Yesterday was a long day. For me, it started at the break of dawn when I got up to work the early morning shift at a polling place and ended near midnight with a gathering of HoCo loco bloggers at Clyde’s.
It was an even longer day for the candidates. On my way over to Clyde’s, just a little before 8 PM, I stopped by Ellicott Mills Middle School to see if any of the candidates were still hanging around. The first person I ran into was Courtney Watson . She had also been up at the crack of dawn after working late the night before sending last minute instructions to her volunteers. As it turned out Courtney had the toughest reelection race of any of the council incumbents. Her victory over Repub challenger Bob Flanagan can be largely attributed to a well organized campaign and tireless campaigning on her behalf. Her 950 vote margin (with 89% of the precincts reporting) kept her from declaring victory until around eleven o’clock.
I also ran into three school board candidates at Ellicott Mills. Frank Aquino was mobilizing his folks to begin removing signs. He was pretty upbeat about his day and it turns out that his optimism was well warranted. Frank led the crowded school board field with 17.73% of the vote, followed by his fellow incumbent Sandra French with 17.27%.
As I was getting ready to go over and say hello to David Proudfoot and his wife April, Brian Meshkin came up to me and introduced himself.
“We’ve already met,” I reminded him.
“We have?”
“At least twice,” I told him.
Obviously I didn’t make much of an impression.
Brian, David, and Cindy Vaillancourt are locked in a three way battle for the two remaining seats on the board. At the end of the day Brian seems poised to claim at least one of the two remaining seats with a 804 vote lead over Cindy and a 1,046 vote lead over David. This race will be decided by the five thousand or so absentee and provisional ballots that remain to be counted.
For these three, the longest day continues.
