March 29, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

District 137 incumbent may request recount

MILFORD – Republican Anita Peavey Haskell, 64, said it was good old-fashioned grass-roots campaigning and hard work that put her 34 votes ahead of incumbent Rep. Laura J. Sanborn, a Democrat from Alton, in the race for House District 137.

Sanborn said Wednesday that she is being encouraged by leadership in the House of Representatives to file a recount request. The 52-year-old said she would decide today whether to seek a recount by the Secretary of State’s Office.

“I knocked on nearly every door in every town in the district,” Haskell said Wednesday. “I am really excited about finding out everything I can about a legislator’s job and how I can be most helpful to the people of this district.”

Haskell, the chairwoman of the Milford Board of Selectmen, won two of the nine towns in the district for a total of 2,003 votes. Sanborn won in six, and the two opponents tied in Hudson with 290 votes each.

The district also includes part of Old Town, Alton, Edinburg, Greenbush, LaGrange, Milford, Passadumkeag and Orneville Township. It was Haskell’s wins in Greenbush by 198 votes and in Milford by 96 votes that put her ahead of Sanborn.

“I am disappointed,” Sanborn said from her office Wednesday. “I feel I did a good job for the district, and I will be back.”

Sanborn said that the Republicans’ get-out-the-vote efforts and the state party’s encouragement of absentee balloting contributed to her defeat.

“There was a real effort by the Republicans to get folks out to vote,” she said.

Haskell’s two-year term on the Board of Selectmen ends in June 2001. She said she would not seek re-election to that position.


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