Recounts on in 2 races

Curtis, Walker each kept legislative seat by less than 20 votes

Utah House Speaker Greg Curtis, R-Sandy, will have one fewer Republican in his caucus during the 2007 Legislature, provided Curtis survives an election recount.

After counting provisional and by-mail absentee ballots and having the vote canvass approved by the Salt Lake County Council, Curtis officially defeated Democratic challenger Jay Seegmiller by 19 votes, it was learned Tuesday. That final result was closer than the tallies following Election Day, when Curtis led by 46 votes.

While Democrats likely missed a golden opportunity to take out one of the most powerful Republicans in the state, the minority party in the Legislature did keep another one of its incumbents when Rep. Carl Duckworth, D-Magna, defeated challenger Deena Ely. Duckworth had trailed by 25 votes before the additional ballots were counted but ended up winning by 33 votes, a total large enough to avoid a recount.

"I've always been hopeful, never given up," Duckworth said Tuesday evening. "We ended the (election) night behind, and it was scary to wait."

There will be one other recount, however, as Rep. Mark Walker, R-Sandy, only won by 18 votes over challenger Laura Black.

To qualify for a recount, the margin of victory must be less than one vote per precinct. The losing candidate has seven days to request the recount, although both Seegmiller and Black said they planned to request one.

Curtis and Walker were both confident about their chances of surviving a recount, since there is historically little change in the vote totals following recounts.

"The recount is not nearly as ominous as the outstanding ballots," Curtis said, noting he was "surprised" that Seegmiller made up that much ground in the additional ballots.

Part of his concern stemmed from the fact that the Board of Canvassers, which is made up of members of the Salt Lake County Council, was including ballots that were mailed in and lacked sufficiently dated postmarks.

Seegmiller said his success in the race was helped by a dissatisfaction with Curtis in the district, especially his involvement with bringing the Real Salt Lake stadium to Sandy and his previous employment as former Salt Lake County Mayor Nancy Workman's staff attorney.

"Greg has had some baggage in the past," Seegmiller said. "I can only assume there were people voting against him."

Like Curtis, Walker said the hardest part was waiting for the additional ballots to be counted. He was much more optimistic about the recount.

"It's like having a zit on your nose," he said about the two-week wait for final results. "You know it's there, but there's nothing you can do about it."

Black said little, only that she "could have been 18 votes better."

With Duckworth's victory and barring any change following the recounts, the Democrats will now have 20 representatives, up from the 19 they had the past two years. They are still below the 25 needed to keep the Republicans, who now have 55 members, from having a veto-proof majority.

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E-mail: jloftin@desnews.com

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