Democrat Dean L. Lees Jr., a town administrator candiate, shakes hands with voters at a polling place last night.

The Providence Journal / Steve Szydlowski

Republican T. Joseph Almond, the winner in the Lincoln town administrator race, listens as election results come in to Republican headquarters last night.

The Providence Journal / Steve Szydlowski

LINCOLN — T. Joseph Almond broke from a crowded pack last night to win a four-way race for town administrator, according to unofficial Town Hall results.

But Almond’s victory was pretty much the only bright spot for local Republicans, as Democrats won control of the Town Council 3 to 1, partly by defeating three-term incumbent Town Council President Elizabeth Robinson.

Almond’s win took a lot of the sting out of those defeats, however. As the results were called in to Republican headquarters at the Lincoln Country Club from polling place after polling place, Almond was consistently ahead of Democrat Dean L. Lees Jr. and independent candidates Edward J. O’Neill and Richard K. Foster.

According to Town Hall results, Almond led the field with 3,084 votes. Behind him in second place was O’Neill with 2,550 votes and Lees with 2,428. Foster received just 995 votes. Those results do not include 148 write-ins and 330 absentee ballots; however, those uncounted are not enough to change the outcome in the town administrator’s race.

Voters yesterday also decided to keep the community’s financial town meeting as the method of approving the town’s annual budget.

Early in the evening, Almond had refused to make any predictions, saying “I have no idea,” every time someone asked how he thought things would go.

Even when the last polling place was in, and the result was clear, he walked around the crowded headquarters with a cautious smile on his face. Men walked up to him and shook his hand and women pulled his face down so they could kiss him on the cheek.

Democrat Lees congratulated Almond on his win.

“Any help or advice I can give him, I will,” Lees said. “But I’m only 35, and there’s plenty of time for me to come back.”

Almond attributed his win to a well-organized get-out-the-vote effort by his supporters.

More than an hour before the polls closed, Almond’s campaign workers were sitting around tables at the Lincoln Country Club. Phone books were open on the tables and each worker had a computer print out of names, addresses and phone numbers.

“I was just wondering if you had a chance to get out and vote for Joe,” one caller said into her cell phone. “You did? Thank you.”

Another supporter came out of a hallway and announced how the polls were still open “and we’ve got to make some phone calls.”

“Holy moly,” one of the women said as she hung up her phone. “We never stopped.”

Almond said the campaign had identified potential supporters during door-to-door stops and put together a list of people they wanted to be sure would turn out to vote.

He said the campaign didn’t do anything special to cope with the independent candidacies of Foster and O’Neill.

“We didn’t want to try to anticipate anything,” Almond said. “We just tried to get out our base of support.”

Robinson, the defeated council president, attributed her loss in part to the fact that she’d been in office three terms and the election seemed to be about voters wanting change. She also speculated that aggressive efforts on behalf of statewide Democratic candidates Sheldon Whitehouse and Charles J. Fogarty brought more Democratic voters to the polls.

“The Democrats all benefited,” she said.

Robinson added that she was pleased with Almond’s win.

“I don’t think he’s going to go in and make any rash changes,” she said.

Lees came out of the Democratic primary victorious, but with a less than clear mandate. He won the party’s nomination with 36 percent of the vote in a three-way race, beating former state Rep. John D. Barr II by 41 votes and former town solicitor Azar by 140 votes.

Barr accepted the results of the primary, but Azar did not. The five-time candidate for town administrator, who came within 527 votes of unseating Sue P. Sheppard in 2004, announced he’d be a write-in candidate. He said if he could hold half of the 4,944 people who voted for him in 2004, in this year’s five-way field, that would be enough to win. Though he did not launch an aggressive door-to-door campaign, he bought advertising, sent mailings and posted signs telling supporters how to write him in.

But the town clerk’s office said there only 148 write-in votes.