LIVINGSTON COUNTY — The Livingston County Sheriffs race just got a shot of caffeine after the Livingston County Conservative Party announced that Undersheriff Jim Szczesniak is their Conservative Party line winner.
The Conservative Party Primary originally ended in a draw and went back to the Executive Committee for the tie breaker where they voted to unanimously endorse Szczesniak.
Last week, on primary day, Investigator Tom Dougherty won the Republican line by 160 votes after a record number of 7,724 voters took to the polls. For the Conservatives the vote did not go so smooth after 318 votes were placed on their party line, 59 of which were mistakenly placed by registered Republicans in the Geneseo and Caledonia voting districts.
“Choosing Mr. Szczesniak was the easy part. The members of our committee certainly shifted toward Jim since our earlier vetting process. In fact, last night’s Executive Committee vote was unanimous. The hard part was determining how best to correct a botched primary election. None of the choices we were confronted with were ideal,” stated Livingston County Conservative Party Chair, Jason McGuire in a press release. “We ultimately decided that if we were to seek another primary that it would cost the taxpayers – that are already overtaxed in this state – far too much, and the end result of that race may have been no different than this one.”
With each candidate securing a party line, all registered voters, regardless of their party affiliation, will have the opportunity to elect the 50th Sheriff of Livingston County on Tuesday November 5th.
“This will not be an easy race. It looks like the Undersheriff is now the underdog, but we’re confident that come November he’ll emerge as the top dog,” McGuire concluded.