By unofficial count, mail-in, affidavit ballots provide margin
The Dutchess County Democratic Committee said Nov. 15 that Dan Aymar-Blair, the Ward 4 representative on the Beacon City Council, has been elected Dutchess County comptroller, based on the latest vote totals it received from the Board of Elections that included mail-in and affidavit ballots.
The Democrats said they received unofficial numbers that show Aymar-Blair with 72,624 votes and Republican Gregg Pulver with 71,693 with all or nearly all the vote counted. The BOE has not confirmed these figures and, as of Thursday (Nov. 21), its website still showed election-night results with Pulver leading by 475 votes. The BOE did not return phone messages asking for updated vote totals.
The comptroller is the county’s chief accounting officer and is responsible for auditing its departments and outside agencies funded by the county.
“The people of Dutchess County want a comptroller committed to transparency, accountability and serving the public interest,” Aymar-Blair said in a statement. “I look forward to bringing independent oversight and a fresh perspective to the office, ensuring every dollar is used wisely and in service of the community.”
Pulver did not return phone messages from The Current, but on Wednesday (Nov. 20) posted a message on his Facebook page thanking supporters in what was “an absurdly close race. Though we didn’t win, our campaign overperformed the presidential ballot by a significant amount.”
Pulver, who served 10 years in the county Legislature, the last six as its chair, was named comptroller by then-County Executive William F.X. O’Neil two weeks after losing his bid for re-election to the Legislature. He represented Pine Plains.
The comptroller’s seat will be on the ballot again in 2025 because Aymar-Blair will serve only the final year of the four-year term of Robin Lois, a Democrat who resigned in December to become the state’s deputy comptroller for local government and school accountability. Aymar-Blair said he plans to run in 2025 for a full term.
If his win is confirmed, Aymar-Blair said he will step down from the City Council and his job overseeing business operations for the New York City public schools’ special education program. He would assume the comptroller position on Jan. 1, and Beacon Mayor Lee Kyriacou would appoint a successor to serve the final year of Aymar-Blair’s two-year term representing Ward 4.
The unofficial election-night results showed the candidates in a near tie. With all 171 precincts reporting, Pulver received 69,581 votes, or 50.13 percent, while Aymar-Blair had 69,106, or 49.79 percent, a difference of 475 votes of 138,799 cast, including 112 write-in votes. According to Dutchess County Democrats, those numbers included mail-in ballots counted through Nov. 2. Mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day, Nov. 5, and received by the Board of Elections by Nov. 12 could be counted.
Adam Fusco, an attorney representing Pulver, said Nov. 13 that his client was “comfortably ahead” and expected to win. But the Dutchess Democratic Committee announced that same day that Aymar-Blair had taken a four-vote lead after the Board of Elections added more than 2,000 affidavit and military ballots to the count.
The committee said that Aymar-Blair had 70,856 votes, compared to 70,852 for Pulver, with more than 3,000 mail-in ballots still to be processed. State law requires a hand recount if the margin of victory is 20 votes or less or 0.5 percent or less.
Michael Dupree, the chair of the county Democratic committee, said the board had provided him with the numbers cited but told him it would not be updating its website “until certification of final election results, which is several weeks, if not a month, away.”
Aymar-Blair filed a lawsuit in state court on Nov. 7 seeking “an injunction against the issuance of a certificate of election.” He asked the Board of Elections to count 1,540 mail-in ballots that he said had been received by Nov. 4. There are also at least 3,261 affidavit ballots — cast when there is a question about a voter’s registration — that have not been processed and as many as 5,230 mail-in ballots that had not been returned but could arrive by Nov. 12, according to the lawsuit.
Aymar-Blair’s attorney, Michael Treybich, said the legal action was designed to compel Erik Haight, the Republican election commissioner, whom Treybich called “completely partisan,” to count all the votes before certification.
Fusco filed a motion on Nov. 12 on Pulver’s behalf, asking Judge Maria Rosa to dismiss Aymar-Blair’s suit. “The courts cannot intervene in the actual canvassing of ballots by the Boards of Elections and do not have the authority to modify the statutory procedures governing that canvassing or its timing,” he wrote.
Aymar-Blair withdrew the suit on Nov. 18. In a court filing, Treybich wrote that his client had amassed a lead of at least 898 votes, exceeding the margin that would have triggered a recount by hand. He added that he did not expect his client’s election to be certified until after Dec. 18, “when all military and overseas voters have had an opportunity to cast a ballot.” Treybich said in the filing that Pulver had conceded and withdrawn his defense against the suit with prejudice, meaning it cannot be revived.
