Ossining Primary Yields More Questions Than Answers

Republican Town of Ossining Councilman Peter Tripodi and Democratic Village of Ossining Trustee Susanne Donnelly had a pre-November election duel last night. Both candidates for Town of Ossining supervisor want to run on the Working Families and Independence Party lines, in addition to their own.

Donnelly and Tripodi are battling it out for the seat that Democrat Catherine Borgia currently holds. Borgia is leaving the Town of Ossining supervisor position so that she can run against Republican Susan Konig for the Westchester County Board of Legislators' 9th District seat.

In last night's election Donnelly was on the ballot, but Tripodi was a write-in candidate. That means that the write-in ballots have to be carefully analyzed—and that could take a while. So far Ossining's Clerk's Office says that they have received write-in ballots for the Independence Party, but not the Working Families party.

Many residents went to the Westchester County Board of Elections website to view the results of the primary, but only found Donnelly's name up. Patch reached out to the Westchester County Board of Elections to see when they would begin tallying and posting write-in results on their site. "We're probably going to start putting up results maybe tomorrow," said Westchester County Board of Elections Commissioner's Secretary Elizabeth Cerino. Even when the ballots are counted, there could still be more questions than answers when the write-in ballots are carefully analyzed.

Both supervisor candidates were confident about their primary prospects.

"I believe that we will win on the Working Families line. I am not sure of the Independence Party line, because we have no idea what the names were that were written," said Donnelly.

"When they're read off I'm pretty sure that they're going to be for me. There are more write-ins than votes for Sue Donnelly. So it pretty much shows how the Independence Party voters of Ossining feel about her as their candidate—they did not want her," said Tripodi.