Somerset County Republican Sheriff’s candidate Tim Pino said he does not intend to go down without a fight.

North Plainfield Police Chief Bill Parenti defeated the former K-9 officer by 238 votes in the GOP Primary for Somerset County Sheriff, according to Somerset County Clerk Steve Peter.

The final tally after provisionals and VBMs was 7,120 votes for Parenti and 6,882 for Pino.

But Pino does not intend to bow out at this time, he told InsiderNJ.

“We have received calls from numerous voters who experienced what my legal team calling ‘voting irregularities’ that affected their right to vote,” said Pino. “We respect the election process too much to let these concerns go unaddressed, so we’re looking into them before we make a final decision on what the campaign should do. Bill Parenti’s public declaration of winning by 600 votes misled the public and a week later – and  almost 400 votes less – and we have a very tight race.”

UPDATE: On June 19th, Pino formally filed for a recount.

“Whenever you have 14K people vote and it comes down to a super thin margin like we have in this primary race, it’s imperative all of the vote totals are confirmed and every ballot is accounted for,” the candidate said.