Six-term incumbent Barbara Cubin, fighting to retain a U.S. House seat that has been held by a Republican for nearly 28 years, held a slim lead this morning over Democrat Gary Trauner.

The six-term congresswoman, through spokesman Joe Milczewski, declared victory at about 12:30 a.m. Trauner was not conceding, and the prospect of an automatic recount loomed over the race.

"Barbara has declared victory and gone to bed for the evening, comfortable that she won," Milczewski said.

"We've a long way to go before anyone declares victory," Trauner said upon hearing of Cubin's declaration. "The best I know, we're a long ways from that."

Cubin trailed Trauner in early returns, but the race got closer as the night wore on, to the point where the two were virtually neck and neck. With 98 percent of precincts reporting at the Casper Star-Tribune's deadline, Cubin led with 91,385 votes to 90,685 for Trauner, or 48.3 percent to 47.9 percent.

Libertarian Thomas Rankin, who became an issue late in the race in a post-debate confrontation with Cubin, was a distant third with the remainder of the vote

Absentee ballots were still being counted in several counties, as were 12 precincts in Carbon County.

Milczewski said the Cubin campaign had heard from people in Carbon County that with just two rural precincts yet to report in that county, Cubin held a 760-point lead statewide. If it stays that close, an automatic recount will be triggered under Wyoming law.

Milczewski acknowledged that likelihood but said, "People in Wyoming do things right. We're sure the recount will come back just about the same as the first count did."

Trauner, whose only previous political experience was being elected to a local school board, was seeking to become the first Democrat to win Wyoming's only House seat since 1976.

Tensions ran high into the night in Jackson at the Teton County Democrats headquarters at a local coffee shop. Trauner, visibly anxious in the close race, left the party about an hour before the latest results. People continued to crowd the Hard Drive Cafe, watching television and checking results on computers.

"At one point I looked up at the television and Wyoming was blue," Shelley Simonton said. "I've never seen that before."

At Republican Party headquarters in Casper, Cubin supporters watched anxiously as results came in. The congresswoman had not appeared there as of 11 p.m.

Democrats believed from the outset of the campaign that Cubin was vulnerable this year and that they had a strong candidate in Trauner. Cubin, a proven conservative in a conservative-leaning state, had fought off previous Democratic challengers handily.

Cubin had a slim lead over Trauner in the one poll conducted in early October, with Rankin a distant third, until an incident after the final of two debates in the race on Oct. 22.

During the debate, Rankin criticized Cubin for accepting campaign contributions from indicted former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's political action committee. Cubin confronted him afterward; their stories differ about what happened next.

Rankin, who has multiple sclerosis and uses an electric wheelchair, said Cubin told him if he "weren't sitting in that chair, I'd slap you across the face."

Cubin's version was that she said, "If you had said that to anyone else, they probably would have smacked you." She apologized for the comment, although not directly to Rankin.

A poll released after the incident indicated that Trauner had narrowed Cubin's lead to the point the race was about even.

But even before the incident, Cubin herself acknowledged in a fundraising letter that she was nervous about the race against Trauner despite Wyoming's better than two-to-one advantage in registered Republicans over Democrats.

Throughout the campaign, the Cubin camp sought to portray Trauner as an East Coast liberal whose views on issues such as gun control and illegal immigration were out of step with Wyoming.

Trauner, who co-founded and later sold an Internet provider based in Jackson, worked hard on a door-to-door campaign - he says he knocked on more than 15,000 doors - and raised enough money to run a competitive race, something that previous Democratic challengers to Cubin had trouble doing.