Dems retain Senate seat

AUGUSTA – With control of the state Senate hanging in the balance, the Democrats won a recount in Senate District 23 on Wednesday. The recount results had Democrat Betheda G. Edmonds with 8,773 votes, actually increasing her margin over Republican David P. Snow of Yarmouth, who had 8,614 votes.

Every Senate race is vital since Democrats and Republicans have 17 seats each with one independent, Sen. Jill M. Goldthwait of Bar Harbor. The only other Senate recount, for District 11, between Democrat incumbent Susan Longley and former Waldo County Sheriff John A. Ford, will be held Thursday morning. Longley has a 63-vote lead in that race.

In the Wednesday District 23 recount, Edmonds saw her margin increase from 82 to 159.

Edmonds will take over the Senate seat vacated by Republican Phillip E. Harriman of Cumberland, who was removed by term limits. Edmonds lost to Harriman in 1998.

At one point on election night, Edmond was 900 votes behind Snow and thought the race was lost. When her hometown of Freeport came in, she finally pulled ahead.

When the final total was announced at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, she said, “I am relieved. I am pleased and I appreciate all the hard work people put in for me. I thought I would win the recount.” Edmonds is a children’s librarian in Yarmouth and credited her 18 years of experience with developing name recognition. She said that knocking on thousands of doors in a campaign to support Social Security and education won her the election.

Snow, a retired investment counselor, said that although he lost his first bid for state office, at least he got more votes in his district than Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush.

Down by 82 votes in a district (Brunswick, Freeport and Yarmouth) with all machine ballots, Snow saw little chance for winning through the recount process. “I didn’t expect to turn it over. But with a 1 percent edge you have to ask for a recount, just in case. The control of the Senate could hang on it. It could be a pivotal situation,” he said.

At 66, Snow said he would consider another run for the State House.

“We will see what kind of shape I am in, in two years, what kind of job she has done. There will be no dearth of candidates for the job. Harriman could be eligible to run again,” he said.

Both candidates said the worst part of the campaign was the dogs. The final tally was Snow, one dog bite, and Edmonds, none.

During the eight-hour recount, Secretary of State Dan Gwadosky thanked his fate for not being involved with the recount ordeal in Florida.

“It couldn’t happen here,” said Gwadosky.

In Maine, the secretary of state’s office designs all the ballots and controls the election process.

In Florida, the counties are free to choose their own ballots and make their own decisions on recounts.

Any recount in Maine is controlled by Gwadosky’s office, not the individual counties, he said.

Deputy Secretary of State Julie Flynn said Maine has banned the now infamous “butterfly ballot,” which has caused so many problems in Florida.

She believed that Sanford was the last community to drop the ballots, in 1996, because of persistent problems.

It is harder to get on the ballot in Maine than in Florida. Part of the confusion in Florida came from having so many names on the presidential ballot, Flynn said.

About 60 percent of Maine communities have adopted the optical scan machine, which makes both tabulation and recounts far simpler, Flynn said. In that system, voters simply fill in an arrow pointing to the candidate, she said. The ballots are read by a system similar to that used in grocery stores.