Brown Hits Hennessy’s “Hypocrisy” On Primary Outcome

City Councilman Marcus Brown led on primary night. He maintains a two-vote lead after a court-ordered hand count of all the ballots tabulated from the August 9 Democratic primary against incumbent State Rep. Jack Hennessy whom, Brown asserts, has reinvented his position on the outcome.

Statement from Brown campaign:

It is incredible that today, the Hennessy campaign filed a cross-claim in court claiming that the Primary Election results are now in question, and even go so far as to ask Judge Stevens to declare “that Hennessy prevailed in the primary” and issue “an order placing him on the ballot for the November general election.” This is despite the fact that the Primary Day results and the court-ordered hand recount both show Brown as the winner.

Last week, after an incomplete machine recount clearly revealed that 9 absentee ballots were unaccounted for, the Hennessy campaign and its surrogates went out of their way to argue that the incomplete recount results should be honored, and implored the City Attorney’s Office to defend the process. Now, after a carefully conducted and closely watched hand recount revealed a more accurate count of the votes with all ballots now being accounted for, the Hennessy campaign wants to argue that the election is now in doubt.

Let’s just be clear. All of their claimed “irregularities,” which have yet to be proven, would have been true last week after the first recount was conducted. And yet, they ardently defended the result. Irregularities didn’t seem to bother them enough to call for a new election last week when Hennessy was up after an improper recount.

This is pure hypocrisy!

Our position has been consistent. We wanted election officials to find and count the 9 missing absentee ballots. They were found and counted. We wanted to rectify the issue with the machine that broke down during the first recount. The Judge ordered a new hand recount. And, we wanted to clear up tabulation issues at Blackham and Winthrop Schools. There was a careful hand recount of these ballots.

The Hennessy campaign is free to bring any claims in superior court that they want. But in the court of public opinion, we hope that people will see how inconsistent and disingenuous the Hennessy campaign has been regarding the validity of the election results.