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With votes still to count, McConchie leads 26th District race

With just provisional, mail-in and absentee ballots left to count in McHenry County, Dan McConchie held a 1,381-vote lead at the end of the day Wednesday in the tight three-way race for the Republican nomination to replace retiring 26th District state Sen. Dan Duffy.

However, McConchie was not yet claiming victory.

"I'm very happy with where the news is, the trends have been very good for us," he said Wednesday. "But I like to wait and ensure that there's no unforeseen changes."

The Hawthorn Woods resident had 13,435 votes, 36.6 percent of the total, as of Wednesday. Mettawa Mayor Casey Urlacher was just behind with 12,054 votes, 32.8 percent of the total, and Barrington Hills Village President Martin McLaughlin was third with 11,214 votes, 30.5 percent of the total.

The unofficial count was completed in Cook, Lake and Kane counties, but vote tallying in McHenry County was still unfinished. The McHenry County clerk's office halted counting Wednesday, according to county board member and candidate Nick Provenzano, because Clerk Mary McClellan was attending a funeral. McClellan returned later in the day, but said she had not received permission to unseal and count provisional ballots yet.

Duffy, who joined several other Republican state lawmakers in endorsing McConchie earlier in the campaign, called the candidate a "very hard worker who loves his state and loves his country."

"He is going to do everything he can to turn around Illinois and make it the great state it once was," said Duffy.

Duffy said the pre-election polls indicated Urlacher would finish third and McLaughlin second, but he believes the Mettawa mayor's stronger showing might have been the result of his famous last name and Donald Trump's presence on the ballot.

"(Trump supporters) are going to vote for the next popular name they see on the ballot and that was Urlacher," he said. "That might have hurt Dan (McConchie) a little bit."

Urlacher is the brother of Chicago Bears legend Brian Urlacher.

McConchie is the vice president of government affairs for Americans United For Life, a national anti-abortion legal advocacy group.

The 26th District is centered in the Barrington area and includes large portions of central and southwest Lake County, plus parts of northwest Cook County, northeast Kane County, and southeast McHenry County.

No Democrat filed to run for the seat, which Duffy, a Lake Barrington Republican, has held for the last eight years. However, Democrats still have time to place a candidate on the November ballot.

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