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Lamont Wins Governorship, As Stefanowski Concedes

Jessica Hill
/
AP
Democrat Ned Lamont, left, has won the governor's race in Connecticut. Republican Bob Stefanowski, right, conceded to Lamont by telephone Wednesday morning.

Republican Bob Stefanowski has conceded the Connecticut gubernatorial race to Democrat Ned Lamont.

Stefanowski called in to WPLR’s “Chaz and AJ in the Morning” show just before 9 a.m. He said he had just called Lamont to concede.

“I told him anything I can do to help, you know, we gotta fix this state. I do think we changed the dialogue to at least getting taxes down. You know, we got more votes than any Republican in the history of the State of Connecticut, but they really got the vote out. The Democrats did a better job to get the vote out.”

Stefanowski said Lamont won “fair and square” in a straight-up election.

This marks the second time in eight years that the Connecticut governor’s race failed to be resolved on election night. With a little more than half of the state’s precincts reporting by midnight, Republican Bob Stefanowski had a 5-point lead over Democrat Ned Lamont.

Democratic Secretary of the State Denise Merrill, got onstage at Lamont’s election night headquarters in Hartford to assure Lamont’s supporters not to despair, that all the ballots would eventually be counted.

“We had, believe it or not, wet ballots. We are telling them, ‘Get your hair dryers. Dry them off. Put them back through.’ But in some cases thousands of ballots may have to be hand counted.”

Merrill said Democrats could expect as many as 16,000 votes for Lamont when the New Haven ballots are all counted. Earlier in the day Stefanowski’s campaign had challenged the same day registration of voters in New Haven and Mansfield.

Eight years ago, it took six days for outgoing Democratic Governor Dannel Malloy to be declared governor after ballot problems in Bridgeport.

As WSHU Public Radio’s award-winning senior political reporter, Ebong Udoma draws on his extensive tenure to delve deep into state politics during a major election year.
Davis Dunavin loves telling stories, whether on the radio or around the campfire. He started in Missouri and ended up in Connecticut, which, he'd like to point out, is the same geographic trajectory taken by Mark Twain.