19th Senate District: ‘We have to wait to see’

WEST CHESTER » Despite preliminary returns from Election Night that showed her with a substantial lead over her two opponents for the Democratic Party nomination in the 19th state Senate District, West Chester legislator Carolyn Comitta on Wednesday declined to pronounce herself the winner.

Comitta cited outstanding ballots that came through the state’s new “no excuse mail-in” voting system that could ultimately decide the race among

her, Tredyffrin-Easttown School Board member Kyle Boyer and Senate staff member Don Vymazal.

“There are a lot of vote by mail ballots that still have to be counted,” Comitta said in a brief interview by phone. “We can talk about the final results after all the votes have been counted.”

But with her lead in balloting from Tuesday night standing at 55 percent to Vymazal’s 30 percent and Boyer’s 13 percent, Comitta’s fortunes would have to suffer an almost complete reversal for the ultimate outcome to produce a different winner.

“I do feel really good about the returns so far,” the two-term state representative from the West Chester area, and former borough mayor, acknowledged.

In unofficial results from the Chester County Office of Voter Services, Comitta had 8,506 votes from the district’s 117 precincts and early mail-in ballot returns. That compared to Vymazal’s 4,661 votes and Boyer’s 2,112. Comitta thus received more votes than her two opponents for the nomination combined.

Those preliminary vote

totals, however significant, counted mostly in-person voting, and not the complete mail-in balloting that was featured for the first time this election. In the county, almost 90,000 of the county’s 359,000-plus voters asked for a mail-in ballot prior to the May 26 deadline, with 63,681 of those coming from registered Democrats; 71,350 ballots were returned as of 8 p.m. Tuesday.

All vote totals are unofficial until certified by the Chester County Board of Elections. Absentee, provisional, and vote-by-mail ballots will be tabulated Wednesday and Thursday and finalized in the coming days, according to a county spokeswoman.

On Wednesday evening, the county Office of Voter Services updated its ballot counts, showing Comitta widening her lead. With 5,728 votes from in-mail balloting added, the unofficial votes showed Comitta with 11,874 votes, or 56 percent, to Vymazal’s 6,520, or 30 percent, and Boyer trailing with 2,588 votes, or 12 percent.

Neither Vymazal, a government relations and policy director in state Sen. Andy Dinniman’s 19th District Office and Dinniman’s hand-chosen candidate for the seat, who also won the county party’s endorsement, nor Boyer, who also serves as president of

the West Chester NAACP, could be reached for comment Wednesday.

Chester County Democratic Committee Chairman Dick Bingham said in an interview he doubted either of those two men would concede the election to Comitta while there are still outstanding votes to be tallied.

“I am pretty sure everyone is waiting for the final count,” he said, noting that he did not know how many outstanding ballots were from the 19th District. “We have to wait to see how this plays out. We have to wait to look at the numbers.”

The numbers available as of Wednesday show essentially a blow out for Comitta, who had failed to capture the committee’s endorsement in February but who amassed an impressive list of supporters among other county and state elected officials and outside organizations representing a variety of causes — from labor unions to conservationists to women’s groups.

The unusual “coronavirus campaign” began in early February when Dinniman, the three-plus term incumbent state senator from West Whiteland, made the surprise announcement that he had decided not to seek another term to the seat he had held since 2006. He cited a desire to concentrate

on his family life as he enters his late 70s.

The 19th District is the largest of the four state Senate districts in the county, its boundaries holding 40 of the county’s 73 municipalities, from the rural areas of southern and western Chester County to urban areas including Coatesville, West Chester and Phoenixville and suburban strongholds like Tredyffrin and East and West Whiteland. There are 81,269 registered Democrats in the district overall.

Of the district’s 117 precincts, Comitta came out ahead in 79. Vymazal won in 21 precincts, in his hometown of Phoenixville, Schuylkill, and Coatesville, and Boyer in 17 precincts, all on his home turf of Tredyffrin. Comitta won in West Chester, Downingtown, East Bradford, West Bradford, and municipalities across the southern swath of the district, from New Garden to Oxford.

Most tellingly, Comitta defeated Vymazal in all seven precincts in West Whiteland, Dinniman’s home municipality, even though the longtime county legislator showered his staff member with praise as “the only choice to succeed me as state Senator.” Comitta garnered 376 in-person votes to Vymazal’s 145 in the township, or 66 percent to 26 percent.