School Committee Is Elected

In tight School Committee elections that drew 12 candidates to battle for six seats, four incumbents and two newcomers were elected, with veteran Henrietta Davis leading the count by almost 200 votes, according to unofficial tallies yesterday.

As of 6 p.m. last night, non-incumbent David P. Maher finished behind Davis and just ahead of the three other incumbents, commission officials said.

Following Maher were two-term member James J. Rafferty, five-term member Albert B. Fantini, three-term incumbent Larry A. Weinstein and non-incumbent E. Denise Simmons.

Officials said that final results will not be announced until Monday.

This year's campaign was particularly close because two popular School Committee incumbents, Alfred E. Vellucci and Fran Cooper, passed up the committee race.

Vellucci and Cooper were the top two vote-getters in the 1989 election. Their absence from the race left approximately 700 votes up for grabs.

"It is definitely a close race," Henry J. Lukas, a School Committee candidate, said at the Longfellow School tallying site before the unoffical results were announced. "It will be a race between myself, Simmons and Rafferty for the last spot."

Although Lukas finished 300 votes behind Simmons, putting him in seventh place, the outcome was unpredictable throughout much of the vote-counting process.

One hour before tally officials announced the counts, Simmons and Lukas were only 100 votes apart. In addition, Rafferty trailed Maher by only six votes for second place.

Weinstein said before the election that his greatest concern was that his constituents would take his reelection "for granted" and would give competitors their number one votes.

Maher said that he worked harder during this campaign than in the 1989 election, which he lost by a margin of only 11 votes behind Rafferty.