper ballots cast for either County Executive Tom Suozzi or his Republican challenger, Ed Mangano, and reviewing the results of other close races.

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