Colonie Town Supervisor Paula Mahan has narrowly won a seventh term after absentee ballots were counted Tuesday.
Paula Mahan will be returning to Town Hall — an outcome that was still in doubt on election night. "The people were there for me. I appreciate their support so much, and tomorrow it will be business as usual and we'll just keep moving the town forward."
The Democrat was ahead of GOP challenger George Scaringe on election night by about 62 votes. More than 20,000 were cast in the Albany suburb with a population of roughly 80,000.
The Albany County Board of Elections opened nearly 850 absentee and affadavit ballots on Tuesday. Halfway through the count, Scaringe believed he had lost the election. "When they come back from lunch or going through the bigger CD's let's see where the number goes. If it doesn't go in our direction then we're going to you know, obviously it's not going to happen for me. I had a lot of fun doing this and I ran a good campaign and you know, there's a lot of issues out in Colonie that have to be explored. If the current supervisor doesn't realize what's going on in Colonie then she should not run again, but that's her call, not my call."
Albany County Democratic Chairman Jack Flynn saw the gap widening too, noting everything was going according to plan. "Based on areas that we figured were gonna be Democratic, we're now at the point of the Republican area of the ballot so hopefully we can stay at par. Hopefully if we can come out of these districts 24 through 30, still up by 102, it's almost a slam dunk."
As the day wore on, and Mahan's lead grew, attorneys for both candidates decided they would no longer object to individual ballots, so the count continued by machine.
In the end, Mahan maintained her hundred-plus vote lead over Scaringe. "We've got a lot of things already in the works and we will continue with them. We take a pro-active approach so we're always prepared ahead of time.”
