Anker Stops Short of Declaring Victory in Legislature Race, Haley Yet To Concede

With unofficial election results having Sarah Anker, D-Mt. Sinai, winning the vote over Martin Haley, R-Miller Place by 224 votes, Anker said she is "cautiously optimistic" that she will soon take over the Sixth District Seat in the Suffolk County Legislature. But she's not declaring victory yet.

With 257 absentee ballots still to be counted, Haley has yet to concede, and voting results have still not been ruled official by the Suffolk County Board of Elections.

"I’d rather wait, I’m pretty conservative for a democrat," she said.

Should the results become official, this would be the first political office held by Anker, who said she had to convince her party to nominate her.

"I really enjoyed campaigning, it’s something I wanted to do for years but it was never the right time," she said. "My children were younger so I decided to wait, so when this opportunity arose I went ahead and pursued it. I went and I had to convince them that I could do this while my opponent has been drafted by his party to run for political office many times."

Anker will take over a traditionally Republican seat that was vacated by Assemblyman Dan Losquadro, R-Shoreham, when Losquadro won his race for the state Assembly in November. Anker said she was able to convince voters with not only her experience, but also the fact that she brought something new to the table.

"I think there are two things that really worked for me," she said. " The residents liked my background and liked my experience ... and that I was actively involved in community issues. The other thing is they were tired of the old 'political machine' and I wasn’t a professional politician.

"I never made big public speeches like I did when I was campaigning. Everything seemed to work well and I’m very fortunate, I’ve been getting a lot of positive feedback."

Anker garnered endorsements from various labor and law enforcement unions and is looking forward to getting to work once the election results become official.

"I've had a lot of experience dealing with a lot of the issues that the county is tackling," Anker said. "I want to hone my skills more on items like budgeting, understanding what’s really going on with the budget and then see what I can do to help."

According to preliminary results, Anker garnered 51.66 percent of the vote. Reportedly just 15 percent of the district came out to vote Tuesday.