Majority Swings Back To Democrats Again

Two years of Republican control over the East Hampton Town Board turned out on Election Night to be just an interlude in the Democratic winning streak that began in 1984.

According to unofficial results from the Suffolk County Board of Elections, starting on New Year's Day Supervisor Cathy Lester will have two Democratic Councilmen, the newly elected Job Potter and the incumbent Peter Hammerle, on her side of the table.

Ms. Lester took 4,069 of the 7,415 votes cast in beating Councilman Thomas Knobel, the Republican-Conservative candidate and her longtime political foe. Mr. Knobel garnered 3,346.

Mansir And Potter

Pat Mansir, a Republican and the East Hampton Town Planning Board chairwoman, received 3,913 votes in winning one of two Town Board seats. Ms. Mansir's colleague on the new minority will be the incumbent Councilman Len Bernard.

Mr. Potter took 3,741 votes in winning the other seat.

Republican Councilwoman Nancy McCaffrey lost the Town Board post she has held since 1990, finishing last of the four board candidates. Lisa Grenci, a Democrat, trailed Mr. Potter by some 418 votes.

A table of results appears with this story.

Lester Versus Knobel

The race between Ms. Lester and Mr. Knobel, both former Town Trustees, attracted the largest turnout of the day, nearly 54 percent of the town's 13,949 registered voters.

Despite balmy weather and lively public interest, the showing was smaller than in 1995, when 56 percent of those eligible went to the polls.

With 723 votes separating Ms. Lester and Mr. Knobel, a third candidate for Supervisor, Capt. Milton L. Miller Sr., took too few votes, 146, to even be called a spoiler. He represented the Independence Party.

Yardley Breaks A Record

Town Clerk Frederick Yardley, a two-term incumbent with a support base that stretches across both parties, got more votes than anybody on Tuesday - more, in fact, than any East Hampton Town candidate ever. His record-breaking total was 5,028.

Mr. Yardley and his Republican opponent, Edwina Cooke, an accountant from Wainscott, had run a dignified and quiet campaign with few issues and fewer harsh words. Mrs. Cooke's platform relied mostly on further computerizing the Clerk's office.

Town Justice Catherine Cahill survived an assault on her judicial demeanor by Robert Savage, the Republican town attorney, taking 4,356 votes to his 2,929. Mr. Savage ran the same race two years ago and lost to Justice Roger Walker.

Russo, Overton

Chris Russo, the five-time Highway Superintendent, beat out James Bennett for a second time. Mr. Bennett, who campaigned on a message of controlled spending, took 2,652 votes to Mr. Russo's 4,703.

Senior Assessor Fred Overton kept his job with a 20-percent margin over his opponent, Democratic newcomer Patrick Glennon.

Of the 16 town seats up for grabs, seven went to Republicans and nine to Democrats. Five incumbents kept their jobs and six were ousted, including Mr. Knobel.

Election Night

Democrats had held majorities on the board in 1979 and 1980, but without a Democratic Supervisor to lead them.

At 11:30 on Election Night, after a harrowing two-and-a-half-hour wait for final numbers, Mr. Knobel and Mrs. McCaffrey made the long walk from G.O.P. headquarters at one end of Main Street to Rowdy Hall, the restaurant at the other end where the Democrats were celebrating their victory, to concede defeat. They arrived in the middle of thunderous applause for Justice Cahill.

Someone finally spotted the pair waiting at the back door and they made an awkward exchange of handshakes with Supervisor Lester and Mr. Potter. The Republicans tried to leave quickly but the Democrats detained them a bit longer, with a vigorous and sustained ovation.

G.O.P. Headquarters

Mr. Knobel, flushing, declined Supervisor Lester's offer of the chair on which the Democratic candidates had stood to make their speeches of victory and defeat. "Hey, Nancy, let us buy you a drink," someone called from the crowd.

"I don't think so," she said, looking embarrassed as she ducked away.

An hour before, waiting with about 40 G.O.P. supporters who lined the walls and both sides of the hallway, Ms. Mansir reacted to the numbers by giving her mentor and political strategist, Perry B. (Chip) Duryea 3d, a bear hug. As the tallies from the 19 election districts were chalked up on the board, she seemed to be running neck-and-neck with Mr. Potter, but ended up 172 votes ahead.

The unofficial tallies released yesterday morning by the Suffolk County Board of Elections did not include all the votes from one of the 19 districts, where a voting machine was discovered to be jammed shut. Most of the 691 absentee ballots on hand were said to have been counted and a few more were expected to trickle in for a few days more.

Traditionally, those voters have gone for Democratic candidates 2-to-1. In the 1995 Supervisor's race, in fact, James Daly, the Republican candidate, went to bed believing he had won, but the absentees put Ms. Lester over the top.

So the final count could push Mr. Potter closer to, or even past, Mrs. Mansir. Ms. Grenci, however, is probably too far behind to hope.

Grenci Vows To Return

"I brought the Wild West to East Hampton," said Ms. Grenci, who is from Montauk, "but if I lose, I'll be back." She stood on a chair and shouted above friendly hooting: "You are the best group of people I have ever met."

"I told you we have more fun," shouted back Deb Foster, a longtime Democratic organizer who serves as advisor to the party's newcomers. Ms. Grenci was a newcomer this year, a Republican who turned Democrat and activist after the influential and Republican Duryea family, her neighbors, put a barrier across Tuthill Road.

Montauk, a Republican stronghold for generations, "came out Democrat for the first time in a long time, and if I had anything to do with that, I'm damn glad," she shouted.

Four Democrats won jobs as East Hampton Town Trustees, and there is a chance that absentee ballots could push a fifth onto the nine-seat board, shifting the majority there for the first time in 13 years.

Taking four seats was a feat; in recent years, the Democrats hadn't even been able to field a full ticket.

This year, though, they had a full ticket led by three highly motivated men - Barry Leach, Frank Kennedy, and Eric Brown - who did not fit the traditional Bonac profile of a Trustee. All three lost, though they led the debate over whether to expand Trustee authority, a Republican-backed movement.

Instead, voters picked other Democrats with old family names - two Bennetts, a Lester, and a Gardiner.

Mamay Finishes First

Diane Mamay, the incumbent Republican Trustee Clerk, led the Trustee polling with 3,707 votes in winning her fourth term. In second and third place were two more Republican incumbents, Gordon Vorpahl and James McCaffrey, the Councilwoman's husband and a three-term incumbent.

Richard Lester, a Democrat and a bayman, came in fourth, followed by the lone Democratic incumbent, Harold Bennett, also a bayman.

Martin Bennett, a Democrat and native Bonacker, placed sixth, followed by Joshua B. (Jack) Edwards 3d, a three-term Republican incumbent.

Close Margin

Mary Gardiner, a former town harbormaster and first-time Democratic candidate, was eighth. William Mott, a Republican newcomer, took the last seat, with Mr. Kennedy, a town code enforcement officer, just 115 votes behind.

That seemingly small margin had the Democratic Party leader, Christopher Kelley, waiting impatiently for all absentee ballots to be tallied.

"We could have a majority of five, or even six," said Mr. Kelley, chomping on the thick cigar that has become his Election Night trademark.

It Took A While

At Republican headquarters, candidates and their supporters stood for a long, long time as Councilman Bernard, Irwin Roberts, and Robert Davis, the town leader, took election results over the phone.

They worked two phones lines and three calculators but did not post any results until more than a hour after the polls closed. Mr. Carley and Mr. Vorpahl, whose older brother, Stuart, also ran for Trustee but won just 688 votes on the Independence Party line, spent the afternoon making the enormous tally board that hung 10 feet over everyone's heads.

Asked whether anyone was carrying a lucky rabbit's foot, Mr. Carley's response was swift: "When you're right, you don't need luck."

Long before the red and green markers were uncapped, a dozen or so candidates and volunteers had left, muttering they would watch the results on LTV.

Mr. Savage found a television across the street at the Grill. Ms. Mamay and others headed to the Three Mile Harbor Inn, where the Republicans planned to gather later on.

Down the street, the Democrats were packing away the laptops and fax machines they had used to take in numbers and send them out again to LTV. They were popping open bottles of champagne and hugging each other at Rowdy Hall while the Republican tally board still lacked numbers from five districts.

A Speech And A Poem

Recalling the close call in 1995, Supervisor Lester did not make her victory speech until the party was in full swing and the crowd demanded it. Earlier, she said she was "superstitious" and couldn't bring herself to say she had won or lost "until the last vote is counted."

She did take the chair, though. "There is nothing like an honest campaign to let the people know who should run the town," she declared. "The Democrats are really the party of all inclusiveness, the party of the people."

The most ear-shattering applause of the night came when Ms. Lester thanked her daughter, Della, "for standing by me."

Harold Bennett, the new Trustee, later that night read a victory poem penned for him by Sonja Connors, the bartender at Three Mile Harbor Inn:

"The election is over

The results are now known

The voice of the people has clearly been shown

So let's get together and let bitterness pass.

You hug my elephant and I'll kiss your ass."

Dead Silence

In a somber and anxious mood, the Republicans posted their first results at 10:10 p.m., from Councilwoman McCaffrey's neighborhood in Wainscott. On each of her two past bids for office, she had taken District Seven by storm.

However, battered this year by Democratic ads that called her unproductive, she learned on Tuesday night that she had finished a mere seven votes ahead of Mr. Potter in her own district. She looked distraught.

There was dead silence around the room, the only sound a sharp intake of breath from a woman in the corner.

As it does each year, the Board of Elections impounded the voting machines and will do a vote-by-vote recount, expected to finish by early next week.