PEABODY — Jeff Grayson, who lost the race for Ward 4 city councilor by a single vote, confirmed yesterday that he will ask for a recount.
It is the first time election results in Peabody have been challenged since 1999, when incumbent Bill Toomey lost his councilor-at-large seat to Jim Liacos by 33 votes.
Incumbent Robert Driscoll received 1,150 votes and Grayson 1,149 votes in Tuesday's election.
Grayson has until next Friday to collect the signatures of at least 10 registered voters in Ward 4 and formally request a recount, City Clerk Tim Spanos said. Driscoll will likely do the same so he can have his own representatives observe what will be a hand count, rather than a machine count, Spanos said.
Once the paperwork is filed, the city has 10 days to schedule the recount. Spanos hopes to complete it before Thanksgiving, and it's possible it could done on a Saturday. The votes will be counted in City Hall's Wiggin Auditorium.
"We might as well take another look," Grayson said yesterday. "If it had been 20 votes, I just might have walked away."
Grayson, 46, is a manager for Costco Wholesale who made his first run for public office. Driscoll, 62, is a retired high school teacher who has served on the council for 22 years.
"It was a hard-fought battle," Driscoll said yesterday. "We did our very best and let the people decide."
All absentee ballots were included in Tuesday's results, Spanos said, and there were no provisional ballots cast in Ward 4. The voting machine read 132 ballots as blank. Spanos said the city would take the count precinct by precinct, which means it will finish counting Precinct 1 before moving on to Precinct 2.
Both candidates will have legal counsel representing them. Driscoll said one of his sons and his brother, both lawyers, will observe on his behalf. Grayson said he would have to hire a lawyer.
Spanos couldn't find a precedent in Peabody for such a razor-thin margin.
"There have been some close mayoral elections, but nothing like this," he said.
The last local contest this close was a 2006 Swampscott selectman's race. Going into a recount, challenger Adam Forman was trailing incumbent Bill Hyde by three votes. Forman came out of the recount the winner by one vote.
Back in 1999, Toomey gained seven votes but still fell 26 votes shy of Liacos.
Liacos, who won a sixth term Tuesday, yesterday remembered the recount as a tense and exhausting ordeal. He said he had three lawyers, one he hired, his accountant and at least 18 volunteers looking out for his interests in what was a citywide recount.
The board of registrars determined the intent of contested ballots, and, at one point, Liacos briefly lost 100 votes when a block of votes went mistakenly unreported.
The experience made him question whether running for office was worth it.
"If I had known (the recount) was going to happen," he said, "I'm not sure I ever would have run."
Ward 4 Results
Precinct 1 (Higgins M.S.), Precinct 2 (Higgins), Precinct 3 (High School), Precinct 3A (Brooksby Village)
Robert Driscoll: 298, 242, 289, 321
Jeffrey Grayson: 318, 221, 268, 342
Blanks: 18, 14, 34, 66
Write-Ins: 1, 1, 0, 3
