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Garry ... cysts benign

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THE COLLEEN Garry Democrat political machine rolled to election victory for the 11th consecutive time Tuesday night, but some pundits wondered if the steam engine is slowing down.

Garry's shrinking vote totals tell the story, they say. Garry's rematch with Dracut Selectmen Chairwoman Cathy Richardson, a Republican, wasn't expected to be close. Garry built up a 1,088-vote plurality over Richardson in retaining the 36th Middlesex District House seat (Dracut-Tyngsboro), yet her margin declined dramatically from the 2012 race, when she defeated Richardson by 3,527 votes.

Garry won 53.7 percent of the 14,570 votes cast on Tuesday; in 2012, she racked up 70 percent of the vote total when 20,587 residents pulled ballots during a presidential election.

The 6,017 fewer voters in 2014 may have been a factor. And Garry could not campaign for much of the fall due to surgery.

Still, there's no doubt that Richardson bested her overall numbers this year by 16 percent. Her biggest gains came in Dracut. Two years ago, Richardson garnered 3,546 Dracut votes; in 2014, she received 4,661, up 31 percent.

Meanwhile, Garry's Dracut total dropped from 8,511 in 2012 to 5,553 in 2014 -- a 35 percent decline (2,958 votes). Garry's vote total in Tyngsboro suffered even a more precipitous decline, going from 6,117 votes in 2012 to 2,276 in 2014 -- a 63 percent drop.

Is Richardson closing the gap toward a third run at Garry in 2016? Some observers told The Column they hope there is no Garry-Richardson III.

Four days before the Nov. 4 election, an anonymous packet arrived in The Sun's newsroom containing court documents on Richardson's five-year-old civil legal battle with a home mortgage company. The documents were circulated among Garry supporters, two of whom went on The Dracut Connection cable TV show to display the papers, accuse Richardson of "fraud" and basically smear Richardson's fiscal fitness to go to Beacon Hill.

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