By Dawn Krebs
dkrebs@hometownnewsol.com
PORT ST. LUCIE - It took almost a week to decide which two candidates would be facing each other for an open city council seat.
In the Port St. Lucie City Council District 4 race, candidate Ron Bowen won the most votes for the seat, with 6,284 votes or 35.61 percent. But because Mr. Bowen didn't get more than 50 percent of the vote, the second-highest vote getter will run against him in the November election.
The issue with that was the next two candidates, Robert Bluestone and Jolien Caraballo, had such small amounts of votes separating them the ballots had to be recounted to see which of them had more.
Initially, after the primary election, Mr. Bluestone had 4,170 votes or 23.63 percent, while Ms. Caraballo had 4,120 votes or 23.35 percent. After a machine recount on Aug. 18, only 35 votes separated the two.
It wasn't until a manual count on Aug. 20 that Mr. Bluestone emerged as having the most votes. During the final count, Mr. Bluestone had 44 more votes than Ms. Caraballo.
Mr. Bowen and Mr. Bluestone will now run against each other in the Nov. 6 election.