Janet Cruz last night narrowly defeated Pat Kemp in the House District 58 Democratic Primary.
At approximately 9:40 p.m., the Supervisor of Elections office in Hillsborough County announced that Cruz had taken 58 more votes than Kemp, and won by 2%, 47-45. Gil Sanchez finished in 3rd place with 8% of the vote.
Stunningly, Hunter Chamberlin defeated Jackie Rojas-Quinones in the GOP Primary by just 12 votes, 355 votes to 343, or 1.7% of the vote, but still too big of a margin to trigger an automatic machine recount.
There are still provisional ballots to be counted, and that could change the outcome of both races.
But a story that should not be ignored is why it took over 2 1/2 hours after the polls closed before the final tabulations could be announced, since only 3,272 actually voted in the special election, called for by Governor Charlie Crist after former District 58 Democratic Representative Mike Scionti left the seat prematurely to take a job with the Defense Department.
This article appears in Jan 27 – Feb 2, 2010.