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County race faces recount
Unofficial results give GOP challenger 243-vote lead
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The slim margin in the county Legislature 4th District race has triggered a recount, which is set for Monday, Legislator Brian Beedenbender (D-Centereach) said Thursday.
Unofficial results posted by the Suffolk Board of Elections Tuesday night had Beedenbender, a first-term incumbent in the district that encompasses Middle Country, down by 243 out of 9,537 votes cast to Republican challenger Tom Muratore of Ronkonkoma, a retired Suffolk cop.
"I don't want to concede or discuss life after until I know that it's over," Beedenbender said.
Roughly 600 ballots had been requested leading up to the election, and Beedenbender's campaign had contacted each of those voters, he said, leading the legislator to speculate that he received "a high percentage of absentee voter support.
While theoretically the absentee ballots were included in the Tuesday night count, absentee and other paper ballots have in the past been missed or incorrectly reported, as have the machine tallies themselves. "We've got to hope for something like that," Beedenbender said. The absentee ballots "should have been opened at the polling places, but perhaps there were problems with them."
Muratore did not wish to comment on the election until the Monday recount certified the outcome, according to an aide at his campaign headquarters Thursday afternoon.
Beedenbender had defeated Muratore two years ago with a slim margin of 544 votes, as well as by 74 votes in this September's primary for the Independence Party line, which delivered Beedenbender 632 votes Tuesday.
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