Andre Horton is trailing Julie Slomski for the Democratic nomination in the race for the 49th district Pennsylvania Senate seat, but there are many more votes to count as the Erie County Election Office begins tallying the paper mail in ballots Wednesday.

Slomski has 6,625 votes (55 percent) compared to Horton's 5,361 votes (45 percent) - a margin of 1,264 votes (10 percent).

If Horton should win, he will focus on equity issues exposed by COVID-19 and keep pushing for a county community college.

"The community college - hopefully, we'll have a vote on that," said Horton. "Ultimately, everything I do will end around quality affordable education and workforce development, so we can prepare our people for the global economy of today, not tomorrow, today."

Slomski works for Logistics Plus now but served as northwest regional director for Gov. Tom Wolf in which she says she has overseen state investment in the Erie region.

"If I am the candidate, rally the troops," said Slomski. "I have such a phenomenal team surrounding me here on the ground and making sure we're really understanding what the issues are here in the 49th district. I still believe that's minimum wage. I still believe it's affordable, reasonable healthcare."

Incumbent Sen. Dan Laughlin was unopposed in the Republican primary but will face either Slomski or Horton in the fall.

Laughlin wants to keep the momentum going. He's most proud of helping secure a more equal share of funding for Erie's Public Schools, as well as helping Erie secure eight federal opportunity zones through a competitive process.

"I have Senator friends who have cities close to the size of Erie that didn't get any because they were kind of asleep at the switch, and we jumped right on that," said Laughlin. "I'm very proud of that, and I know this pandemic has kind of short-circuited a little bit of that for now, but the investments that are going to come into the of Erie are going to help provide family-sustaining jobs. That's one of the things I'm looking forward to being helpful on."

Laughlin received 11,544 votes.