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Incumbent Kirk Rolls With 63 Percent of Vote in Three-Way Race
By admin | October 4, 2009
(reproduced from the Gloucester Daily Times)
Mayor Carolyn Kirk easily bested two challengers last night in a preliminary election in which voters largely stayed away from the polls, and perennial candidate Daniel Ruberti was eliminated.
In search of a mandate after her first term in office, Kirk took 63 percent of the vote, besting second-place finisher and City Councilor Sharon George, who had 25 percent, by 912 votes.
Ruberti, the biennial also-ran who has been defeated in 19 straight mayoral campaigns, picked up 247 votes, or just over 10 percent.
“The results show overwhelming support for my performance,” Kirk said at City Hall after the results came in. She said she was satisfied with all aspects of the ballot.
While disappointed with the results, George said she would campaign with renewed vigor during the general election campaign, which leads to Election Day on Nov. 3.
“It was a very, very low turnout,” George said. “If you add Ruberti’s support to my support, I didn’t do all that bad for the amount of time and visibility this campaign has had.”
A call to Ruberti’s house for comment was not returned last night.
From the start, the primary was the election no one wanted, and it showed. Only 2,351 people showed up at the polls, the lowest preliminary in recent campaigns.
The total was nearly one-third of the more than 7,000 who showed up for the 2007 primary, which featured a seven-way mayoral race.
When it became clear that no other races would require preliminary votes and the race would mean only the elimination of one candidate, the City Council, with the support of all three candidates, petitioned to the state Legislature to have it canceled.
Lawmakers denied that request, but interest in the primary never recovered.
In addition to the low number of candidates involved, the primary featured virtually no campaigning and George, the candidate considered the biggest threat to the incumbent, was limited in the amount she could campaign because of her job as town clerk in Wilmington.
Kirk said last Friday, aside from a few passing exchanges at City Council meetings, she had not been engaged in any debate on the issues or had any face-to-face contact with her challengers.
That will certainly change in the general election, in which several debates are already scheduled.
Looking ahead to the general election, George targeted the debates as a way to increase her visibility and make her case against two more years of Kirk’s leadership
Kirk said she also welcomed the contest as a platform to engage the city and explain her agenda.
“The city has so many challenges, the magnitude of which are just becoming known,” Kirk said last night. “I am looking forward to the debates to discuss the issues facing the city.”
For Ruberti, who two years ago only pulled in 103 votes, the results represent one of his better showings and may be some indication of the discontent within the electorate.
Still, even if George collects all of Ruberti’s support, she would still be 665 votes behind Kirk and would need to draw significant numbers of voters who did not turn out yesterday to unseat the incumbent.
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