A New Day Has Dawned

In yesterday's election, incumbent Jim Haff was narrowly defeated by Patty McGrath in a stunning reversal. At about 8:30 am, Chris Bianchi, current Select Board chairman, who had been working on McGrath's campaign,  all but conceded victory for Jim Haff . I suppose he determined this from their last minute canvassing of voters the previous evening while searching for votes.
I was at the polling place at 7:20 am until 6:00 pm, trying to coax more votes for Jim. During the morning through early afternoon, my informal exit polling process of reading people's reactions to my waving a Haff pamphlet at them, smile, yes for Haff, frown, no for Haff, was confirming what Chris had said. Then around 2:30 - 3:00 pm things changed; suddenly frowns and white knuckles squeezing steering wheels became more and more prevalent. Lack of eye contact by voters leaving became disturbing. An uncomfortable feeling was slowly working its way up my spine.
Periodic checks of the voter turnout kept steadily increasing until it reached about 420 at around 5:30 pm just before I left. We did not count on such a large turnout, neither did Patty's people. The previous local election on had 391 voters. What seemed to be a route was suddenly a new ballgame. As it turned out Patty won by 26 votes.
A post game analysis speculated the likely reason for the high voter turnout was Whit Montgomery's campaign for First Constable. He canvassed a large cross section of voters in town which apparently included many McGrath supporters and Haff exorcists.
Congratulations to Patty for her hard fought nail biting victory.
Congratulations to Whit on his overwhelming victory for First Constable and, paradoxically, Article 4 which will essentially make the First Constable position largely ceremonial.