Race hits close to home for local politicians

Monroe County residents Brian O'Neill and Jeff Ellington know what it's like to be in the shoes of Vice President Al Gore and Texas Gov. George W. Bush. Four years ago, the two men -- and their constituents -- went through an extremely close election. The results weighed heavily on factors similar to the recount and absentee ballot situations delaying the outcome of this year's presidential election.\nDemocrat O'Neill, now county commissioner, and Republican Ellington, who was elected to his second term on the Monroe county council Tuesday, got a taste of the recount process in 1996 when they were opponents for a seat on the Monroe County Council.\nAn evening of watching and waiting ended with Ellington as the loser Election Day. O'Neill went to sleep a winner by over 100 electronically counted votes. Despite congratulations from friends and campaign workers, O'Neill went to bed with a feeling the race was not over -- more than 3,000 absentee ballots had yet to be counted. First thing the next morning, he called the clerk's office for the final results. True to O'Neill's suspicions, Ellington was the winner by a margin of only eight votes.\nO\'Neill\'s campaign called for a recount, in part due to what it saw as discrepancies on the absentee ballots. O'Neill said many of the ballots did not meet election law requirements, such as a signatures on the ballot and the mailing envelope or two sets of initials validating the ballot from the clerk's office. In addition, the two candidates were competing for the seventh seat on a County Council with the other six seats divided evenly between Democrats and Republicans.\nThe recount results still reported O'Neill as the loser. A Monroe County judge was called in to decide if the standards used by the recount commission were legally valid. The entire process took almost four months and the judge's final decision had O'Neill down by four votes. At that point, O'Neill conceded the election.\n"It wasn't fair to prolong the process any longer," he said. \nBoth candidates look back on the process as expensive and time consuming. O'Neill had to be present while the ballots were recounted and both sides had to foot the bill for lawyers.\nThe County Council race against O'Neill was the first of two victories Ellington has had to defend. In 1998, his opponent for District 60 State Representative, Jerry Bales, called for a recount. Ellington calls the whole experience "expensive, time-consuming and frustrating."\n"Basically what happens is you sue the person who won and you sue the voters," Ellington said. "I had to go to court and defend myself. It's just like a car accident -- it's not your fault but you have to defend yourself."\nWaiting for the counting of absentee ballots, and eventually a recount, made the campaign a difficult one for all involved.\n"It makes things harder on the candidates and on their supporters and on the voters," O'Neill said. "Anything that throws in to doubt the outcome of the election is not, of course, a very good development for the community. It tends to undermine the authenticity of elected officials. I think elected officials like to go into office with some sense of having a mandate from the public saying they definitely want you to serve." \nA similar situation happened to Frank McCloskey, chair of the Monroe County Democratic Party, when he ran for his first term as U.S. Representative for the Eighth District in 1984. McCloskey went to bed on election night winning by 11 votes. He woke up and was told he was a loser. Four or five hours later, he was a winner once again. A recount process took place in all counties of the district and McCloskey was officially given the seat. McCloskey said he hopes the results of the presidential race will come to fruition more quickly.\n"Hopefully they'll get it out of the way as soon as possible. I don't think the American public can stand the uncertainty," he said. "Nationally speaking, it's come down to one vote. Hopefully in the future this will cause people to realize voting is important and this will most likely develop a scrutiny of the Electoral College process." \nWatching the Gore/Bush results Tuesday night was a flashback for Ellington.\n"It's mentally frustrating," he said. "It's like playing the lottery. You've got five of the six numbers and you can't see the last number until something's taken out of your line of sight. You have a feeling about it, but you're not sure."\nThe experiences of 1996 help O'Neill to sympathize with local candidates in addition to Gore and Bush.\n"You put so much work and energy and resources into a campaign," he said. "The one thing you want on that Election Day is some closure, whether it's learning to live with being defeated or assuming a new responsibility. It makes it a lot tougher when you think it's going to be over but in fact it's not"