Register of wills race remains too close to call, with incumbent Tracey Gordon trailing

Incumbent Register of Wills Tracey Gordon trailed challenger John Sabatina by about 3,400 votes with 95% of the ballots in the 2023 Philadelphia primary election counted late Wednesday afternoon. Though Gordon hadn’t conceded, Sabatina told The Inquirer he was claiming victory.

“We believe I’ve won it,” Sabatina, an estate attorney and longtime ward leader, said. “That’s what I’ve been told by several people who have the experience in matching up the numbers and where they’re coming from.”

Reached by text message Wednesday evening, Gordon only said: “Fingers crossed!”

The register of wills race remained tight on Tuesday night, with neither candidate prepared to accept victory or defeat when vote counting stalled after midnight.

“It was a tough race and I expect to win it tomorrow,” Sabatina said as he was leaving his election night party at Sprinkler Fitters Local 692.

Gordon ran for elected office four times before winning register of wills in 2019, shocking the Democratic Party by beating Ron Donatucci, who’d held the position for more than 40 years. Gordon was not endorsed by the party then or ahead of Tuesday’s election, and has had a difficult relationship with Philadelphia’s Democratic machine.

In 2012, Gordon successfully sued the Philadelphia Democratic Party to retain her appointment as a committeeperson in her Southwest Philadelphia ward after the ward leader and party boss Bob Brady opposed it.

The hallmark of Gordon’s register of wills tenure has been her attention to tangled titles, or messy property battles that happen when someone dies without a will, sometimes leading to property sheriff sales. Gordon sounded the alarm on the issue before City Council, which resulted in a $7.6 million city investment to help families settle the disputes. She also linked the issue of tangled titles and subsequent property blight with Philly’s record-breaking gun violence epidemic.

Gordon has also faced controversies in her first term. She hired and then let go of a beleaguered political consultant, and caught heat for allowing her daughter to sell Eagles merchandise ahead of the Super Bowl. Most recently, two former staffers accused Gordon of firing them because they refused to contribute to her campaign.

Sabatina is a longtime Northeast Philly ward leader, having held the position in the 56th Ward for more than 30 years. Sabatina’s son, John Sabatina Jr., served as a state representative and a state senator before becoming a judge on the Court of Common Pleas.

Sabatina said he decided to run after hearing of mishandling within the office under Gordon’s leadership.

“I thought that, hey, maybe I can go in and straighten it out and make it run right,” Sabatina said prior to the election.

Sabatina held a lead of about 3,400 votes Wednesday evening, about 2% of the 171,500 votes counted. About 4% of the city’s precincts had not yet returned their in-person results, and there were still a few thousand mail ballots and an unknown number of provisional ballots, along with a handful of overseas and military votes, that could still be counted. Not all of those votes will end up being counted, and not all of them will be Democratic votes or have voted in the register of wills race.

The other register of wills candidates, Elizabeth Hall Lowe and Rae K. Hall, trailed Sabatina by about 10 and 17 points, respectively.

“A Democratic win is almost an absolute sure thing of winning in the fall,” Sabatina said Wednesday. “It was a tough fight. I had a lot of good people helping me and it’s good to win.”

The Democratic nominee will face Republican candidate Linwood Holland, GOP leader of the 35th Ward, in the November general election. Holland ran unopposed in the GOP primary.

Staff writers Chris Brennan and Jonathan Lai contributed to this article.