Jahana Hayes declares victory in hotly contested 5th Congressional District

After a day of nervously watching super-tight election results, U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes on Wednesday night declared victory over Republican challenger George Logan in Connecticut’s most hotly contested Congressional race.

“This was a hard-fought race that was unfortunately fueled by millions of dollars in outside spending. But ultimately, the people of this district are the ones to decide who their representative will be – not national Super PACs,” Hayes said in an emailed statement at 7 p.m.

State officials had held out the possibility of a recount all day because the results were so close, and said they were waiting for final results from the town of Salisbury. At dinnertime, Salisbury posted its totals backing Hayes — with enough margin that state officials said a recount won’t happen.

In a race where more than 250,000 residents cast ballots, Hayes won by 1,842 votes, according to the Secretary of the State. If the margin had been less than about 1,250, a recount would have been automatic.

There was no immediate response from the Logan camp, which had been predicting either outright victory or a recount.

The race is a factor in control of Congress and also represented Republicans’ only chance to win a major office in Connecticut this year, since voters rejected the rest of their ticket.

The 5th District lead went back and forth repeatedly since Election Night, and by late afternoon both sides had fallen silent about the outcome. Privately, they acknowledged frustration at delays in absentee ballot counting in some of the district’s 41 towns and cities.

Logan was ahead throughout the morning, but by early afternoon Hayes took the lead with a margin of just 398 votes. A slow progression of absentee ballot results on Wednesday afternoon widened the gap.

A factor that proved to be critical was third-party endorsements. Hayes landed the backing of the Working Families Party, and by late Wednesday it had brought her 3,922 votes. By comparison, Logan’s endorsement from the Independent Party yielded just 2,467.

That difference — 1,455 votes — made up the vast bulk of Hayes’ win.

On Election Night, both candidates had called on their supporters for patience — and then went silent. Surrogates gave optimistic statements Wednesday morning, but then the campaigns, too, stopped talking publicly.

“We’re closely monitoring the vote count, but given the results reported by the Secretary of State we’re confident that after all the votes are counted we believe George Logan will be the next congressman from Connecticut’s 5th Congressional District,” senior Logan aide Liz Kurantowicz said in an email at mid-day.

“We are looking good. We said all along this would be by the shortest of margins,” Logan told cheering supporters late on Election Night. “I believe we’re going to pull this out, but it’s going to take a little while.”

The race was the Republicans’ best shot to elect the first GOP congressman in Connecticut in 16 years.

Democrats had a strong showing in the Northwest Corner, where Hayes won — in some cases, very widely — in Sharon, Cornwall, Falls Village, Salisbury, Norfolk and Kent. Logan won only a relatively narrow victory in a single Northwest town: Canaan.

Hayes also took the Farmington Valley, winning Avon, Farmington, Simsbury and Canton while losing only Burlington.

In both cases, those were towns where long-time Republican Rep. Nancy Johnson won re-election time after time. Without capturing more of those middle-class and more affluent suburbs, Logan faced a tough challenge: There weren’t enough votes in hard-right towns like Thomaston and Wolcott to overcome those losses.

Republicans appeared to have narrowed Hayes’ vote count in the big cities that traditionally roll up huge margins for Democrats. But privately, Republicans acknowledged that Logan’s numbers in the suburbs and small towns weren’t breaking more convincingly for them.

The 5th District covers most of the Farmington Valley, the Northwest Corner, New Britain, Meriden, Danbury, parts of Torrington and Waterbury, and numerous towns in the central Naugatuck Valley.