BOSTON — Both camps traded jabs as a districtwide recount expected to stretch at least two days began in the tight race between state Sen. William Brownsberger and Daniel Lander, a former senior aide to Boston Mayor Michelle Wu.

The four municipalities that comprise the Suffolk and Middlesex District — Belmont, Boston, Cambridge, and Watertown — began their respective recounts Wednesday, but both candidates decided to camp out at Boston City Hall.

Neither was alone. Brownsberger, who is ahead by 34 votes, was supported by 11 state senators and Lander was aided by some of Wu’s top allies, highlighting a race that has become a proxy battle between the state Senate and the mayor, who sought to oust Brownsberger for helping to kill her tax bill in late 2024.

Brownsberger, the President pro tempore of the state Senate and Belmont Democrat who represents parts of Boston, was reportedly joined at City Hall by Senators Sal DiDomenico, Michael Rodrigues, William Driscoll, Joan Lovely, Jake Oliveira, Robyn Kennedy, Adam Gomez, John Cronin, Pavel Payano, John Velis, and Brendan Crighton.

Most of the senators operated as poll watchers for Brownsberger’s campaign. Also supporting the Senate leader were state Rep. Steve Owens and staffers for Senate President Karen Spilka, all of whom watched the election count for him, per State House News Service.

Lander, a first-time candidate, took a swing at the show of Senate support for an opponent he has framed as an “architect of the broken Beacon Hill status quo.”

“It’s almost a caucus in the Senate here as volunteers because my opponent doesn’t have a grassroots operation,” Lander told State House News Service during Boston’s recount. “Personally, I believe that there’s a lot of business that is undone on Beacon Hill right now that would be a perfectly good use of the first Wednesday after Labor Day to get done.

“Things like getting phones out of our high schools, things like building more affordable housing, expanding the public transportation system, but again and again, Senate leadership is unwilling to work on that,” Lander added.

Lander’s recount effort was aided by some top Wu allies. His criticism of the Senate drew a sharp rebuke from Spilka, the Senate president, via a statement issued by her advisor Eileen O’Connor, who led the mayoral campaign for Josh Kraft last year in his unsuccessful bid to unseat Wu.

“There’s a reason so many of Will Brownsberger’s colleagues have rallied around him: they know the difference between someone who does the hard work of governing and someone who’s never done the job and talks about it from the sidelines,” O’Connor said.

“Will has earned the respect of his colleagues because he’s serious, thoughtful and effective. Political potshots at the Senate, which operates as a team where members support each other, don’t change that,” O’Connor added.

Brownsberger appeared to lock down the race with a 34-vote lead when last week’s primary election results were certified over the weekend — after trailing Lander by a handful of votes from late Wednesday to early Friday.

Shifting vote totals throughout last week led both Brownsberger and Lander to file for districtwide recounts.

The Boston Election Department completed its recount Wednesday evening, certifying results at 5:42 p.m. that upheld the initial count certified by the city over the weekend that had Lander beating Brownsberger by a 1,762-vote margin.

At the request of the Lander campaign and pursuant to state law, the Election Department said it will conduct an additional review of absentee and vote-by-mail ballot materials, including a comparison of signatures on ballot applications and the corresponding returned ballot envelopes, in accordance with applicable election procedures.

The Boston Election Commissioners plan to reconvene at City Hall on Thursday morning to continue the review.

The results were not immediately clear in the three other municipalities. Secretary of State William Galvin’s office said Watertown was also expected to wrap up its recount on Wednesday, while Belmont and Cambridge would continue for a second day on Thursday.

Primary results certified ahead of the recount had Brownsberger holding a roughly 2,200-vote lead in Belmont. In addition to taking Boston, Lander had won in Watertown and Cambridge, though by much smaller margins of 157 and 248, respectively.

Brownsberger is ahead of Lander by just a tenth of a percent, 50.1% to 49.9%.

Wu sought to knock off Brownsberger and state Sen. Nick Collins for helping to kill her signature tax shift legislation in late 2024, by aggressively campaigning for their respective opponents, Lander and Latoya Gayle.

Collins, a South Boston Democrat, easily won reelection, but Wu appeared to be on her way to splitting the difference with Brownsberger. It now appears the Senate leader may have been able to eke a victory in his first contested race since winning his Senate seat in a 2011 special election.

Should Brownsberger hold onto his victory following the recount, Wu will have lost all three state Senate races she endorsed in this election cycle. One of her Senate allies, Michael Rush, who unsuccessfully tried to shepherd a version of Wu’s tax bill through the Senate earlier this year, lost his primary race to Persis Yu.

Wu said she didn’t regret her decision to get involved in the Senate races, despite appearing on the losing side for all three.

“I think across the board, we saw a big message that voters in general are tired of the status quo and want to see more urgency to actually fix things and do things,” Wu said Wednesday on GBH’s Boston Public Radio.

Wu added that the first-time candidates she backed, Lander and Gayle, gave two longtime senators a run for their money, with the race between Lander and Brownsberger still too close to call a week after the primary.

The mayor said she did not ask either candidate to run or do her “bidding,” if elected to the Senate. She did, however, make no secret of her bid to oust Brownsberger and Collins this past election cycle.

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