With just about 25-percent voter turn out, Republican Dean Esposito has won the Danbury mayoral race.  He defeated Democrat Robert Alves by 171 votes.  Esposito, Chief of Staff to two Mayors will continue the 20-year Republican leadership of the City.  Alves phoned Esposito to concede the race late last night.  He said after the race that his team did everything they could to try to pull this one out, but came up short.

The Republican margin on the Danbury City Council has widened once again after moving to just a one-member majority.  The 11 to 10 City Council will be 14 to 7 after all seven at-large or city-wide seats went to the GOP. 

Mayor Joe Cavo, who chose not to run for a term of his own leading the City, was able to secure one of those seats.  He  will return to the Council where he served as its President for many years.  Alves gave up his at-large seat to run for Mayor.  4th Ward Democrat John Esposito switched parties after he failed to garner enough petition signatures to force a primary, but lost his GOP bid for the district.  The 7th ward will once again have split representation with one Democrat and one Republican winning.

There was a hand count of ballots in Danbury's 5th ward.  Some ballots were unable to go through the tabulator.  Data had to be hand entered into the form to be submitted to the Secretary of the State's Office. 

There was also a technical issue statewide with the reporting system.  A spokesperson for Denise Merrill's office said all of the results were tallied locally and entered in a safe and secure way, but that they weren't being displayed online. A third-party vendor that manages the reporting system is working to have the results on the site published by her office.  No other details on the issue or a timeline for fixing it were released.