Recount declares Teresa Heitmann Naples mayor.

Mayor Teresa Heitmann won re-election after a costly and time-consuming campaign. Later, a manual recount verified that Bernier Barton had won a Naples City Council contest.

The lengthy and costly mayor’s race comes to an end with the Collier County Supervisor of Elections’ recount, according to a recent article by Jacob Ogles of Florida Politics

Heitmann stood for re-election against Gary Price, a former City Councilman, and Ted Blankenship, a current City Council member. Results on election day showed Heitmann ahead of Price by a mere 12 votes, or around 0.1% of the total votes cast, a margin narrow enough to force a recount.

Heitmann’s advantage increased to 22 votes after counting accepted provisional ballots and correcting many uncounted vote-by-mail ballots due to incorrect signatures.

A machine recount on Saturday confirmed the outcome, in which Heitmann received 3,269 votes to Price’s 3,247. Blankenship was cast in 2,049 ballots.

Despite being small, the victory was sufficient to end the race without requiring a manual recount.

Concurrent with the Mayor’s race was an election for the City Council, in which six candidates ran for three seats on the board.On election day, Bill Kramer and Linda Penniman prevailed with sizable percentages.

However, Tony Perez-Benitoa and Barton shared a slim lead that necessitated a recount in the contest for the third seat as well.

After provisional and cured ballots were counted on Friday, Barton’s lead of 33 votes on Election Day increased to 35 votes. Nevertheless, the margin stayed at roughly 0.2% of the total votes.

Barton had 34 votes in the lead, according to a machine recount. However, that number was still sufficiently close to call for a manual vote recount. According to Florida law, ballots must be recounted by machine if the margin is within 0.5% of all cast votes, and by hand if the margin is still within 0.25%.

Following all recounts, the final results confirmed the 34-vote margin, with Barton receiving 3,686 votes to Perez-Benitoa’s 3,652.

Heitmann spent approximately $64,000 defending her seat through March 14 and still had $50,000 available for the closing stretch. Price spent $284,000 through March 14, with an additional $11,000 planned to wrap up the election season.

This article originally appeared on Florida Politics