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Campaigns gear up for recounts, runoff – Yahoo! News
Nearly a week since Election Day, the fate of six House and Senate races remained unclear Monday as heated recounts and a runoff were underway in contested races across the country.
In Georgia, Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R) was gearing up for an intense runoff against Democrat Jim Martin after the Republican failed to cross the 50-percent mark. Voters were scheduled to revisit the polls on Dec. 2, but early voting could start next week.
Republican presidential nominee John McCain was scheduled to return to the campaign trail to stump for Chambliss on Thursday, following up a visit from Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) on Wednesday. The Chambliss campaign also extended invites to GOP stars Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani and Mike Huckabbee.
Martin reached out to Barack Obama’s camp in hopes that the president-elect would stump for him, but so far has not gotten a response.
“The request has been made. Obviously president-elect Obama is immersed in a full set of challenges that go beyond the Georgia Senate race,” Martin spokesman Matt Canter said. “His campaign team has been a tremendous help, and they are reaching out to help us on a daily basis.”
The Democrat, whose Election Day numbers were boosted by an increase in black turnout, currently is running ads tying himself to Obama. Chambliss, meanwhile, recently began airing a spot hitting Martin on taxes.
After a toughly fought general election, the question for both campaigns was whether they have the money to run at full speed for the next three weeks.
Chambliss spokeswoman Michelle Grasso said the campaign’s fundraising operation “has been in overdrive” preparing for the runoff, though she would not say how much cash the campaign has on hand. Chambliss has made appeals to leading national conservatives, including radio talk host Hugh Hewitt, to help him attract donors from outside the state.
“We have been very aggressive,” Gasso said. “Hopefully you won’t be able to listen to the radio or turn on television without seeing the senator.”
Canter insisted that the Martin campaign “will have the resources to stay on the air through the election,” but he conceded that doing so “will take all the resources we can muster.”
In Minnesota, incumbent Republican Sen. Norm Coleman and former comedian Al Franken, the Democratic nominee, were headed for a recount. Franken picked up ground on Coleman due to an apparent typo — a Pine County official accidentally entered 24 votes for Franken instead of 124 when tallying the county's final vote — and now trails by 204 votes out of more than 2.9 million cast. The difference is well within the one half of one percentage point margin that triggers an automatic, by-hand recount.
Republicans have alleged improprieties in St. Louis County, where in one precinct both Franken and Coleman netted an extra 100 votes in recanvassing. A county election spokeswoman speculated that the county board of elections misheard the original numbers.
The Coleman campaign is pushing Franken to exercise his option to decline the recount, citing an estimated $86,000 cost to taxpayers, but the Democrat has refused to do so.
“Minnesota has a history of fair and clean elections, and we are committed to ensuring that this election is no different,” Coleman campaign manager Cullen Sheehan said. “That is why it is so troubling to us that instead of the normal slight changes in vote totals one would expect during this process, we are now seeing huge chunks of votes appearing and disappearing — statistically dubious and improbable shifts that are overwhelmingly accruing to the benefit of Al Franken.”
Franken spokesman Andy Barr said that Coleman’s allegation of improprieties “doesn’t really hold water.”
“As recanvassing happens, the totals shift,” he said. “It happens in every election.”
The Minnesota Secretary of State will start on automatic hand recount after certifying the election on Wednesday. December 19 is the target date for ending the recount.
Once the recount starts, neither campaign knows what to expect.
“It’s impossible to know how this will turn out,” Barr said. “The one thing we do know is that thanks to our election laws, every vote is going to be counted, so whoever ends up winning will have gotten the most votes.”
Alaska Republican Sen. Ted Stevens, meanwhile, still clings to a thin margin over former Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich, a Democrat. Few thought Stevens could hold his Senate seat after he was convicted nine days before the election on seven counts of corruption, but the longest-serving GOP senator currently holds a 3,257-vote lead with 99 percent of precincts reporting.
While it was widely assumed last week that Stevens would hang on to the lead, some are now questioning whether the remaining ballots will break his way.
Analyst Nate Silver wrote Friday in a post on his blog that he believes Begich still has a path to victory.
“Although Ted Stevens currently holds a lead of approximately 3,200 votes in ballots counted to date in Alaska's senate contest, there is good reason to believe that the ballots yet to be counted — the vast majority of which are early and absentee ballots — will allow Mark Begich to mitigate his disadvantage with Stevens and quite possibly pull ahead of him,” Silver wrote.
Democrats currently hold 57 of the 100 Senate seats, but the party is still aiming to win some of the remaining three races and pushing closer to a filibuster proof majority of 60.
House Democrats have netted 20 seats, but are waiting on the results from Virginia’s 5th District, California’s 4th District and Ohio’s 15th District, each of which remain too close to call and could be headed to recounts.
Democrat Tom Perriello declared victory Friday in his race against Republican Rep. Virgil H. Goode in Virginia’s 5th District, although no news outlet or state election observer has called the race.
The Democrat's lead stood at 745 votes, but that could change as some precincts were recanvassed on Monday. Both camps were bracing for a recount when the Democrat called the race in his favor.
“With the votes in and the extensive bipartisan canvass process effectively complete, the results are clear: Virginians want change in Washington to get this economy turned around,” Perriello said. “I am proud and humbled to be elected as the next congressman from the 5th District of Virginia.”
Goode, though, gave no indication that he will concede. He continued to point to reports of voting irregularities and to the remaining, uncounted provisional and military ballots.
“Any declarations of winners and losers in this race is premature,” Goode said in a statement. “This contest is undeniably close, the vote totals have greatly varied back and forth since Election Night, and the official counting process is still ongoing.”
The vote will not be certified until November 24, at which point the losing campaign has 10 days to call for a state-funded recount if the margin between the two candidates is .5 percent or smaller. Unless totals change dramatically, the difference in the race will fall well within a half of a percent.
“The vote totals continue to move, and these types of changes are precisely why no one should call the result until the state board of elections makes it official,” a Goode spokesman said Monday, adding that he hopes it will be Perriello who ends up calling for the recount after declaring the race over.
Republican Tom McClintock is clinging to a 709-vote lead over Democrat Charlie Brown in their race for California's 4th District, a seat left vacant by the retirement of Republican Rep. John Doolittle. Both campaigns have hired lawyers and poll observers for what likely will be a nasty wrangle for each contestable vote in the upcoming recount. And both are reaching out for additional funds after tearing through their campaign war chests in the closing weeks of the election.
“We are scrambling to keep a legal presence in all the counties that are counting ballots, and the estimated cost is going to run over $100,000,” McClintock wrote in an email to supporters this weekend.
Ohio’s 15th District may not be decided for more than a week as local election officials awaited the arrival of provisional ballots. Republican Steve Stivers hangs on to lead of 149 votes — out of more than 250,000 cast — over Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy.
Alaska’s at-large House seat also remained uncalled Monday, though Republican Rep. Don Young’s 51.5- percent to 44.3-percent lead made it unlikely he would lose his to Democrat Ethan Berkowitz.
Rep. Dave Reichert (R-Wash.) was declared the winner of his reelection bid against Democrat Darcy Burner late Friday.
The race in Maryland’s First District was also called over the weekend for Democrat Frank Kratovil over Republican Andy Harris. Harris had ousted Rep. Wayne Gilchrest in the Republican primary, but was unable to prevail in the general election.
Josh Kraushaar contributed to this report.
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