Election night leads hold for all council candidates

MAT-SU — Candidates in local city council elections that held Election night leads on Tuesday maintained those leads and all held on to their seats after local Canvass Boards counted remaining votes on Friday.

In Houston, Cole Carter, Lance Wilson and Mike Adams all won seats on the council. In Palmer, Councilman Steve Carrington won his bid for reelection and Pamela Melin won the other available seat on the Palmer city council. In Wasilla, Stu Graham and Colleen-Sullivan Leonard will both return to the Wasilla council after winning their elections by wide margins.

In Palmer, the two candidates who trailed on Tuesday did make up some ground, but not enough for the results to change. Carrington and Melin led on Tuesday and Berberich received 164 votes out of the early, questioned, absentee by mail and special needs counted by the Canvass board, which was the most of any candidate. Lee Henrikson received 152 additional votes after the Canvass board had finished their tally, but the margin between Melin and Berberich was 1.4 %. Carrington received 348 total votes, Melin 329, Berberich 328 and Henrikson 279 with four write-in votes.

“Sometimes I’m amazed at how much interest there is about Palmer from people that are outside the technical bounds of Palmer but on the other hand that’s kind of a compliment that they consider this their hometown, so I feel honored to be elected again to do this and I still think of myself as a reluctant politician. I don’t enjoy this in the sense of I really like it, but I get more frustrated if I’m not in the middle of it trying to help so therefore I’m in the middle of it trying to help,” said Carrington.

Palmer ended with a total of 14.2 % of the eligible 4,986 voters turning out to the polls. Of those 709 total voters, 284 voted early, absentee by mail, questioned or special needs ballots that were tallied by tallied by the Canvass board on Friday and 390 voters cast their ballots on Election Day. Of the 35 ballots that were rejected by the Canvass board, one was an early ballot, 32 were absentee by mail, and two were questioned ballots.

Wasilla saw two former council members win elections by wide margins to return to the council. Former Deputy Mayor Stu Graham won his race against Dajonee Hale by the largest margin of any local council race this cycle. Graham received 253 ballots accounting for 77.4 % of the total while Hale received 72 ballots and two write-in votes were cast. Former state representative Colleen Sullivan-Leonard received 229 ballots to 101 ballots cast for current councilman Jordan Rausa, who was appointed to the council and running in his first election.

“I am very excited to be back on council and work with an excellent group of council members representing Wasilla. First issue is to meet with Mayor Ledford and City of Wasilla Directors to see how the city is doing with the services they provide for our citizens,” said Sullivan-Leonard. “The December schedule for city council is set for discussion on the city’s goals and objectives as it ties into the city budget that the administration is preparing. As in years past I will be looking for accountability in how our city tax dollars are spent and the services the city is providing our residents.”

Wasilla had a total of 4.7 % voter turnout with 188 ballots cast at the polls on election day and another 150 ballots counted by the Canvass board on Friday. Of the 11 ballots that were rejected by the Canvass board, one was an absentee by mail ballot and 10 were questioned ballots.

“We had 77 ballots mailed for absentee by mail. Of those, 59 were returned, 58 were counted. We had one rejected because the voter failed to sign the voter certificate on the ballot envelope as well as there was no witnessing affidavit. On the questioned voting we had 35 ballots cast, 25 were counted, 10 were rejected because the voter was not registered to vote in the city at least 30 days prior to the election as required by code,” said Canvass Board chair Angela Long. “We had no irregularities in the election that were reported or found during the Canvass Board.”

The city of Houston had 10.1 % voter turnout with 8.1 % of voters turning out to the polls on election day. Carter won seat C with 63 votes over opponents Shanie Heger with 52 votes and Ron Bass who received 31 votes. Lance Wilson won seat D by a 5.5 % margin with 85 votes over 62 that were cast for Tony Kuse with two write-in ballots cast. Mike Adams defeated current councilwoman Gina Jorgenson for Seat G with 80 ballots to Jorgensen’s 54 while David Johnson received 30 ballots and one write-in vote was cast.