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BEDFORD – After several nerve-wracking hours Tuesday night, 9th Congressional District Republican challenger Art Halvorson said the race remained too close to call, as an uncertain number of provisional and absentee ballots remained to be counted.
Halvorson, challenging sitting Rep. Bill Shuster, R-9th District, for the second time, remained at the incumbent’s heels even as his supporters cleared food and chairs from the Bedford Crossroads Bible Church.
“I don’t know that we’re going to know the outcome tonight,” he said around midnight.
With the vast majority of 9th District precincts counted, Shuster led with 48,182 votes to Halvorson’s 46,553, according to the Pennsylvania Department of State website.
In percentage terms, Shuster led 50.86 to 49.14.
Results are considered preliminary and are not final until verified by county election officials.
“It’s a fight, a battle,” Halvorson said at the church, where several dozen supporters gathered and watched TV screens displaying poll results. “And this battle is not over until we win.”
Sunburned after a final day of campaigning, Halvorson spent the night mingling with supporters at the church. It remained unclear how many absentee ballots remained to be counted, as well as provisional, backup ballots from precincts Halvorson claimed had run out during the day.
Halvorson fought a hard campaign with just a fraction of Shuster’s financial power, raising some $264,000 according to federal campaign finance records, much of it from personal loans from his own coffers. Shuster raised millions, largely from local and national business figures and political action committees.
“I don’t think this is over. I know it’s not over,” Halvorson said Tuesday.
The race, often razor-close as results trickled in to the church hall, appeared to bring more counties into Halvorson’s camp than in 2014 – including two counties Shuster has called home.
Where Halvorson won only Bedford County in his first campaign, he seized Bedford, Blair, Fulton, Franklin and Indiana counties Tuesday, according to preliminary and possibly incomplete results.
Richard Latker of Hollidaysburg, Halvorson’s deputy campaign manager, pointed proudly to the Blair County win as a sign of the candidate’s success early in the evening. Halvorson took 11,436 votes there to 9,261 for Shuster, according to preliminary results, in a notable shift from Shuster’s 2014 win.
Shuster handily took the counties around Pittsburgh, in the large district’s western reaches.
His last-minute win came after national observers questioned the race’s likely outcome. The revelation that Shuster is dating an airline industry lobbyist had thrown the outcome into uncertainty, some said, while the incumbent touted his legislative success in a divided Congress.
Turnout far outstripped 2014, with tens of thousands more voters taking to the polls this year. In the hours before results arrived, both campaigns claimed high turnout would help their chances.
Halvorson, who has sometimes used language and slogans evocative of Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz, said the prominence of anti-establishment national candidates could only benefit his campaign.
The absence of a third candidate had a clear effect on the preliminary results, with Franklin County candidate Travis Schooley sitting out the 2016 race.
Schooley, who endorsed Shuster before the Tuesday primary, took more than 12 percent of the vote in 2014.
The mood at Halvorson’s party ebbed and flowed with the results, the crowds celebrating as he took an early lead but becoming increasingly serious as the night dragged on.
Supporters and reporters compared results from different news sources, some showing a tantalizingly close race throughout the evening.
Reports of yet-to-be-counted votes and possible irregularities percolated at the Crossroads Bible Church: Halvorson said some precincts he’d visited ran out of ballots, forcing some to use provisional ballots and thus uncounted for now, while a supporter discussed rumors of destroyed ballots at one site.
Halvorson said he believed many of the absentee and backup ballots wouldn’t be counted for at least a day, possibly several days, leaving the race unsettled.
Those claims couldn’t be confirmed by election officials late Tuesday night.
Even as the race remained up in the air, small groups of Halvorson supporters filed out of the hall.
By 11:30 p.m., the room fell silent; by midnight, the mood among those remaining seemed to have picked up as it became clear the results wouldn’t be certain. Halvorson said the lack of closure didn’t bother him.
He refused to countenance a concession call or speech with so much still on the line.
“It’s in the Lord’s hands, right?” supporter Gib Davis of Bedford asked Halvorson.
“That’s right,” the candidate replied.
Mirror Staff Writer Ryan Brown is at 946-7457.