Recount to be held for several Old Lyme races
Nov. 11—OLD LYME — Close races on the Board of Selectmen and Board of Education, among others, have prompted a recount to be held Monday at 10 a.m. at Town Hall.
Voters on Election Day handed Democrats control of the Board of Selectmen by choosing Martha Shoemaker as first selectwoman and her running mate, Jim Lampos, as selectman.
The two Democrats will make up the majority of the three-member board when they are sworn in later this month.
In Old Lyme, the losing candidate in the first selectman race automatically becomes a candidate for the Board of Selectmen. The move pitted Shoemaker's challenger, Republican John Mesham, against his own running mate, Judith Danenhower Read.
Lampos, with 1,792 votes, was the highest vote-getter among the three candidates for selectman. Read garnered 1,719 votes to Mesham's 1,701.
State election law says a recount is triggered when 20 or less votes separate the candidates.
The recount also affects the school board race, where voters elected Democrats Susan Fogliano, W. Scott Brown and Alexander Lowry. But only four votes separate Lowry's 1,727 votes from Republican Suzanne Thompson's 1,723 votes.
The nine-member school board consists of four-year, staggered terms, four of which were contested last week. As reconstituted on Election Day, the group consists of seven Democrats. Only Republican Christopher Staab and Laura Dean-Frazier, who is unaffiliated voter but was endorsed by the Republicans, represent that party on the board.
In Lyme, Democrat Gavin Lodge unseated two-term Republican Mary Powell-St. Louis for a seat on the regional school board.
Recounts will also affect the Board of Assessment Appeals and the Zoning Board of Appeals alternate races on Old Lyme.
