In what remained a close race for the 15th Legislative District, incumbent Republican Dennis Dunne defeated Democrat Theresa Butler by nearly 1,000 votes on Tuesday.

Dunne, who was running on the Independent and Conservative Party lines, defeated not only Butler who was also running on the Liberal and Working Families lines, but Benjamin Slutsky who ran on the Right to Life ticket and Janet Zink, who ran on the Green Party line. All of the candidates except Zink are residents of Levittown. Zink is a resident of Bethpage.

According to unofficial numbers provided by the Nassau County Board of Elections, Dunne received 6,234 votes, Butler received 5,267 votes, Slutsky received 414 votes and Zink received only 46 votes to represent residents in part of Levittown, Salisbury and part of Wantagh, in the Legislature.

Dunne has served as a member of the county Legislature since its inception on Jan. 2, 1996 and is very proud of his record of community service. He sees the role of a legislator as being a problem-solver for the people of the district and one of the biggest problems he recently set out to correct was the budget deficit in the county. Dunne is very proud of the fact that the Legislature shredded County Executive Thomas Gulotta's budget and worked on their own, which he sees as being more financially responsible.

A pet project that Dunne is also particularly proud of is initiating a cancer survey in Levittown when fear of a cancer cluster in the community spread. When the number of returned surveys did not reach his expectations, Dunne then gathered a large group of volunteers to deliver the surveys door-to-door.

The revitalization of Hempstead Turnpike is something that Dunne has been involved with in recent months and he is looking forward to seeing the project progress within the next year.

Of his re-election, Dunne said, "I thank the men and women of the 15th Legislative District for having faith in me and returning me to the job as their legislator, their representative, and I'll continue to work as hard as I can for them." He believes that the fact he has worked as hard as he could for the people in Levittown, Island Trees and Salisbury helped his re-election, in what was one of the most difficult years for Republican candidates.

Under the now-Democratic majority within the Legislature Dunne expects to see many changes but vows, "That's not going to change my work ethic. I'm going to continue to do everything I possibly can for Levittown."