Gatto on way back to Juneau

MAT-SU — Republican incumbent state Rep. Carl Gatto, R-Palmer, appeared to be on track late Tuesday evening to win re-election to the seat he’s held for six years in House District 13 Tuesday.

As of press time Tuesday, Gatto was leading Democratic challenger David Cheezem with 74.41 percent of votes counted to 24.96 percent in the polls.

The apparent win will send Gatto onto his fourth term as a legislator in Juneau.

Reached on his cell phone late Tuesday, Gatto said he feels fine about the results and declined to comment further.

For his part, Cheezem, who spoke from local Democratic headquarters in Palmer Tuesday, said he’s not pessimistic about the results.

“I’m thinking there is something like 2,000 early votes that we won’t know about until 10 days from now,” Cheezem said.

He added local Democrats encouraged their voters to hit the polls early, and he believes those votes will be weighted in favor of the Democrats when they are counted.

It may be a long shot for Cheezem to count on absentee and early votes to make up a 2,819-946 vote deficit with five of the district’s 10 precincts reporting.

As of Tuesday evening, it was still unclear what uncounted votes might do to any election in the Valley.

The race for House District 13 heated up as Election Day neared, and the Democratic Party sent mailers to voters in the district touting their candidate.

Cheezem, who owns Fireside Books in Palmer, said he ran for a House seat because he feels he can get results in Juneau.

He’ll be looking forward to the coming days as outstanding votes are counted, he said.

“Obviously, I would have liked these numbers to be a closer today,” Cheezem said.