Not so fast, Mr. Scannell

Even as Nassau County Legislator Joe Scannell (D-Baldwin) declared victory Election Night over his Republican challenger, Chris Browne, of Rockville Centre, officials from Browne's campaign said they are not conceding, and will instead wait for official results from the Nassau County Board of Elections, which will be recounting the votes of all county races over the next couple of weeks.

“There’s going to be a total recount,” said Doug Diana, Browne's campaign chairman. In unofficial results on the election board’s Web site, Scannell was leading Browne by fewer than 400 votes, 7,103 to 6,729, with all 66 election districts reporting.

Scannell declared victory in the early morning hours of Nov. 4, but Diana said that according to the Board of Elections, there are still absentee and paper ballots to be counted, a process that began Monday afternoon. Diana said he was satisfied with how the Browne team campaigned, but added that without official results, it was too early to make a prediction of the outcome.

“I think we ran a fantastic campaign,” Diana said. “Besides taking on Joe Scannell, we took on the entire Nassau County Democratic Party. We battled everybody.”

Scannell said he was not worried about a recount because he believes he will be the winner. “It's fine with me because we're up by 432 [votes] and I'm declaring victory,” he said, citing numbers from his campaign officials. “I feel very confident. I'm very grateful that the people of the 5th District decided to give me another term. I'm confident that we're gonna win.”

But Don Steinert, assistant to Republican election Commissioner John DeGrace, said that Scannell's victory is not a certainty. When asked if Browne had a chance to win based on the recount, Steinert said, “Yes, that is a possibility.”

Regardless of who prevails in the 5th L.D., Democrats will no longer have the majority in the Legislature come January. Many believed that Browne had the best chance to unseat one of the incumbent Democrats and shift the balance of power to Republicans, but the Democrats were officially done in by a loss in the 7th District, when Republican Howard Kopel defeated longtime incumbent Jeff Toback, a Democrat from Oceanside. And it appeared that Legislator Dave Mejias (D-Farmingdale) lost his 14th District seat to Republican challenger Joseph Belesi by a razor-thin 28-vote margin.

The race for county executive between incumbent Demo-

crat Tom Suozzi and Republican Ed Mangano, meanwhile, is still too close to call (see accompanying story). According to unofficial results, Suozzi is leading Mangano by 107 votes. The outcome of that race may not be known for up to a month, according to senior officials at the county Board of Elections.

Joe Kellard contributed to this story. Comments about it? RVCeditor@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 208.