Wow! Thank you! We almost finished it last night! Just two percentage points short of 50 percent while my closest opponent got 21 percent.

We knew it was going to be a very challenging race when the Democratic party recruited four candidates with the goal of forcing a runoff.

A tremendous amount of party and union money was spent in the last weeks of the campaign attacking me with deceptive allegations and plain lies. And we still almost won outright!

Now with the primary behind us, we can focus these next several months on the real issues: jobs, public safety, smart management of the taxpayers’ resources and preserving support for community healthcare and social services.

What we can’t afford are reckless proposals for a government-run hospital or diversion of local tax dollars to backfill welfare programs cut by state government. These and other differences will be clear in the months ahead, and I am confident of victory in November.