Jinks Concedes 90th House District Race To Fishbein

CHESHIRE, WALLINGFORD, CT — After a hard-fought campaign and experiencing the ups and downs from election night through the recount, Cheshire Town Councilor Jim Jinks announced the end of his bid for the 90th District state House seat on Wednesday.

Jinks appeared to win the hotly contested race with Republican incumbent Craig Fishbein on election night. He declared victory early in the morning on Nov. 4 after election night totals showed him ahead of Fishbein, who is also a member of the Wallingford Town Council.

However, the Wallingford Town Clerk's office discovered that no votes from Mary G. Fritz Elementary School were recorded in the state election reporting system. The updated results, including the votes from Fritz Elementary School, showed Fishbein leading the race by 21 votes – 7,058 to 7,037. The close vote forced the automatic recount in both Wallingford and Cheshire.

Through early afternoon on Nov. 16, Cheshire and Wallingford elections officials submitted their final, post-recount numbers to the Secretary of the State’s office. Jinks ultimately fell short by only seven votes (7,055 to 7,048), according to campaign officials.

Jinks said he is ending his bid despite lingering concerns.

‘’On election night my campaign thought we’d won,” Jinks said. “My opponent’s campaign thought we’d won. State Democrats thought we’d won. State Republicans thought we’d won. We were all looking at the same numbers. I can’t explain the confusion other than to say it appears it was universal.”

Over the weekend following Election Day, members of the Jinks campaign and Wallingford’s Democratic Town Committee separately realized that “something didn’t add up,” according to a news release.

“The Wallingford DTC alerted Wallingford’s Town Clerk, who then discovered her offices’ reporting error which flipped the race to incumbent Craig Fishbein by 21 votes and triggered an automatic recount per state statute,” the release states.

Following the recount on Nov. 12, the margin was initially reported as 19 and then 17. Late Thursday night (Nov. 12) a newspaper ran a story claiming Fishbein’s lead had grown to 850 votes, but later retracted and revised the article after the error was reported.

“There’s been far too much confusion about the vote counts throughout this process,” Jinks said. “Nevertheless, it’s time to accept the hard work done by the recount moderators and volunteers. I called to concede this morning.’’

Reflecting on the campaign, Jinks said ‘’I’m proud of the campaign we ran, based on issues and facts.”

“I’m proud of all that we’ve accomplished in this race – from over-delivering on signatures, to fundraising in less than a day, to quickly organizing a strong campaign during a pandemic and ultimately reducing my opponent’s margin to such a tiny percentage,” he said. “One more day of canvassing and we would’ve won.’’