Lynn recount goes mayor-elect’s way

LYNN – Mayor-elect Judith Flanagan Kennedy kept victory in her grasp at Wednesday’s recount, adding a net gain of three votes to her 27-vote election night edge on Nov. 3, and pledged to reunite the city’s electorate.Well-wishers mobbed Kennedy on Veterans Memorial Auditorium’s stage at 3:33 p.m. as election officials confirmed a 8,053-8,023 final vote tally from the Nov. 3 election.”I never felt comfortable with title ‘mayor-elect’ until now, with 27 votes being so close,” Kennedy said, adding one of her priorities is to reach out to Clancy supporters.”Part of my job (will be) bringing a divided city back together,” she said.Clancy said he did not intend to challenge the recount results.”The system worked perfectly,” he said. “(City Clerk) Mary (Audley) and her staff did a fine job. Statistically the margin was so small we wanted to make sure it was correct.”Kennedy confirmed Clancy shook her hand, congratulated her and made plans to meet right after Thanksgiving to begin transition discussions.Kennedy added 13 votes to her 8,043 election night total, but also lost a vote in Ward 4 and two in Ward 5 for a gain of 10 votes, while Clancy added seven votes to the 8,016 he received on election night, therefore Kennedy added three votes to her final margin.Election commissioners said attorneys for Kennedy and Clancy made 13 challenges during the recount, including one involving nine votes cast in Ward 3, Precinct 4. Audley said the challenges were resolved between attorney Haskell Kassler representing Clancy and William McDermott representing Kennedy without appeals to the four election commissioners.The challenges encompassed the 216 blank ballots cast in the Nov. 3 election and 45 write-in votes, focusing, Audley said, on “voter intent.”The mayor and the mayor-elect have kept a low profile since Nov. 3. Both attended Veterans Day ceremonies in City Hall and Kennedy appeared at a State House event for new mayors hosted by Gov. Deval Patrick.Clancy filed recount petitions last week and retained Kassler, the veteran recount lawyer who helped him prevail in a 1990 legislative recount. Flanagan filed her own recount petitions and hired McDermott.The recount began at 9 a.m. after both attorneys viewed ballot boxes and other election equipment stored since the election in a room near the clerk’s office. Thirty-six counters and tabulators hired by the city conducted the count at tables set up on the stage while high school students designated as runners shuttled ballots from counting tables to tabulating tables. Observers for both sides stood looking over the shoulders of counters and tabulators for the duration of the six-and-a-half-hour recount.Clancy spent most of the day on the stage, occasionally talking to his observers, including members of his office staff and his wife, Beth, who worked as an observer at several different tables. Kennedy arrived in the auditorium shortly before noon and spoke with acquaintances and husband, Kevin, who served as an observer, before leaving and returning by 3 p.m.Audley, at the request of the two attorneys, altered recount procedures from a simultaneous count of precincts in each of the seven wards to a count focusing on one ward at a time.About 30 people sat in the auditorium observing the recount. As the clock ticked past 3 p.m. and the last batch of Ward 7 ballots were counted and cleared from the tables, anticipation filled the auditorium.Kennedy’s supporters gathered on the stage, motioning for her to join them. As excited people pressed around his successor, Clancy stood alone watching for several seconds before making his exit.”I’ll keep running,” he said, by way of offering a cryptic comment encompassing his love of jogging miles on the city’s streets and the four decades of his life he has dedicated to elected office.