Pryce Named Winner in Ohio's 15th, Though Recount Looms

[Ron Burgundy]

CQPolitics.com - Updated at 3:43 p.m.
Republican Rep. Deborah Pryce (news, bio, voting record) appears to have won an eighth term in Ohio’s 15th District, where unofficial totals show her leading — but by such a small margin that an automatic recount is required, according to the Associated Press.

Returns announced Monday by Franklin County gave Pryce a 1,055-vote lead over Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy — giving Pryce 50.2 percent of the vote to Kilroy’s 49.8 percent.

The margin is small enough to trigger an automatic recount under state law, which orders a second count when the margin of victory is less than one-half of 1 percent. But it appears unlikely the second count would put Kilroy into the lead, though she has yet to concede defeat.

James Lee, a spokesman for the Ohio secretary of state’s office, said the recount totals will be due 10 days after the department orders the recount, but did not say when the order would come.

The result was not surprising. An unofficial tally Nov. 7 had Pryce ahead of Kilroy by 3,500 votes and just less than 2 percentage points — not a landslide, but not a cliffhanger result that a count of provisional ballots was going to reverse.

A final outcome in the race had been delayed by counting of about 19,000 absentee and provisional ballots in Franklin County, the last of three counties to report unofficial totals before Tuesday’s official canvass deadline.

Kilroy actually led Pryce in Franklin County (Columbus), the district’s dominant population center and the constituency in which Kilroy was re-elected in 2004 as county commissioner. But Pryce had a narrow overall lead in the 15th because of her decisive wins in lesser-populated Union and Madison Counties west of Columbus.

Amanda Wurst, spokeswoman for the Kilroy campaign, said the automatic recount is just an extension of the original count. “Of course, we’re going to see this process through to be sure all the voters’ voices are heard,” she said. “It’s basically election night; we’ve just had a longer [one,]” she said. “Now, we move on to the next phase of the process.”

Wurst said information on a recount could come as early as tomorrow. Both campaigns said they had not received a clear schedule for that process.

Pryce campaign spokesman George Rasley said he welcomed the recount as a chance to remove any doubt about Pryce’s win. “Conducting the recount according to Ohio law will further legitimize the win and take away any questions about it,” he said.

Buoyed by an anti-Republican political environment nationally and in Ohio, Kilroy was the toughest challenger Pryce had ever faced in her 14 years in the House. The race was very expensive, with Kilroy taking in $2.4 million and Pryce raising $3.9 million as of mid-October.

The national House campaign committees waged independent expenditure campaigns in the district. The contest also attracted the attention of outside groups like Moveon.org, which this spring aired television commercials attacking Pryce on energy issues.

Pryce is the second Ohio Republican to emerge victorious from a lengthy count this year — last week, 2nd District Rep. Jean Schmidt secured a narrow win over Democrat Victoria Wulsin.

Pryce’s apparent victory leaves two House general elections from Nov. 7 that CQPolitics.com considers still uncalled: Florida’s 13th District and North Carolina’s 8th District.

Florida’s 13th: Republican businessman Vern Buchanan holds a narrow lead after a machine recount. But Democratic nominee Christine Jennings has sued, charging widespread voting irregularities, and state officials plan to audit electronic touch-screen voting machines of the type used in the election to determine whether alleged malfunctions could have affected the outcome. The winner will succeed two-term Republican Rep. Katherine Harris (news, bio, voting record), who left the seat open for a Senate bid that failed.

North Carolina’s 8th: A manual inspection of ballots is set in 3 percent of precincts for Wednesday and Thursday, as four-term Republican Rep. Robin Hayes (news, bio, voting record) leads Democratic nominee Larry Kissell with 329 votes. If the sampling reveals a statistical inconsistency, state officials may decide to pursue a districtwide manual recount. Kissell, a teacher little known to voters when the campaign began, staged one of the most serious House upset bids in the nation.

Two other House contests’ outcomes are pending because December runoff elections are required. One of these will be held Dec. 9 in Louisiana’s New Orleans-area 2nd District, where Democrats already are assured of maintaining their hold on the seat: Democratic Rep. William J. Jefferson (news, bio, voting record) and Democratic state Rep. Karen Carter are the contestants. The other, on Dec. 12, is in Texas’ southwestern 23rd District, where Republican Rep. Henry Bonilla (news, bio, voting record) is up against Democratic former Rep. Ciro D. Rodriguez (news, bio, voting record).

Should Buchanan and Hayes maintain their leads, and if Bonilla prevails next month in Texas, the 110th Congress will have 232 Democrats and 203 Republicans — a precise partisan mirror image of the House that convened two years ago. The Democrats’ net gain, at this point, is holding at 29 seats, 14 more than they needed to claim a bare one-seat majority and more than enough to end 12 years of Republican dominance in the House.