Apr 28, 2004 By Paul Sunyak 3 min read

State Rep. Larry Roberts (D-South) had only 1,827 votes with 74 percent of the 51st District’s precinct reporting Tuesday night, giving challenger Timothy S. Mahoney’s camp hope that his write-in campaign might come close to unseating the six-term incumbent. Roberts was on track to register his lowest primary election vote total in four elections dating back to 1998, when he got 3,776 votes in a race against Michael J. Cavanagh, who got only 1,094. Roberts got 3,356 votes in 2000, when he had no opponent, and 4,620 votes in 2002 when he bested Terry Janosek, who got 2,398 votes.

In those three Democrat primary elections, Roberts received an average of 3,917 votes.

Roberts’ comparatively low vote total this time, coupled with unofficial and sporadic write-in results forwarded to the Mahoney camp, had Vincent Zapotosky claiming victory even though official results won’t be known for at least two weeks and may not be available for a month.

Zapotosky, chairman of the Democrats for Good Government group that waged an aggressive write-in effort for Mahoney at the district’s 33 voting precincts, said the race was shaping up as very close.

“Based on reports and phone calls we’ve gotten, it’s pretty close. It’s real close,” said Zapotosky. “We won South Union 1 and 3, by maybe 110 (votes) combined, then we lost South Union 2 by only 12 votes.”

Relying on information forwarded by others, Zapotosky said it appears that Mahoney won some precincts in Wharton Township. He also said Mahoney lost Nicholson 1 by 10 votes, lost Bullskin 1 by 186 votes and won South Connellsville by six votes.

“I define it as a victory. Win or lose, it’s a victory,” said Zapotosky, who noted that because Mahoney wasn’t on the ballot, his supporters could not qualify to get poll watcher certificates that qualified them to monitor the write-in vote as it was counted at certain polling places.

A complete Mahoney vote total, however, was impossible for anyone to obtain on election night. Laurie Nicholson, director of the Fayette County Election Bureau, earlier said that a write-in vote total isn’t computed at every polling place, even though it’s supposed to be, and that task is reserved for the tedious official vote count that begins in her office Friday morning.

Kicked off the Democrat primary ballot by the courts after Roberts challenged the completeness of his statement of financial interests, Mahoney switched his voter registration to independent in order to keep alive his chance to knock off Roberts in November.

However, Mahoney and Democrats for Good Government surprised many political observers with their willingness to mount a primary election write-in campaign, because those are generally acknowledged as difficult to pull off.

If Mahoney, a Uniontown businessman and Fayette County Jury commissioner, doesn’t win the Democrat nomination when Tuesday’s votes are officially counted, he plans to run against Roberts again in the fall as an independent.

Roberts could not be reached for comment late Tuesday night because his cell phone was disconnected.

On the Republican side, lone nominee Harry E. Albert III had 803 votes with 74 percent of the 51st District precincts reporting.