Democrat Dan Malloy's campaign manager, Dan Kelly, issued a brief statement about a half-hour after Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch announced totals at a 6:20 a.m. press conference Friday. The mayor said an all-night vote count in his city went for Malloy, apparently throwing the disputed statewide gubernatorial election to the Democrat.
"We've been confident that Dan Malloy and Nancy Wyman would be declared the winners. We'll wait for the Secretary of the State to make it official, and will then have more to say," Kelly said. Wyman, the state comptroller, is Malloy's running mate for lieutenant governor.
The Bridgeport tally, to be submitted later Friday to Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz, gave Malloy 17,800 votes in that city to Republican Tom Foley's 4,075 votes. That margin of 13,725 appears to be enough to give Malloy a statewide victory margin of 5,316, if certified as official.
Bysiewicz hopes today to announce official results after she receives the report of Bridgeport voting officials and adds that city's official tally to those of the state's other 168 towns and cities, which already have been submitted, a spokesman for the Secretary of the State's office said. Whether she'll hold a press conference in the state Capitol to do that, or will just release a statement, is still unclear.
Foley -- who has been saying he believed he, not Malloy, held a lead of fewer than 2,000 votes statewide -- announced that he will talk about the Bridgeport vote at a 10:30 a.m. press conference in Hartford, at the lobby of Goodwin Square, 225 Asylum St.
In a brief radio interview Friday morning on 99.1 WPLR-FM, Foley did not concede the race, but said the campaign wanted to make sure any changes in the vote count did not affect the overall outcome.
If the results remain in Malloy's favor, Foley said, his campaign would be "the first ones to congratulate Dannel Malloy."