Republican State Sen. Andrew Roraback took an early lead as primary results began to add up Tuesday night, finally besting his closest opponent, Mark Greenberg, by 1,382 votes with only a few towns left to report.
The other challengers for the nomination, Justin Bernier and Lisa Wilson-Foley, came in 3,258 and 3,023 votes behind Roraback, respectively.
Roraback’s longtime best friend and fellow former State Rep. Brian Mattiello (Torrington, 1993-2001) read out the results as they came in to campaign party headquarters, Backstage Restaurant in Torrington.
As the numbers were slowly tallied Tuesday evening, Roraback won a majority of the towns, many by safe margins, though Greenberg was consistently close behind. Many of the areas where Greenberg was expected to aggressively challenge Roraback, third-place Wilson-Foley took away some of the momentum.
“Greenberg and Lisa Wilson-Foley are eating each other up,” Mattiello said, watching the numbers. “Sometimes your strategy is just to mitigate some of the loss,” he added as a few losses trickled in. “When they get to now Drew like we know him, they’ll learn to love him like we do, too.”
Speaking to a packed room Tuesday night, Roraback thanked everyone that helped him to secure the nomination and asked his opponents to get behind him as he moves on toward the general election in November.
Check back with Patch later for video of Roraback’s acceptance speech.
