Liberal candidate Sandra Yeung Racco wins in Thornhill
The Thornhill riding race was tight all night and the Liberal challenger appeared to have beaten PC incumbent Gila Martow by a razor-thin margin.

TheStar.com
June 12, 2014
Kate Allen

Liberal challenger Sandra Yeung Racco appears to have won by the thinnest of margins over PC incumbent Gila Martow in the Thornhill riding.

The lead swung back and forth dramatically as the final votes were tallied.

At incumbent Martow’s party, supporters paced nervously as they watched the results trickle in, with gasps arising from the crowd every time new votes were added to the total.

With all 280 polls reporting, Yeung Racco had a razor-thin margin, leading Martow 21,837 to 21,752. A recount is expected.

At one point late in the evening, the pair were separated by a single vote. A Martow campaign staffer asked volunteers to make sure to hand in their polling materials in the case of a recount.

The race was a rematch of a close contest just four months earlier: In mid-February, Martow and Yeung Racco ran against each other in a byelection to fill the seat of departed PC MPP Peter Shurman.

Shurman retired last December after a housing-allowance controversy that led to a rift with Tory leader Tim Hudak. Shurman, whose primary residence was in Niagara-on-the-Lake even though he represented Thornhill, collected a substantial subsidy intended for members of Parliament who live more than 50 kilometres away from Queen’s Park — a “loophole” that has since been closed so that only MPPs whose ridings are distant from the legislature can cash in. Hudak fired Shurman as finance critic when the $20,719 expense was revealed, even though Shurman said he had followed the rules in place at the time and claimed that Hudak was aware of the arrangement.

Shurman had held the seat since 2007, when he defeated single-term Liberal MPP Mario Racco, Yeung Racco’s husband. In the February byelection, Martow overcame her predecessor’s public criticisms of the Tories to win 48 per cent of the vote to Yeung Racco’s 42 per cent, a difference of 1,767 votes.

Since the writ dropped on May 7, both contestants have been campaigning hard to either widen or reverse that gap. Premier Kathleen Wynne visited the riding to celebrate her birthday. Hudak walked alongside Martow in the United Jewish Appeal’s Walk with Israel. Thornhill has a large Jewish community, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s support of Israel has bolstered Conservative campaigners. Both candidates boasted high-profile endorsements.

Transportation was a major issue during the campaign: In her short time as MPP, Martow championed a private-members bill aimed at curbing highway congestion, and the candidates from all three major parties vowed to expand transit.

The NDP candidate, Cindy Hackelberg, came in a distant third with 4,005 votes.

Martow was an optometrist before winning the byelection. After careers in music and business, Yeung Racco has spent the last decade as a Vaughan city councillor.