According to results from the state Board of Elections, Ramos is leading with 7,896 votes, or 50.4 percent, to Larisa’s 7,884 votes, or 49.96 percent, pending a count of mail-in ballots.

There are 782 absentee ballots left to be counted. The city has 28,848 registered voters, Canvassing Clerk MaryAnn Callahan said last night.

“It’s not over yet, but it’s a good fight,” a tearful Ramos told his supporters.

“As Yogi Berra once said, ‘It ain’t over till it’s over,’ ” Larisa said.

Also too close to call was the School Committee race in Ward 4 where chairman Antone Gouveia Jr. is trailing Steven Santos, a political newcomer, by 30 votes. The state results have 2,185 for Santos, a senior business analyst at Lifespan, and 2,155 for Gouveia, a former country club manager. That ward has 185 absentee ballots still to be counted, Gouveia said.

“I haven’t conceded and we’ll ask for a recount,” Gouveia said. “It seems as if I was the only one in the city who though it would be close. I was concerned about [the contest] from the beginning. Obviously, I’m not happy.”

One of the city’s two local referendum questions also grabbed residents’ attention before last night. Larisa cosponsored a City Charter change last year with outgoing Councilman Patrick Caine that would give the council final say on all union contracts, including those with school employees.

Opponents of the measure said it would strip the School Committee of an important duty while others said the committee didn’t handle that responsibility well in the past, hurting taxpayers.

The charter change was approved by a landslide. More than 70 percent of the voters were for it.

The second local referendum asked for approval of a $5-million bond to repair, renovate and improve the city’s roads and drainage systems. It also passed easily.

There were five additional local, nonpartisan races – four council contests and the School Committee at-large seat – that voters also had to decide.

In the race for the Ward 1 City Council seat, Zoning Board member Robert Cusack won against James Abrams, a 56-year-old who has offered budget reductions to the council over the last couple of years. Former state Rep. Brian Coogan was handily defeated by incumbent Byran Silva, a local flower shop owner, for the Ward 2 council seat. Silva had already defeated Coogan in a special election earlier this year after the death of Councilman Norman Miranda. In the Ward 3 council race, incumbent Valerie Perry also convincingly beat Bob Carlin, a design engineer and political newcomer. The Ward 4 race between longtime incumbent Peter Midgley and challenger Bruce DiTraglia was exacerbated by a last-minute complaint that DiTraglia was violating the federal Hatch Act that bans partisan political activity by people whose salaries include federal money. DiTraglia works for the state Department of Transportation but DOT officials have said he isn’t paid with federal funds.

The decision in that investigation had not been announced as of yesterday afternoon, but DiTraglia is confident he will be cleared.

DiTraglia won the race against Midgley.

In three of the five races for School Committee seats, incumbents were unopposed, giving Eileen Lovett, David Medeiros and Robert Faria two more years on the board.

Mildred Morris, a 10-year veteran on the School Committee, also had a challenger in Robert Enos, a founder of the city’s League of Concerned Voters. Morris, who worked for the school district as a secretary in the high school for 32 years, beat Enos with nearly 55 percent of the vote.

At the end of the night, most attention was focused on the heavyweight battle between Ramos, the soft-spoken former educator, and Larisa, the lawyer who was a former key advisor to Governor Carcieri.