Update: Will County Democrats turn table on 3 races

Three Will County Democrats who were down on Election Night appear to have won the races for sheriff, treasurer and a circuit court judicial seat after a Tuesday count of more than 6,400 late-arriving mail-in ballots.

Will County Sheriff Mike Kelley and Treasurer Tim Brophy were reelected, according to the unofficial results once the Tuesday vote count was included.

Associate Judge Jessica Colon-Sayre now is the unofficial winner in her contest against Joliet Attorney Bob Bodach in an election for Will County circuit judge.

Mail-in votes yet to arrive, and provisional ballots will be counted next week. But the numbers are not expected to be large enough to change the results from Tuesday. The canvass that makes the vote count official will be held on Nov 29.

Going into Tuesday, Democrats believed they had a chance to turn around the results of the the three close contests for sheriff, treasurer and judge. Democrats typically use mail-in voting at much larger numbers than Republicans. All three candidates had big leads in the mail-in count that was available on Election Day.

Another 6,474 mail-in ballots were counted Tuesday.

“I had the same situation eight years ago, and I came out on top,” Sheriff Mike Kelley said Tuesday.

In 2014, Kelley reversed a narrow Election Night lead held by the late Ken Kaupas after late-arriving mail-in ballots were counted.

Kelley went into Tuesday trailing Republican Jim Reilly by 289 votes. He ended the day ahead by 2,144 votes.

Reilly, a deputy sheriff who waged his second campaign against Kelley, acknowledged defeat.

“We brought up a lot of great issues,” he said. “Unfortunately, the Will County voters have spoken.”

A similar reversal occurred in the treasurer’s race where Republican Raj Pillai saw his 478-vote lead turn into a 1,930-vote deficit.

“We’re proud of the campaign that we ran,” Pillai said acknowledging defeat after the mail-in count. “I hope that the race has brought to light some of the issues that Will County is facing.”

Pillai came to the county office building for the Tuesday vote count hoping that his appeal to voters to take advantage of mail-in voting may have cut into the typical Democratic advantage.

Brophy was not at the Tuesday vote count and instead went to a meeting of the Joliet Rotary Club. But he said he was not overconfident in the outcome despite being advised that Democrats typically enjoy a 2-1 advantage in mail-in votes.

“This was a strange election,” Brophy said, noting that he and Kelley got 5,000 fewer countywide votes on Election Night than other Democratic candidates on the ballot.

Brophy said he went to the Rotary Club meeting because of a presentation being made for Megan’s Mission Foundation, which raises money for treatment of childhood cancer, and because he was the sergeant at arms for the club at that meeting.

Colon-Sayre said she was told by the Democratic Party that mail-in votes were likely to go in her favor in large numbers. But it was her first election, and Colon-Sayre said she did not know what to expect.

“I had to see it to believe it,” she said.

Colon-Sayre had the biggest deficit to overcome. She was down by 1,430 votes on Election Night. After the Tuesday county, she has a lead of 1,322 votes.

There are 585 provisional ballots that need to be reviewed after questions were raised. They will be counted on Nov. 22. On that day, any more mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day will be counted.

Will County Clerk Lauren Staley Ferry said a few hundred mail-in ballots at the most are likely to arrive by Nov. 22.