Aresimowicz Facing A Recount

Gagliardi In Close Race With House Speaker In 30th District

BERLIN — An automatic recount will be done in the 30th district race, where a late-entry candidate is 37 votes behind House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz.

“Recounts are automatic if the margin is within one half of one percent or within 20 votes. That would seem to be the case here,” Gabe Rosenberg, spokesman for the Secretary of the State’s office said Wednesday. Any margin beyond 59 votes in this race would not trigger an automatic recount.

The unofficial totals on the district that includes parts of Berlin and Southington give Aresimowicz 5,892 votes and challenger Mike Gagliardi 5,855 votes.

Registrars in the district towns will be notified by state election officials to schedule a recount once the voting results are certified official.

The recount is an unusual end to an unusual race. Aresimowicz, a Berlin Democrat who is leader of the state House, was nearly defeated by a novice challenger who entered the race in mid-October, three weeks before Election Day.

Gagliardi, of Berlin stepped up to fill the GOP slot that the original candidate Steve Baleshiski, a college student from Southington, quit after public outcry over his anti-Islam and other strident online posts that prompted Berlin and Southington Republican leaders to withdraw support of his candidacy.

Some of the earliest absentee ballots were mailed prior to Baleshiski’s departure from the race. Any absentee votes for him will not be counted and have no impact on the race or recount, Southington Republican Registrar Robert Sherman said Wednesday.

“Those votes don’t exist. He’s a non-candidate,” Sherman said.

Rosenberg said the recount must start no later than five business days after the election. That means the deadline to begin the recount is Wednesday. Nov. 14.

“It doesn’t have to end then,” he said, although “they generally take hours, not days.”

Gagliardi, 47, a supervisor of a West Hartford pharmacy who never ran for any office before, has the option of stopping the automatic recount. But he decided to go ahead with it after discussing the issue Tuesday night with party leaders in Berlin and Southington.

“We feel we owe it to the voters to go ahead with a recount,” Berlin Republican Town Committee Chair Anne Reilly said Wednesday.

Aresimowicz said Wednesday he’s not opposed to a recount. But he is confident he will remain the winner after the recount. He said the modern technology used to read ballots and tabulate results are usually very accurate.

“With modern technology, results rarely change more than a vote or two,” he said. He was first elected to the 30th district in 2004, having served three terms on Berlin’s town council prior to seeking state office.