Joe Biden handily won Rhode Island and fellow Democrats U.S. Sen. Jack Reed and U.S. Rep. David Cicilline cruised to reelection Tuesday, but many other closely watched races in the state remained undecided as vote counting stretched well passed midnight in an election that set a new state record for voter turnout.

Republican Barbara Ann Fenton-Fung on Tuesday appeared on track to defeat Democratic House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello, one of Rhode Island’s most powerful politicians, though elections officials still had not counted mail or early voting ballots in that and many other races hours after polls closed at 8 p.m.

Republicans are vastly outnumbered in the state Legislature, but a victory by Fenton-Fung would trigger a power struggle among House Democrats. Mattiello, an attorney and a conservative Democrat, has been House speaker since 2014 and has represented the district since 2007.

Fenton-Fung, a physical therapist and the wife of longtime Cranston Mayor Allan Fung — a popular two-time GOP gubernatorial candidate — had aggressively targeted Mattiello in the 15th legislative district in Cranston.

The 39-year-old Fenton-Fung repeatedly called attention to scandals that have dogged Mattiello, most recently the money laundering trial of former campaign aide Jeffrey Britt.

Earlier this year, the 57-year-old Mattiello himself was the subject of a grand jury investigation into why he ordered an unauthorized audit of the Rhode Island Convention Center Authority. He was accused of using the audit as retaliation for disciplinary action against one of his campaign donors, the convention center’s director of security, who was put on leave.

Allan Fung, a popular figure who’s term-limited after serving as Cranston’s mayor since 2009 and ran twice for governor, had also gone door to door with his wife as she made her case to voters. The western Cranston district backed Trump for president in 2016, and Mattiello squeaked out a victory by just 329 votes in 2018.

In the presidential race, Democrat Joe Biden beat Republican President Donald Trump.

Rhode Islanders also passed judgment on a ballot measure that would shorten the state’s official name and weighed another term for U.S. Rep. Jim Langevin.

More than 480,000 voters cast ballots, besting the state’s previous all-time high of more than 475,000 in 2008, when Democrat Barack Obama was elected president, according to preliminary tallies from Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea’s office as polls closed.

The office said the final voter turnout count will be higher as provisional ballots, mail ballots placed in drop boxes on election day and ballots cast by voters still in line after polls close will be added to the overall count Wednesday.

Elections officials also cautioned that results for some races might not be knowable on election night because of expected tabulation delays.

But the outcome of the presidential race was in little doubt in Rhode Island, where President Donald Trump lost to Hillary Clinton by more than 15 percentage points in 2016. Rhode Island has backed a Republican for the White House only four times in the modern era — twice for Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956, once for Richard Nixon in 1972 and once for Ronald Reagan in 1984.

The U.S. Senate race in Rhode Island pitted the Democrat Reed against Republican challenger Allen Waters, a perennial candidate who mounted earlier unsuccessful campaigns for the state Senate and U.S. Senate in Massachusetts.

Reed, first elected to the Senate in 1996, is a senior member of the powerful Appropriations Committee and a ranking member of the Armed Services Committee. Rhode Island's other U.S. senator, Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse, isn't up for reelection until 2024.

In the U.S. House, Cicilline, one of Trump’s harshest critics in Congress, faced independents Frederick Wysocki and Jeffrey Lemire in his bid for a fifth term representing the 1st Congressional District.

The longtime Democratic U.S. Rep. Langevin, the first quadriplegic lawmaker to serve in Congress, was up against Republican former state lawmaker Robert Lancia in the 2nd Congressional District. If reelected, Langevin would start his 11th term in January.

The sole statewide referendum on the ballot asked voters to shorten the state's official name, “The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations,” to drop the plantations reference. Supporters argue that it evokes the slavery era and offends at a time when the nation is wrestling with racial injustice.

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