East Hampton Town Justice Too Close To Call

On an Election Day that saw Democrats swamp Republican candidates in town-wide races across East Hampton, one race bucked the trend. When votes cast at the ballot box for East Hampton Town Justice, Lisa Rana, the Republican incumbent seeking her fifth four-year term, were counted, she had eked out a 116-vote margin over her Democratic rival, Andrew Strong.

The election will now be determined after the tallying of absentee ballots.

As of Wednesday morning, Rana stood with 3012 votes, just under 51 percent, to Strong’s 2896, or 49 percent. There were two write-in votes cast for unknown candidates.

Strong had started off the long Tuesday evening of vote-counting with a 10 percentage point lead in early returns, but Rana’s numbers kept inching up as more of the town’s 19 districts filed their results.

A majority of the districts in East Hampton filed their results long after almost all of Suffolk County had finished counting their votes.

As an example, at 10:50 PM, while East Hampton still had a majority of its districts not counted, in the towns of Southold, Southampton, Riverhead, and Shelter Island, which total 87 voting districts, all but two had been tallied up.

t.e@indyeastend.com