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Election Officials: Absentees counted, Fusco wins Rome mayor's race

By HILARY LANE

Story Created: Nov 16, 2011 at 6:42 PM EDT

Story Updated: Nov 16, 2011 at 6:44 PM EDT

ROME, N.Y. (WKTV) - After Election Day, Conservative Rome mayoral candidate Joe Fusco was ahead by just 191 votes with fewer than 400 absentee ballots left to count.

Now that those ballots have been counted, and the Oneida County Board of Elections says Fusco has beat out Republican Incumbent James Brown by 81 votes.

Wednesday afternoon, election officials said Fusco had 4,151 votes to James Brown's 4,070 votes.

Fusco, who was at the Board of Elections Wednesday as the ballots were counted, said he can't wait to begin working for the City of Tome.

"I am looking forward to getting a start on bringing about some change in our community, the way we run our government, the way we feel about our community," Fusco said. "There's a lot of work to be done."

Brown's lawyers say they feel there are discrepancies with 100 of the ballots and that they will be speaking with Brown to decide on the next course of action.

We did reach out to Brown for comment, but he had not returned our call as of this writing.

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