Photo by Ethan Fry
State Sen. George Logan speaks during Ansonia’s 2018 Veterans Day service.
State Sen. George Logan will be returning to Hartford to represent the 17th District for a second, two-year term.
Unofficial results Wednesday from the last of seven recounts conducted this week show Logan defeated Democratic challenger Jorge Cabrera by 85 votes, according to a Facebook post on Logan’s campaign page.
The Valley Indy will post the vote total when it is available.
“It is an honor and privilege to have this opportunity to represent you in the Senate for another term,” the post read. “I look forward to working with Governor-elect Lamont and his new administration in a bipartisan manner to move CT forward in a way that improves the lives of everyone living and working in CT.”
Logan’s full post is embedded below:
Cabrera said he called Logan to congratulate him Wednesday.
“Of course we’d want a different outcome but it was very close and we’re happy with the work that we put in and the team we assembled,” Cabrera said.
Cabrera said he’d thinking about running for office again — after taking some time off.
“At this point I’m going to relax and enjoy Thanksgiving with my family and probably watch some Netflix with my boys and reassess at the turn of the year,” he said.
The 17th District includes Ansonia, Derby, Beacon Falls, Bethany, Hamden, Naugatuck, and Woodbridge.
Those towns had until Wednesday (Nov. 14) to conduct a state-mandated recount of the Nov. 6 vote, because the final tally was so close.
Logan won on Election Day by just 65 votes.
But the results from the Nov. 6 election weren’t finalized until Nov. 8, after Registrars in Ansonia discovered — through the Logan campaign — that they had initially submitted wrong vote tallies to the secretary of state.
The mistaken vote tally was attributed to a problematic machine and human error.
See the links at the bottom of this story for background.
The mistake highlights problems in the state’s antiquated methods to conduct elections. Click this link to read an editorial from The Hartford Courant suggesting ways to improve the reporting system.
Ansonia did a recount Tuesday — in the presence of a bunch of lawyers and staffers for both political parties and the campaigns.
Cabrera and his supporters held a rally in front of Ansonia City Hall Monday to focus attention on the recount.
He said Wednesday that “the biggest thing for me was to make sure every vote was counted fairly.”
“It wasn’t the result we would have liked, but considering coming from virtually nowhere and coming so close, we have a lot to be happy about,” he said.
Meanwhile, the state’s Election Enforcement Commission voted Wednesday to probe just what happened on Election Day in Ansonia.
The move comes after Ansonia Town/City Clerk Janet Waugh sent a letter to the commission asking for an investigation.
The commission’s staff will conduct a fact-finding mission and write a report for the commission to consider. The pending complaint is filed as 2018-106, and can be tracked by the public through the commission’s website.
There’s no deadline for the investigation to be complete.
When the results were still up in the air, Nick Balletto, the chairman of the Connecticut Democratic party, floated the possibility of a legal challenge.
But after the recount ended Wednesday he issued a statement saying “While this is not the outcome we hoped for, I’m proud that we came so close in such a competitive district.
“Jorge Cabrera ran a great race, and I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of him in the future,” Balletto said.
