As the results came in Tuesday night, the race for Board of Selectman (BOS) remained tight, with incumbent First Selectman Bill Davidson keeping his position with a total of 2,174 votes to Republican challenger Steve O’Reilly’s 1,989. Davidson will be joined on the BOS by Republican George Walker (2,095) and Davidson’s running mate and incumbent selectman, Howard Lasser (2,021).

The close tally saw O’Reilly lose his position on the BOS by only 32 votes, however according to the CT General Statutes, the margin is too wide to require a recount.

“Steve and I worked hard together to make every effort we could to bring us 100 percent success,” Walker said Tuesday night. “We didn’t quite get there but Steve deserves all the credit in the world.”

Davidson said he was thrilled with the results as they came in, both for himself and for Lasser.

“As a team we’re doing good things for Brookfield and will continue to,” he said in a post-election interview Tuesday. “I thought that we had done good for the town and was fairly comfortable that we’d be rewarded.”

“I’m good to go for another two years,” he added. “We’ll have a good time collaborating with George Walker, we know him well, we’ve worked with him before on the Board of Finance. It will work well and the town will benefit.”

“We came pretty damn close,” O’Reilly said Tuesday. “We knew coming in that we needed to win District I by 300 votes and we didn’t quite do it,” as he only gained 121 votes over Davidson at the Huckleberry polls, which serves a higher number of registered Republicans but half the number of voters, and fell behind by 317 votes in District II, Brookfield High School.

“We got our message out,” he said. “We knew what we wanted to say and if the people don’t come out you can’t force people to vote.”

The 4,198 ballots cast represented 41.8 percent of the town’s 10,043 registered voters, the second lowest turnout in town history, second only to the 2007 municipal election.

(The last comparable election, in 2009, had 46.4 percent of voters turn out, with 4,522 ballots cast out of 9,753 registered voters.)

“It was the storm and the power outage and everything else this past week,” Republican Town Committee (RTC) secretary Matt Grimes said of the low turnout. “But the voters elected a divided government and said, ‘work together.’”

“I’m pleased that Bill and I won another term,” Lasser said of Tuesday night’s results. “It shows that we did a good job for the town and they supported us.”

However, while the Democrats maintained control of the BOS, “We didn’t take the Board of Finance,” in which GOP candidates Robin Appleby and Phil Kurtz defeated their Democratic challengers. “It shows that the town still has kind of a split personality and is still looking for restraint in spending.”

“I think the Republican Party is alive and well in this town,” O’Reilly said. “Give us two years and we’ll be back.”