Clarence, N.Y. (WBEN) - A true come from behind victory took place Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning as Nick Langworthy and news organizations declared him the winner of the primary for New York's 23rd Congressional district over his opponent, Carl Paladino.
Since the polls closed at 9 p.m., early election results showed Paladino ahead of Langworthy with winning margins of around 5-12 percent until about 11 o'clock, with the AP polls showing 80 percent of the vote in. Nick Langworthy than took a narrow lead minutes later, which was met with loud cheers behind closed doors of the Langworthy headquarters.
Langworthy claimed victory by securing 24,275 votes, 52% of the vote, as of 1 a.m. Wednesday and Paladino garnered 48%, with 94% of the votes reported. If confirmed, he will advance to the November 8th election.
Just before midnight, Langworthy took the stage to make his winning announcement.
"Tonight, the Southern Tier made me the comeback kid. This is an overwhelming victory to the hours and the miles on the road and what was a very short campaign -- but it was a campaign about ideas about the brand of leadership that we need for Western New York in the Southern Tier."
Paladino chose not to speak with his packed house of supporters following the results. His campaign spokesperson said that they have noticed a number of irregularities and as of 1 a.m. Wednesday, has chose not to concede.
Langworthy said in his speech that it's time to unify a Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.
"We work together in build a Republican majority in the US House of Representatives, because the most important mission is still in hand - and that is firing Nancy Pelosi and giving the gavel to Republicans before the real governing agenda for America. Because as we said, from the outset of this campaign, this was about stopping Joe Biden's disastrous agenda that has taken us so far backwards in this country, whether it's inflation or gas prices, family budgets are pinched every single day. We deserve a better and brighter future for Western New York and the Southern Tier and we will bring that to this district."
After his speech, Langworthy spoke with media reflecting on his poll performance, "The early numbers in Erie County were obviously not very promising. We didn't perform as well as we would like to in Erie County, but our campaign spent a tremendous amount of emphasis on our time in the Southern Tier. The Southern Tier has 60% of the vote in this district and it was very important that I get better known in the Southern Tier."
Related
Due to the primaries changing from July to August and the districts in New York State recently redrawn, it was surprising to a large percentage of voters show up to vote. Over 46,000 of the 195,000+ registered Republican voters of the highly red area voted.
Nick Langworthy, the current New York State Republic Committee Chairman is going to continue his duties as chair he says until he wins the Nov. 8th election against his Democratic opponent, Max Della Pia, "I will leave this the chair once I'm sworn into Congress."
See the players below to listen to the full winning speech of Nick Langworthy and the comments made afterwards: