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EASTCHESTER, N.Y. Sheila Marcotte will keep her seat on the Westchester County Board of Legislators edging out challenger John Fitzpatrick by 39 votes.
Marcotte ran on the Repbulican, Conservative and Independence lines to represent District 10 on the board which covers Eastchester, Tuckahoe and New Rochelle. She confirmed updated tallies posted on the Board of Elections website on Saturday afternoon.
"I am very cautiously claiming victory," she said noting the official tallies will not likely be complete until sometime in December. Multiple efforts to reach Democratic challenger John Fitzpatrick were unsuccessful.
On Election night Fitzpatrick, the former Mayor of Tuckahoe, was leading the race by 275 votes. But results from jammed voting machines in 19 out of the 64 voting districts made the tally incomplete.
A few days later, Marcotte pulled ahead by 47 votes, but there were still over 300 other ballots, such as absentee ballots and emergency ballots that had yet to be counted.
Before the Board of Elections could factor all of the votes in they had to have a county wide impound released in court. That ban was lifted on Monday and the Board of Elections has been working over time all week to get the unofficial final tallies complete. The final tally for District 10, as posted, is Marcotte 4,363 and Fitzpatrick 4,324.
Late Saturday afternoon, Marcotte said she was very happy to retain her seat and expressed her gratitude to everyone in her district regardless of who they voted for." In District 10, there are 2,000 more registered Democrats than there are Republicans," Marcotte said. "So I am very grateful to everyone in the district who voted for me."
Marcotte said that the next hurdle she is facing is hammering out the budget for Westchester County. "There are over $100 million in cuts and a fair amount of lay-offs in the proposed plan" Marcotte said. "We have to look at everything very carefully."
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