By Gretchen Webster

Most everything was going like clockwork this afternoon on Election Day, with new tabulating equipment at the town’s polls and sunny weather outside. But the unusual number of candidates for first selectman – three – and their political makeup, made for some uncertainty for those campaigning and voting at the polls.

“I don’t think anybody has a clue who’s going to win” the first selectman race, said State Representative Jonathan Steinberg, who was outside the polls at Greens Farms Elementary School, campaigning for Democrat Kevin Christie. “I haven’t a clue.”

And John Suggs, also outside Greens Farms School, agreed. He was campaigning for Independent Party first selectman candidate David Rosenwaks. “It’s so hard to predict,” he said. “They were all registered Democrats before,” he said of the three first selectman candidates, Christie, Rosenwaks, and Don O’Day.

But Kirstin Ogorman, standing outside the school displaying a “Vote for Don O’Day” sign, had a different view. “Of course they’re going to win,” she said of O’Day and his running mate, selectwoman Andrea Moore. “Experience matters.”

Over at the District 9 polls in the Westport Library, Rosenwaks was campaigning with his wife Liz, and their 7- and 9-year-old daughters. “I think it’s a close race,” Rowenwaks said. He said he knows “there are forces working against me, that’s a typical response where you’re a third party candidate. But we’re above the fray,” he said.

Another candidate’s family members outside the library polls – Tom and Donny O’Day – had been campaigning for their father, Don O’Day, at various locations since 6 a.m., said Tom O’Day. “Obviously I think he will win,” he said of his father.

At both the library and school polls, there were reports that residents had been coming to vote steadily all day. At Greens Farms School, poll moderator Vera Shanov reported that voting had been steady during the day, but she expected that tabulators that count the ballots inserted into the machine would help make the vote counting  quicker. 

Every poll worker in Westport was also using laptop computers to check voters in as they came in to vote, as well as using a paper list as is required. “We haven’t had a single problem with the new equipment, “ the poll moderator said. She expected that the new equipment as well as a large number of early voters would help the results be finished more quickly.

That’s not necessarily true, however, reported Registrar Deborah Greenberg, as she was working on election procedures in Town Hall in the afternoon. The early voting ballots, and absentee ballots, which were not inserted into the new tabulators will still take time to count, she said. “And we can’t count them until 8 o’clock.”

Gretchen Webster

^{_{Gretchen Webster, a Fairfield County journalist for many years, has reported for the daily Greenwich Time and Norwalk Hour, the weekly Westport News, Fairfield Citizen and Weston Forum. She was editor of the Fairfield Minuteman for ten years. She has won numerous journalism awards over the years, and taught journalism at New York University and Southern Connecticut State University.}}