After several hours and a dozen rounds of back-and-forth voting, the Republican committee was unable to pick a candidate for the 13th Senate District seat.

Early this morning, the committee, with its number of voting members dwindling and a deadlock between two candidates, finally called an early end to the convention and declared an open primary for the coveted legislative post.

And one candidate left the convention accusing another of using supporters to manipulate the votes.

Greg Sahd, a former Lancaster County treasurer, and Lloyd Smucker, a West Lampeter Township supervisor and business consultant, were running neck and neck as the convention began, according to straw polls held earlier this month.

Paul Thibault, a former chairman of the county commissioners, and Bill Neff of York County were eliminated during the first two rounds of voting.

Although Smucker led the voting in the first two rounds Tuesday, he was unable to sustain his lead through the night. Sahd took the lead and opened a sizable margin, but couldn't spur it to a clear victory as committee members cast ballot after ballot at the convention, held at Conestoga Valley Middle School.

The open seat is in the 13th state Senate District, from which state Sen. Gibson E. Armstrong is retiring after serving 30 years in the state Legislature. The district covers Lancaster city, Manheim Township and southern Lancaster County, as well as a portion of eastern York County.

Leaving the convention without an endorsement in hand, Smucker accused Thibault supporters of manipulating votes to get the open primary they were hoping for.

"I, in fact, was willing to support an endorsed candidate," Smucker said. "But this vote was manipulated from round one. There was a block of votes controlled by Thibault that went back and forth all night."

Thibault denied the accusation.

"I'm not starting the campaign on such a negative tone," he said.

Voting began behind closed doors at 10:15 p.m. The candidates, their families and their consultants waited in the lobby of the auditorium as ballots were cast and counted.

Neff was the first to fall and was dropped from the ballot after receiving only two votes in the first round. Thibault stayed in the running with 36 votes, while Smucker edged Sahd, 58 votes to 55. Three voters abstained.

Thibault was eliminated in the second round after receiving only 25 votes. Smucker garnered 65 votes and Sahd got 62 in that round, with two voters abstaining.

Thibault said later he will stay in the race without an endorsement.

"Let the campaign begin. It's already an open primary because others are running," he said. "It's an open seat. Let the voters decide."

Neff also has vowed to continue his campaign.

Smucker and Sahd continued jockeying for an endorsement over the next several rounds of voting. Although Sahd saw his lead grow, he was unable to capture the two-thirds majority he needed.

The vote in the third round was Sahd, 75, and Smucker, 74. In the fourth round, Sahd increased his lead to 79 over Smucker's 67, with six abstentions and two missing ballots. The fifth round came in with Sahd at 83, Smucker at 64, and seven abstentions.

A call to close the voting at that point and hold an open primary was shot down by the committee.

"I'm pretty optimistic," Sahd said after the fifth-round votes were counted. "The momentum I obtained will continue into the next couple of rounds."

After the sixth round — Sahd, 85, Smucker, 64, and five abstentions — a motion was made to give each candidate two minutes to make his case to the committee. The motion was denied, and district committee members broke into small groups to confer.

One committee member left just prior to the seventh round, and another left before the eighth, bringing the number of voters down to 152.

The next two rounds showed little movement. In the seventh round, Sahd got 83 votes and Smucker 68, with two abstentions. In the eighth, it was Sahd, 82, Smucker, 69, and one abstention.

Another motion to adjourn was voted down as the committee prepared for round nine, which brought Smucker back into the running, with 72 votes to Sahd's 78.

With 148 voters remaining, Sahd regained a portion of his lead in the 10th round — 82 votes to Smucker's 65, with one voter abstaining — only to slip slightly in the 11th, with 80 votes to 63 and, again, one abstention.

By the 12th round, with five more committee members heading home and the remaining 143 growing visibly tired, the vote shifted only slightly: Sahd, 82; Smucker, 61.

And that was enough for the committee, which approved an adjournment just short of 1 a.m.

"Naturally, I'm disappointed we weren't able to come up with an endorsement," Sahd said, "but you can't expect our good committee people to stay all hours of the night to get there."

Steve McDonald, the county recorder of deeds, also is running for Armstrong's seat but dropped out of the endorsement process.

McDonald said Tuesday it's clear the primary results are more important than a party endorsement.

"If it's an open primary, it will create a fair field for the voters to assess the candidates," he said.

Former U.S. Rep. Bob Walker endorsed Sahd for the post Tuesday morning.

E-mail: dpidgeon@lnpnews.com

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