East Rochester, N.Y. --- Just a handful of votes separate the candidates in one of the more intriguing Election Day storylines in Monroe County.
Ballots still need to be counted in the race for East Rochester Town Justice but after the polls closed Democrat Dennis Greco led Republican David Bonacchi by just three votes.
Absentee ballots were counted late Tuesday night and that tally gave Bonacchi a five vote lead. On November 19th the remaining absentee, military, and affidavit ballots will be counted.
But until then East Rochester High School’s Head Football Coach (Greco) and Former Mayor (Bonacchi) will sweat out a few days of “political overtime.”
"At about 9:45 last night I'm down by three votes, at 9:46 I think I threw up, then at 11:46 or 12:46 I'm up by five so, welcome to East Rochester!" Bonacchi joked about his Election Night experience. "As soon as I learned I was behind by three votes I immediately polled my own family and it was good news they all voted for me...so they say."
Bonacchi is a former East Rochester Police Officer with electoral experience as the former mayor who lost a surprising race in 2007 to Democrat Jason Koon.
Greco is a recently retired Social Studies teacher who continues to coach the East Rochester-Gananda football team. Now in his 20th season Greco balanced campaigning with coaching a team that won the Section 5 title on Saturday.
"It was a great game beating Livonia in the Sectional Championships," Greco said of his busy week. "It has been really interesting the last few days I've had a good group of people work for us, get information out in the community and you know winning football games probably helped a little bit.”
“I knew I should've went out for the baseball position," Bonacchi joked. "I liked running for this position because it was two good people and the campaign was honorable, there was no negativity as you can see in this year's election negativity was awful."
The village justice serves a four year term.
