Reno City Council candidate Lily Baran’s campaign for the Ward 1 seat has ended after the recount of June’s primary election results, which she’d requested just days earlier, was stopped at her request. She rescinded the withdrawal request less than 24 hours later, but Nevada law doesn’t allow a withdrawn recount to resume.
As first reported in The Nevada Independent, Baran said she was in a “panic” about the recount and allegations she’d accepted an illegal campaign donation. Accepting an illegal campaign donation is a class E felony and could result in up to four years in jail and a $5,000 fine.
Baran did not respond to This Is Reno for comment.
The allegation came from former Reno City Council member Paul McKenzie, who on June 28 filed a complaint with the Secretary of State’s office alleging that the more than $50,000 for the recount, which was paid by local far-right activist Robert Beadles, who runs the Franklin Project PAC, was illegal.
Baran said she allowed Beadles to pay for the recount because of the narrow margin in the race — just 15 votes separated her from second-place finisher Frank Perez.
“If I didn’t talk to voters who told me their votes were not counted when they should have been, I would not be doing this,” she wrote on Instagram last week. She said she’d consulted “the legal community” and been assured it was the right thing to do.
However, by Sunday evening, Baran was having doubts. As outlined in a July 2 memo from Reno City Clerk Mikki Huntsman, Baran emailed Huntsman on Sunday, June 30, around 4 p.m. to request to withdraw her request for the recount.
“I’m unclear on what the process here is please advise,” Baran wrote.
By 6:49 a.m. the following morning, she emailed Huntsman again writing, “I think it’s too late to do this please disregard.” Baran emailed again around 3 p.m. to again say she had been confused and wanted the recount to continue.
It was too late. The city attorney’s office had already begun the process to stop the recount, and Nevada’s administrative code doesn’t allow for a recount to resume once it has been withdrawn.
Baran said she’s frustrated with how recounts are handled in Nevada. In many other states, automatic recounts are triggered when there is a narrow vote margin between candidates — often much larger than in Baran’s race. Nevada has no such law, and instead charges candidates for the cost of a recount.
Each of the three candidates had to pay more than $50,000 for a recount. The cost covers 44 people to manage the recount, according to records obtained by This Is Reno.
“Each candidate who demands a recount has to pay what it costs to conduct the recount,” Washoe County spokesperson Bethany Drysdale said. “Each recount demand is treated as a singular demand, regardless of how the ballots are counted. The Registrar of Voters estimates that it will take 44 people to conduct a recount of all the ballots.”
Baran said that system disenfranchises marginalized people who often can’t come up with the $50,000 needed to re-tally the votes. “No one is standing behind those people right now,” she wrote. “No one is asking why I had 30 minutes to find $50,000. Or why the county would not just pay for it themselves to preserve all our faith and integrity in elections.”
Kendall Holcomb with the District Attorney’s Office said, “the recounts are conducted simultaneously and if more than one fails to prevail, the actual cost owed will be divided equally among those candidates.”
Recounts confirm losses in two races
Washoe County’s Registrar of Voters on Tuesday also posted preliminary results of two other recounts requests following June’s primary election.
In the race for County Commission District 4, Republican challenger Mark Lawson, who requested the recount, came up with one vote less based on the yet-to-be-certified recount results posted by the registrar of voters. Commissioner Clara Andriola’s tally remained the same at 4,055 votes while Lawson dropped to 2,329 votes.
Washoe County School Board of Trustees District G candidate Paul White also requested a recount, despite coming in fourth in that race. White picked up one vote in the recount to reach 4,555, still far short of Perry Rosenstein who led the race with 13,419 votes. Incumbent Diane Nicolet was the second-highest vote-getter with 6,872 votes based on the preliminary recount tally.
Both Lawson’s and White’s recounts were also paid for by Robert Beadles. Washoe’s Board of County Commissioners and Reno City Council members will each meet next week to canvass the recounts.
