A recount to determine the outcome of the race for a Boston-area state Senate seat began Wednesday, but the slim margin separating incumbent Senator William N. Brownsberger and first-time candidate Daniel Lander remained the same.
Boston election officials finished recounting ballots Wednesday evening, with each candidates losing four votes.
That left Brownsberger, a top Senate Democrat, holding a 34-vote lead over Lander, a former senior aide to Mayor Michelle Wu.
The recount is set to continue Thursday in the rest of the Suffolk and Middlesex district — which includes part of Cambridge, Watertown, and Belmont.
The race has remained too close to call since the Sept. 1 primary. The narrow margin separating the two candidates fluctuated from dozens to, at one point, a mere three votes as local election officials updated their unofficial vote tallies. Both Lander and Brownsberger formally requested a recount at the end of last week.
The secretary of state’s office allows candidates to request a districtwide recount if the margin is less than 0.5 percent of the total votes cast in the race — a threshold that would amount to about 120 votes in the Brownsberger vs. Lander race.
Local officials must submit the recounted and recertified vote totals to the state by 5 p.m. on Friday.
The second floor of Boston’s City Hall was buzzing with activity from 8:30 a.m. until past 6 p.m. Wednesday, as an army of election staff and recount workers meticulously checked and tallied ballots. They did the work under the watchful eyes of dozens of volunteers from both campaigns, the candidates themselves, attorneys, and state election officials.
By Wednesday evening, Brownsberger and Lander were still neck and neck — Brownsberger with 12,287 votes and Lander with 12,253, according to unofficial vote totals in Belmont, Cambridge, and Watertown, and the recounted and re-certified tally from Boston.
The recount is an outlier in a state primary where most incumbent lawmakers easily held on to their seats. Should Lander pull off an upset, it would be in no small part due to the influence of Wu, who endorsed her former aide in his bid to unseat the third-ranking Democrat in the state Senate.
Wu’s move to formally back a political newcomer over a two-decade veteran of Beacon Hill put a spotlight on the race as a test of Wu’s influence outside City Hall.
Wu publicly clashed with Brownsberger and state Senator Nick Collins of South Boston several times in recent years after they played key roles in blocking her request to temporarily adjust how the city taxes commercial and residential properties to ease coming tax spikes for homeowners. Wu also endorsed first-time candidate Latoya Gayle, an education advocate, who lost by about 10 percentage points to Collins last week.
Many political observers saw Wu’s endorsements of Lander and Gayle as attempts to oust two of her top adversaries in the state Legislature. Others argued that the tight margin in the Brownsberger vs. Lander contest reflects some voters’ growing impatience with the establishment and slow-moving bureaucracy of Beacon Hill, where state lawmakers have extensive control over municipal policies such as the ability to implement new taxes, raise existing taxes, or distribute new liquor licenses.
Brownsberger declined to speak to the Globe Wednesday, citing the ongoing recount process. But at least 10 sitting state Senators, who were among the Brownsberger volunteers, said they wanted to make sure their colleague knew he has the backing of his peers.
“I’m here today because we can’t afford to lose Will Brownsberger in the state Senate,” said state Senator Sal DiDomenico of Everett. “He’s a leader that we all turn to. I look at Will in a lot of ways, on a lot of issues. ... It’s important for us to make sure that we keep the good guys in the Senate.”
Lander’s campaign and supporters, though, argued that the razor-thin margin should serve as a warning to all incumbents.
“I know nobody on that side of the room expected it” to be this close, Lander told the Globe in an interview Wednesday. “It is clear that they gotta start to do real work to make sure that people can stay in the state. ... People just know this is a wealthy place that believes in public good, and we should have a Statehouse that actually wants to deal with urgency.”
Throughout his campaign, Lander sought to tap into Democratic voters’ growing appetite for more progressive leadership, and accused the notoriously opaque, hierarchical state Legislature of failing to urgently address challenges like the rising cost of living. Brownsberger defended his extensive record in office, pointing to his work on police and criminal justice reform and investments in affordable housing.
Lander narrowly won Cambridge and Watertown, by margins of 248 votes and 157 votes, respectively.
He also claimed Boston, where he lives in the Fenway, earning 1,762 more votes than Brownsberger.
But Brownsberger closed that gap by pulling ahead in Belmont, where he lives, earning 2,201 more votes than Lander.
The Lander campaign also requested to review additional election materials in the coming days, including signatures on mail-in ballot envelopes and applications. That process is separate from the completed recount and will not likely result in a change in vote totals, according to the secretary of state’s office.
Kelly Garrity of the Globe staff contributed to this report.
Niki Griswold can be reached at niki.griswold@globe.com. Follow her @nikigriswold.