By Mary Hladky
Andy Thomson has won Boca Raton’s mayoral race, narrowly edging out challenger Mike Liebelson.
In official results posted shortly after 5 p.m. Friday, Thomson had prevailed — but just barely — in both a machine and a manual count of the ballots.
The machine count showed that Thomson, first elected to the City Council in 2018, won by one vote — 7,568 votes to 7,567. In the manual count, Thomson received 7,572 votes to Liebelson’s 7,567.
Thomson and Liebelson could not immediately be reached for comment after the final count was announced.
The election results were so close that no winner could be declared after polls closed on March 10, prompting Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Wendy Sartory Link to hold both recounts.
Left unclear, however, is whether Liebelson will challenge the results.
His attorney, Ricardo Reyes, sent a letter on March 12 to Link, saying he had found a “huge discrepancy” in vote-by-mail ballots.
When the final batch of vote-by-mail ballots were tallied on election night, 32 were for Liebelson and 63 were for Thomson. That difference, he wrote, was “highly unusual and concerning” since the overall election results showed Thomson and Liebelson were nearly tied.
“Accordingly, please be advised that, as of now, Mr. Liebelson intends to contest the results of the Mayoral Election,”… the letter stated.
Liebelson did not respond to The Coastal Star to clarify his intentions after final results were posted on Friday.
Thomson beat back a challenger who was not a member of Save Boca but strongly supported many of that grassroots organization’s goals. Those included opposition to redevelopment of the downtown campus by developers Terra and Frisbie Group, which had rebranded as One Boca.
Thomson also opposed the redevelopment plan and called on fellow City Council members in September to allow residents to decide whether the project would go forward or be scrapped. They agreed the matter should be decided by voters.
The vote results in the City Council races are clear that the council now is firmly in the hands of Save Boca members Jon Pearlman, the group’s founder, Michelle Grau and Stacy Sipple.
Current council member Yvette Drucker was not up for re-election.
Thomson is no stranger to narrow victory. In 2018, following six hours of recounting, he won by 32 votes.
The election winners will be sworn into office on March 31.
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