A Wheatfield election that turned ugly in the final few days of the general election led to

a sound win for former Town Justice Robert B. Cliffe tonight.

Cliffe, a Republican, won the supervisor's seat with 59 percent of the vote against

Democratic candidate Samuel B. Conti Jr., who got 40 percent.

Unofficial write-in numbers from Republican leaders showed that Supervisor Timothy E.

Demler was unable to attract enough votes to pull off a win, but appeared to have polled more

votes than any write-in candidate in a Niagara County race in memory, about 800.

Demler lost a bitter Republican primary to Cliffe. The incumbent and his supporters waged a

vigorous write-in campaign — one that in prompted county elections commissioners to put

sheriff's deputies at every Wheatfield polling place today after problems at the ballot box

during the GOP primary — but the effort still fell about 1,000 votes shy of what Cliffe got

today.