State Sen. William Brownsberger, the Senate’s third in command, and his opponent are preparing for a potential recount in this weeks election after unofficial results show the candidates separated by a margin of less than two dozen votes.
The final vote counts aren’t official yet in the state Senate’s Suffolk & Middlesex race, which covers parts of Boston, Cambridge, Watertown and Belmont, and it’s not clear who will emerge with the most votes in the first count.
Brownsberger submitted his petition for a recount to Belmont Thursday morning, according to Belmont’s town clerk Ellen Cushman. Meanwhile, challenger Daniel Lander filed paperwork with the state’s Office of Campaign & Political Finance to form a fund for the recount process.
Belmont is now in the process of certifying the signatures on Brownsberger’s petition.
“At this point, we are making preparations to make sure we’re ready if a recount is necessary,” Brownsberger told GBH News over text.
Vote totals from the Associated Press have Brownsberger trailing Lander by three votes as of Wednesday afternoon.
But unofficial results from the cities and towns in the Suffolk & Middlesex District shared with GBH News show Brownsberger with an 18-vote lead, 12,164 to 12,148.
In Belmont, clerk Cushman said there are still seven provisional ballots that need to be evaluated and possibly counted. Other election officials could not immediately tell GBH News how many votes may still need to be counted.
No matter what, the official totals are almost certain to end up within a 0.5% margin — which means that either candidate has the right to request a district-wide recount.
The race is widely viewed as a proxy war between Boston Mayor Michelle Wu and the state Legislature. Wu is backing Lander, her former aide, in an effort to oust the longtime incumbent. Brownsberger did not support her plan to temporarily shift more of the city’s property tax burden onto commercial owners, which Wu has argued would shield homeowners from dramatic bill increases. The state’s legislative branch would have needed to approve the plan.
After the public clash, Wu threw her support behind not only Brownsberger’s opponent but the challenger of another Boston state senator, Sen. Nick Collins, who also opposed her plan.
Collins prevailed in his primary with 54% of the vote, beating out two candidates.
