By Kelsey Durham
A congressional primary between two Republican candidates in northeast Queens is still not officially decided after three unsuccessful weeks of trying to determine a winner, the state Board of Elections said.
Days after the June 24 election, the race between Stephen Labate and Grant Lally, each hoping to unseat U.S. Rep. Steve Israel (D-Melville) in November, was still too close to call before counting the absentee ballots.
After all 661 scanner votes had been tallied, the BOE website showed Lally held a 15-vote lead over Labate as of June 25, before absentee ballots had been opened. After counting absentee ballots, the BOE said earlier this week that the race would be heading to the courtroom to have a judge rule on a group of ballots that Labate’s campaign objected to. But the lawsuit was called off Wednesday after a discontinuance was filed, allowing the three counties represented in the district — Queens, Nassau and Suffolk — to continue their counting process undisturbed, according to the BOE.
The district is made up of towns and villages on Long Island as well as the Queens neighborhoods of Little Neck, Douglaston, Whitestone and Bay Terrace.
Even though the results were still unclear, Lally posted a message to his campaign’s Facebook page July 7 stating that the board had confirmed he won the election and thanked his voters for their support.
“After completing the count of over 500 absentee ballots in New York’s 3rd congressional district, New York’s Board of Elections is certifying Grant Lally as the winner for the Republican nomination!” the post read.
Lally said Wednesday that the message was posted after he received word from the BOE that he had a 19-vote lead over Labate after absentee ballots were counted and he said the BOE had to certify those results by July 9 under state law, which is when the BOE said it was originally expecting all results to be final. But as of Wednesday afternoon, the BOE said it had still only received official county results from Suffolk, although the spokesman said the process was probably being held up by the issuing of the court order earlier in the week.
“At this point, I’ve won the election,” Lally said Wednesday. “I didn’t issue a victory declaration on the basis of nothing.”
A spokeswoman for Labate’s campaign posted a message on his page Tuesday morning saying that 25 absentee ballots had not yet been counted prior to the court hearings.
“The 25 voters whose ballots have yet to be counted deserve to have their voices heard,” the spokeswoman wrote. “The vote is razor thin and we owe it to the voters to ensure that not only were their votes counted, but counted correctly.”
Labate’s campaign did not respond to a request for an additional comment about the status of the results.
Reach reporter Kelsey Durham at 718-260-4573 or by e-mail at kdurham@cnglocal.com.
