Update: Arapahoe County still has no election results for SD-26 at this time and county officials do not know how many ballots are left to count. 3:52 p.m.
Update: Apparently media members and campaign staffers are having problems with the live election results on Arapahoe County’s Web site. If you look at the individual races the results look like they show that 100 percent of precincts have been counted even though they haven’t yet. 10:57 a.m.
Update: Arapahoe County has now confirmed that they are still counting 14,000 mail-in ballots, with Republican Clapp currently leading by some 30 votes. Results are expected in the afternoon hours according to the county. Despite victory claims by the Newell camp, the race is still very much up in the air. 10:27 a.m.
Update: The Newell camp is now claiming that they have just found out that an unknown number of mail-in ballots are still being counted in Arapahoe County, saying that the race is still very tight. Stay tuned for more details. 10:16 a.m.
Democrat Linda Newell, running for public office for the first time in the historically Republican Senate District 26 in the southern suburbs of Denver, declared victory in the early morning hours today by a margin of 106 votes.
Current Arapahoe County results are projecting the race for Newell, although provisional ballots are still being counted. State law also allows a recount of the results to take place if the margin of winning votes is less than or equal to one-half of one percent.
However, the Newell campaign is confident that she will have a strong lead among the provisional ballots and will win a recount should it occur.
It is unknown if the Republican challenger and former state House member, Lauri Clapp, has conceded at this time. The Clapp campaign has not returned messages seeking comment.
Newell’s campaign was characterized by a strong ground offensive as The Colorado Independent reported on Monday:
Could countless hours of field work — canvassing door-to-door and making phone calls — be the key to winning a contested Senate seat that had been characterized by Lt. Gov. Barbara O’Brien as a “slam dunk” for Republicans?
Newell thinks so. The single mother and her volunteers say they knocked on more than 37,000 doors since July as part of an elaborate field strategy to defeat Clapp.
…
But if Newell does win, it may end up being one of the most important, and under-reported, stories of Election Day in Colorado, where field work and community organizing — tactics that are often sidestepped by campaigns in favor of advertising spots and consulting fees — turned what was once an un-winnable seat over to a Democrat.
“Don’t let it ever be said that one person’s vote doesn’t matter,” Newell said on Wednesday.
Comments are closed.