Voters in more than 20 Broward County municipalities weighed in on mayoral contests, filled Commission and Council seats and decided dozens of ballot questions Tuesday.
All in all, 23 of the county’s 31 cities, towns and villages had something on the ballot, with more than 100 people running for 41 contested posts.
Several races were decided before a single vote was cast. Others were disrupted in various ways. Judges struck two candidates from the ballot — one over residency, the other over qualifying issues. And a sitting Vice Mayor campaigned — and won — while facing domestic battery charges.
There was no shortage of upsets and surprises in Florida’s bluest county, where a plurality of the vote was all it took to decide a race.
In Coconut Creek, no City Hall seats were at stake, but five ballot proposals were — and all of them passed.
They included:
— Referendum 1, which passed with 82% support. The measure clarifies when the charter’s references to “days” mean calendar days and when they mean business days, and confirms that the City Manager’s and City Attorney’s salaries are set by the City Commission.
— Referendum 2, which passed with the city’s strongest showing, nearly 84% support. It bars the Mayor and City Commissioners from simultaneously serving as an officer on a homeowner or condominium association board inside the city while holding office.
— Referendum 3 (65.5%) scraps the charter’s automatic five-year expiration of unspent appropriations and instead lets the City Commission decide each year, during the budget process, which appropriations to abandon.
— Referendum 4 (60%) exempts the Land Development Code, Comprehensive Plan and related ordinances from the referendum process, creating a procedure for validating the form of a petition or ordinance, and sets a method for resolving conflicting charter amendments approved by voters.
— Referendum 5 (82%) requires a charter review every six years beginning in January 2030, rather than every five, so the cycle lines up with scheduled elections.
Cooper City Commissioners Jeremy Katzman and Lisa Mallozzi would have faced voters if anyone had qualified to run against them. None did, so they won four more years by default in Seats 1 and 2, respectively.
Of the three proposed charter changes, two passed. The third remains unresolved.
Referendum 1 is headed to an automatic machine recount, the City Clerk’s Office confirmed, after falling 0.21 percentage points short of the majority necessary for passage. If it passes, the measure will allow the annual salary and benefits of the Mayor and City Commissioners to be set by ordinance, never to exceed those of the lowest-paid full-time position in the city.
Referendum 2 passed with 53% support and eliminates a referendum requirement for city borrowing and bond issuances.
And Referendum 3 passed with 70% support to require the remaining City Commissioners to appoint a qualified successor by majority vote when a seat goes vacant, with that appointee serving until the next November election in even-numbered years. The charter had required a Special Election, which the city said costs more.
In the Mayor’s race, incumbent Scott Brook defeated Commissioner Joshua Simmons with nearly 56% of the vote.
Brook, a family law and estate planning lawyer, held the city’s top job from 2006 to 2010 and returned through a 2019 Special Election after Mayor Skip Campbell’s death.
Simmons, a former high school teacher and mental health professional, became the city’s first Black Commissioner in 2018 and its first Black Vice Mayor in 2020.
A win would have made him the city’s first Black Mayor.
Five candidates ran for Commission Seat 3, which had been empty since Vice Mayor Nancy Metayer was shot and killed in a domestic violence incident April 1.
Bill Capplis, a police officer who has spent 26 years with the Coral Springs Police Department, won with 38.9% and will serve the remaining two years of her term. He has said his outreach work brought him into regular contact with the late Vice Mayor.
Other candidates included Marly Metayer, the late Vice Mayor’s mother, who finished second with 35% of the vote; Terry Ann Williams Edden, a civil mediator and repeat state and county candidate, who took 15.2%; Kohy Holmes, a financial aid administrator who has served in the Florida State Guard, who took 6.8%; and Erick Nyatenya, a military veteran, former police officer and cloud computing engineer, who took 4.2%.
The race to succeed Simmons in Seat 4 was the closest of the three contested Commission contests, and Jennifer Levi, Chair of the Chabad Friendship Circle Parent Committee and member of the city’s Accessibility Advisory Committee, won with 44.5%.
Levi outpaced second-place candidate Jeff Adelman, a lawyer, by 553 votes. Adelman took 43.1% of the vote, while Tristan Celestin took 12.4%.
Commissioner Shawn Cerra drew no opposition for Seat 2 and was automatically re-elected.
Six candidates ran in an at-large race for a pair of two-year terms on the Dania Beach Commission, with each voter picking up to two candidates, the top vote-getters of which became Mayor and Vice Mayor.
Colman Ryan, a small-business owner and President of the Dania Improvement Committee, led the field with 26.1% and succeeds Joyce Davis as Mayor. Diana Fahmie, who works in real estate and promised to protect the city from overdevelopment, took 23.6% and becomes Vice Mayor, succeeding Marco Salvino.
Kevin Johnson, Maoz Druskin, Kristof Von Anderson and Aaron Hollis respectively took 21%, 12.6%, 11.7% and 5% of the vote.
Davie Council Member Daniel Alfonso won re-election unopposed in District 2. Of the Town Council’s four other seats, three incumbents held onto office and one did not.
In the race for Mayor, Judy Paul defended a job she’s held since 2009, taking 60% of the vote over trucking company owner Jackie Rocha.
Vice Mayor Michelle Whitman held District 1 outright with 52.7% of the vote, beating Heloise Giraldo (26.2%) and Lains Love Albert (21%).
In District 3, incumbent Susan Starkey won comfortably with 58.6% of the vote against three challengers, two of whom made news for not-so-fortunate reasons.
Stephen Korka, a musician, finished second with 18.9%. While he was open about having a “sarcastic, vulgar and borderline offensive” sense of humor, he wasn’t the one who drew negative headlines.
But candidates Jordan Nelson and Toula Amanna did. Nelson, who ran on a platform prioritizing government accountability and infrastructure, was arrested by Davie police in late September on three counts of driving under the influence, including DUI with property damage, after a crash into a guardrail and utility pole.
He has pleaded not guilty and took 14.4% of the vote Tuesday.
Restaurateur Toula Amanna, who finished last with 8.1%, came under scrutiny in September after Florida Politics reported about a Facebook comment under her name telling residents they needed “the courage to pick up guns and fight in public … against the forces that ruin” America.
The Broward Sheriff’s Office confirmed it was investigating the post, which Amanna blamed on deep-state hackers in Deerfield Beach.
District 4 produced the town’s only turnover, as civil engineer Alex Barr unseated incumbent Marlon Luis by 338 votes, winning 42.7% to 39.2%. Therapist Roxana Milan took the remainder.
Barr, who has worked for the Florida Department of Transportation, Broward County and several municipalities, won a Florida TaxWatch “Productivity Award” for a railroad-crossing deterrent system that Brightline and Tri-Rail later adopted. He ran on responsible development, traffic mitigation and preserving the district’s agricultural character.
No elected seats were on the ballot in Deerfield Beach, and voters rejected six of nine charter questions posed to them — the product of the city’s first comprehensive charter review in roughly two decades.
They included:
— Amendment A, which passed with nearly 56% support and will update the charter for style, clarity and consistency, stripping outdated newspaper, audit and paper-check references and conforming provisions superseded by state law.
— Amendment B, which passed (54.3%) and replaces the charter’s lengthy “metes and bounds” description of the city’s corporate limits, assembled over decades and now out of date, with a map maintained by the City Clerk.
— Amendment C, which passed with the strongest support of the nine (69.4%), raising the residency requirement for candidates from six months to two years of continuous residency, citywide for Mayor and within districts for Commissioners, except where non-residency resulted solely from redistricting.
— Amendment D, which failed with less than 42% support. It would have moved Commission elections from March of odd-numbered years to November of even-numbered years beginning in 2028, canceling the March 2027 and March 2029 elections and extending the current Mayor’s and Commissioners’ terms by roughly 20 months.
— Amendment E, which failed 22.5% to 77.5%. It would have eliminated the requirement that voters approve any sale, gift, trade, transfer or lease of city-owned real property worth more than $750,000, letting the City Commission approve those deals instead.
— Amendment F failed, with 47% support. It would have required the City Commission to appoint a Charter Review Board in May 2035 and every 10 years after, with five voting members and five alternates making non-binding recommendations.
— Amendment G failed with 29% support. If passed, it would have stripped from the charter floor-area-ratio limits and mixed- and accessory-use restrictions for property east of the Intracoastal Waterway, leaving them to the Land Development Code.
— Amendment H failed with 26.4% support. It would have removed three charter restrictions on the city’s main beach parking parcels — the minimum 10-by-20-foot space size, the 15-day annual cap on significant commercial use and the ban on counting those public spaces toward another property’s parking requirement.
— Amendment I failed narrowly, 48.8% to 51.2%. It would have required a four-fifths City Commission vote for any future move to transfer, contract out or consolidate police or fire services to another government, special district or Sheriff’s Office. A simple majority still suffices.
Broward’s largest city had one seat in play Tuesday — a Special Election in District 1 to fill the two years remaining on the term of Commissioner John Herbst, who resigned in May — and 10 proposed charter amendments, nine of which passed.
Educator Heather Moraitis, who held Herbst’s seat from March 2018 until November 2022, won it back with 49% of the vote — 415 votes ahead of John Rodstrom, a lawyer and business owner.
She is the wife of former state Rep. George Moraitis, who made an unsuccessful bid for Congress this year. Her priorities included public safety, infrastructure, economic growth, environmental resilience, education and improving Fort Lauderdale’s quality of life.
There was a third name on the ballot, and even though the candidate withdrew from the contest, his inclusion among the listed candidates proved pivotal.
Garry Smyth, Vice Chair of a Margate-based substance abuse recovery nonprofit, ended his campaign in October after reports arose about his past legal troubles. He still drew 746 votes, well past Moraitis’ winning margin.
The proposed charter amendments included:
— Amendment 1, which passed (78.6%). It requires candidates to be registered city voters at the time of qualifying and to have lived in their district — or, in the Mayor’s case, the city — for a full year beforehand, proven with at least five of 10 specified documents. It also moves the Vice Mayor designation and the oath of office to the first Commission meetings after an election.
— Amendment 2, which passed (81.1%). It requires every candidate for Mayor or Commissioner to file compliance documentation with the Clerk, who will confirm it was submitted but not judge whether a candidate is qualified.
— Amendment 3, which passed (62.6%). It deletes the charter’s mechanism letting any registered city voter file an affidavit challenging a candidate’s eligibility at the canvass, leaving such fights to the courts.
— Amendment 4, which passed with the city’s strongest showing, 82.1%. It lengthens the notice required for a special Commission meeting from six hours to 72, with an emergency exception, and deletes a provision shielding special meetings from challenges over how they were called.
— Amendment 5, which passed (65.2%). It overhauls how classified employees pick their representative on the Civil Service Board, cutting a second employee vote, letting the top five nominees form the nominating committee outright and replacing the two Commissioners who certify that election with two committee members.
— Amendment 6, which failed with 46% support. It would have split the “acting City Manager” title in two, creating an interim Manager named by the Commission after a departure and an acting Manager chosen by the sitting Manager during a temporary absence. It would also have repealed the charter’s default newspaper notice requirement and extended the charter’s tiebreaker — a random draw conducted by the City Attorney — to a tie among any number of candidates, not just two.
— Amendment 7, which passed (62.3%). It revises five sections governing how the city disposes of property, replacing competitive bidding, notice and appraisal-floor requirements for land sales with a four-vote resolution finding the sale serves the city’s interest, defining “public purpose” for the first time, adding appraisal and viability reviews for long leases at the tenant’s expense, and narrowing residents’ petition right to leases longer than 50 years.
— Amendment 8, which passed (70.7%). It extends an existing unanimity requirement for park land deals to license, concession and facility-use agreements lasting more than a year.
— Amendment 9, which passed (54.1%). It creates a charter position of Police Chief appointed by and reporting to the City Commission rather than the City Manager, with Commissioners setting the salary by resolution. Current Chief William Schultz becomes the first appointee without a search.
— Amendment 10, which passed (54.8%). It establishes the same arrangement for the Fire Chief, currently Stephen Gollan.
Both Hallandale Beach incumbents held their seats in races that weren’t close.
In the contest for Seat 1, Mike Butler defended the post he won in 2022, taking 56% of the vote. He defeated Viktor Vaynshteyn (23.7%) and Matthew Mickens (20.3%).
Commissioner Joy Adams, a longtime resident and business owner, won a second term in Seat 2 with 72.5% over Cheryl “WhoDat” Robinson, a lifelong resident and self-described “FreeDem fighter” whose campaign website listed four quotes attributed to her, including “I’m the felon that’s yelling.”
Half of the six district seats on the Hollywood Commission were on the ballot, and all three races produced new Commissioners.
In District 1, where Commissioner Caryl Shuham departed after winning a four-person race for the Broward County Commission in August, her preferred successor — Cat Uden, a senior field representative for conservation group Oceana — won with 60.7% of the vote.
Lawyer Brian Paruas finished second with 22.8%. Itzhack Feldman, a repeat District 1 candidate and noted community activist, took the remainder.
In District 3, small-business owner Alex Recio beat entrepreneur David Raskind 60.3% to 39.7% to replace Traci Callari.
And in District 5, Adam Roberti edged Erin Marvasti 53% to 47% to succeed Kevin Biederman.
Two referendums on the ballot also passed:
— Referendum 1, which passed with 64.4% support, requires five-sevenths Commission approval for city property leases of 20 years or longer, including renewals, and voter approval for sales or leases of 50 years or longer, including renewals, involving city-owned parks, golf courses, recreational facilities, designated historic properties or properties east of the Intracoastal Waterway.
— Referendum 2 (60%) authorizes the city to sell or transfer beachfront property north of the Dania Beach Pier to Broward County for conservation.
In Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, Broward’s fourth-smallest municipality by population, the Vice Mayor took the Mayor’s job, one Commissioner survived by just over 30 votes and voters rejected three of eight ballot questions.
Atop the ticket, Vice Mayor Randy Strauss, a lawyer who campaigned on a promise to protect the town’s building height limit, keep taxes low and fix parking, unseated Mayor Edmund Malkoon, taking 54% of the vote.
In District 1, Commissioner Theo Poulopoulos held on by 31 votes against Howard Goldberg, 50.5% to 49.5%.
And in District 2, Patrick Ferguson — whose brother, Michael, flipped House District 100 blue Tuesday — won the seat Strauss gave up, taking 57.5% of the vote over Justin Bartholomew.
The ballot questions included:
— Question 1, which passed with 60% support and gives the Town Clerk more time to certify citizen petitions, extending the deadline from 20 to 30 calendar days for initiative petitions and from five to 10 business days for petitions to repeal or amend an ordinance.
— Question 2, which failed (46.5%). It would have changed the Mayor’s term from two to four years and capped service at two terms rather than three, effective with the November 2028 election.
— Question 3, which failed (46.8%). It would have let a former Mayor run for and serve as a Commissioner after leaving the Mayor’s seat, provided the person remained within the charter’s maximum term limits.
— Question 4, which failed (42.7%). It would have allowed the Commission to appoint a qualified person to fill a vacancy in the Mayor’s seat or on the Commission, even if that person would otherwise have to take a two-year break in service.
— Question 5, which passed (60.2%). The measure writes the Town’s existing northern and southern Commission district boundaries — unchanged since 2004 — into the charter, including the dividing line at the portion of the Village of Sea Ranch Lakes fronting the Atlantic Ocean, with the map maintained by the Town Clerk.
— Question 6, which passed (57.2%), rewriting the grounds and process for forfeiting office, tying disqualification to the charter’s list of qualifications and requiring ethics removals to rest on a final Florida Commission on Ethics order after all appeals.
— Question 7, which passed (63.3%). It adopts Florida’s general laws governing municipal elections, pushing the deadline for the town’s annual financial audit from six to nine months after the close of the fiscal year and allowing legal notices to run on publicly accessible websites, where state law permits.
— Question 8, which passed with the town’s strongest showing (67.9%). The measure makes technical and housekeeping fixes, consolidating conflicting candidate-residency language into the charter’s elections article at the existing six-month standard, correcting outdated Florida Statutes citations and clarifying that the extra months officials served when the Town moved its elections from March to November don’t count as a separate term for term-limit purposes.
Both Lauderhill incumbents won, including one under criminal charges.
Mayor Denise Grant, a former law firm operations director who joined the City Commission in 2018 and became Mayor in November 2024, kept Seat 5 with 84.8% of the vote over public administrator Pauline Ricketts.
Vice Mayor Richard Campbell also held onto Seat 4 of the City Commission with 54.4% of the vote against three challengers — small-business owner Mary Smith, healthcare finance and operations pro Madline Noel and Christian academy Dean Jalecia Mack — despite being arrested in late August on counts of simple domestic battery and tampering with or harassing a witness, victim or informant.
He has denied the allegations and called the case a political smear ahead of the election.
Smith took 22.1% of the vote, while Noel and Mack took 17.1% and 6.4%, respectively.
Mayor Antonio Arserio won a third consecutive term in Seat 3 — the maximum Margate allows — with 49.5% of the vote against three challengers: small-business owner Mindy Lee (31.8%), telecommunications engineer Jonathan Kraljic (13%) and education professional Sloan Robbins (5.8%).
Seat 5 was open because Commissioner Joanne Simone was term-limited, and Nina Culver won it on her third try at City Hall with 40.9% of the vote. She’d also sought the seat in 2022 and Seat 1 in 2024.
Culver, who founded the group Margate Neighbors, outpaced nurse and former Arserio challenger Theresa Booker (35.8%) and former Commissioner Le Peerman (23.3%).
A third contest was settled in June, when Michael Marquez won Seat 1 unopposed, becoming Vice Mayor Anthony Caggiano’s successor-in-waiting.
Mayor Samson Borgelin, who joined the Commission in 2016 before winning the mayoralty in 2022, won another term with 57% of the vote, running on his budgeting record and a lien clemency program for qualified homeowners.
He beat lawyer Willnae LaCroix and healthcare finance specialist Tosha Chambers, who received 31% and 12% of the vote, respectively.
All five charter changes, based on a Charter Review Commission report delivered in December, passed:
— Referendum 1, which passed with 76% support, swaps “Council” for “Commission” throughout, recognizing the existing single-member district election system, correcting references to state law and the Broward County charter, allowing notices by website posting instead of newspaper publication, and making technical changes.
— Referendum 2 (79%) extends the charter’s attendance requirement, and its potential penalty of forfeiting office for four consecutive unexcused absences, to Commission workshop meetings.
— Referendum 3 (62.2%) moves authority over hiring, firing and supervision of the City Clerk and Deputy City Clerk from the City Commission to the City Manager.
— Referendum 4 (77.6%) bars the Commission from waiving a requirement that the City Manager live in Broward County within six months of being hired.
— Referendum 5 (69%) renames the Charter Review Commission the Charter Review Board, expanding it from five to 11 members, having the City Commission designate its Chair and Vice Chair, and guaranteeing the Board meeting space and equipment.
Incumbents Vice Mayor Mario Bustamante and Commissioner Luke Lewis won re-election unopposed in June.
Four candidates competed for two Oakland Park Commission seats in an at-large race in which voters cast two votes each — and the current Mayor finished last, by just three votes.
Commissioner Tim Lonergan, a former Mayor and healthcare business professional, led the field with 33% of the vote, followed by real estate agent and Oakland Park Neighborhood Association President Chris Fischer, who received 29%.
The runners-up included David Anderson (19.02%) and Steven Arnst, the current Mayor (19.01%).
Notably, the Mayor’s post rotates annually among Commissioners.
No Commission seats were on the Pembroke Pines ballot, and the city’s lone charter amendment passed with 54% backing.
It moves municipal elections from March to November of even-numbered years and shifts the annual Vice Mayor selection to the first meeting in December. Passage also extends all five current Commissioners’ terms by about eight months.
Broward’s only major strong-Mayor city kept its incumbent: Mayor Nick Sortal, a former Sun-Sentinel journalist now in his eighth year as an elected official, won 64% of the vote.
He ran on a record of having passed the city’s first millage-rate reduction in seven years, implementing police body cameras, opening North Acres Park, creating a city stormwater team and launching a University of Plantation program that teaches residents about city operations.
Sortal defeated a lone opponent: City Council member Tim Fadgen, who served as acting Mayor in 2024 while Sortal was on medical leave.
Fadgen’s run left the Council’s Group 4 seat open, and Aston Bright, a captain and Public Information Officer with the Plantation Fire Department and two-time city “Firefighter of the Year” honoree, won it with 63% of the vote.
He beat H. Wayne Clark Jr., an Army veteran and lawyer who has served on the Small Business Advisory Committee for Broward County Schools, among other community involvements.
Three Pompano Beach incumbents held onto their seats, while one got the heave-ho.
In District 1, Commissioner Audrey Fesik won another two-year term with 53% of the vote over Realtor Keriann Worley, who took 47%.
In District 2, incumbent Rhonda Sigerson-Eaton successfully defended the seat she won in 2018, with a 64.5% share of ballots cast in her favor.
She beat two challengers: veteran Freddy York, who took 19.5%, and Brandi Zabadal, President of the Pompano Beach Highlands Civic Improvement Association, who took 16%.
In District 3, Vice Mayor Alison Fournier turned back Tom McMahon, who previously held the seat and attempted a return, 63.5% to 36.5%.
But District 4 produced an upset, as ex-Lauderdale Lakes Commissioner and former state Rep. Patricia Hawkins-Williams unseated Commissioner Beverly Perkins 57.7% to 34.2%.
Mary Phillips placed third with 8.1%.
Pompano’s election would have featured five seats in play, but a Broward Judge disqualified Commissioner Darlene Smith’s lone opponent in September after reviewing evidence showing the man, Delvin King, had repeatedly moved in and out of the district he hoped to serve.
Southwest Ranches voters rejected the town’s lone charter change decisively, 67% to 33%. The measure would have raised Council members’ monthly pay from $1,000 to $1,500 and the Mayor’s monthly compensation from $1,250 to $2,000, while allowing annual cost-of-living increases tied to inflation, capped at 3%.
Both Sunrise incumbents held their seats.
In Seat C, Commissioner Neil Kerch, a lawyer and former Broward Assistant Public Defender first elected in 2013, won another term with 47.6% of the vote over Evelyn Bryant (39.2%) and Emoni McGregor (13.2%).
In Seat D, Deputy Mayor Jacqueline Guzman, who became the first Latina elected in Sunrise when she won in 2020, won re-election with 68.6% of the vote over small-business owner Niccole Pazos.
In District 4, incumbent Kicia Daniel kept the seat she won in 2022 with 65.3% of the vote over her lone challenger, Carol Mendelson.
Mayor Michelle Gomez coasted into re-election unopposed in June.
A planned race for District 2 got canceled following a court ruling.
Former Commissioner Mike Gelin reclaimed the seat he held from 2018 to 2022 without a vote cast against him, after a Judge struck incumbent Commissioner Morey Wright Jr. from the ballot last month.
Gelin had sued over Wright’s qualifying paperwork, alleging the Commissioner signed his qualifying fee check without properly appointing himself a Deputy Campaign Treasurer. A Broward Judge ruled for Gelin on Oct. 14, and a state appeals court unanimously upheld the disqualification Oct. 29.
Two District 2 residents, Patti Lynn and Patti Fox, then sued to postpone the election and reopen qualifying, arguing the city’s code required it after a candidate is disqualified. That failed too, and election officials sent notices warning voters that ballots cast for Wright would not count.
Both West Park incumbents lost, including one of the Commissioners who had sued the Mayor, City Attorney and City Manager over claims they’d been blocked from placing items on the agenda and voting.
Derrick Jones Jr., a Florida A&M graduate in political science and public administration who has worked as a county legislative analyst and in federal and nonprofit public service, unseated Commissioner Katrina Touchstone, one of the lawsuit’s plaintiffs, in Seat 1.
The margin was 121 votes, or 2.8 percentage points. Jones ran on a promise to address housing unaffordability and improve access to public services.
In Seat 2, Jajuan Burton, an Army veteran, software engineer and youth advocate, unseated incumbent Brandon Smith, a former Vice Mayor with more than a decade of public service experience.
Burton took 55.2% of the vote.
Two Weston Commission seats were open, with both incumbents leaving.
For Seat 3, Patricia Bernardini defeated German Melo with nearly 68% of the vote to succeed Byron Jaffe. Bernardini, who founded a mental health nonprofit last year and works as a cargo transportation executive, previously ran for the seat and helped organize residents against a proposed park-and-ride facility at the city’s entrance.
In the race to replace outgoing Commissioner Mary Molina-Macfie, longtime local government pro Alfredo Ortega edged Navy veteran Jaime Herrero with 51.6% of the vote.
Ortega has served as Chief of Staff to two Doral Mayors and worked as a community liaison for that city’s Police Department.
Scott Newton planned to leave his job as Mayor to run as one of four candidates in an at-large contest for two City Commission seats. He emerged Tuesday without a government title, and the woman who replaced him in the top City Hall job is a familiar face.
Former Commissioner and Vice Mayor Julie Carson, a real estate professional who served from 2010 to 2020, won the Mayor’s race with 63.4%. During her tenure, the city made national news when it became the second in the country to seat an entirely LGBTQ governing body.
She ran on a platform championing transparency and ethics in government and advocated for seniors, children, people with disabilities and members of the transgender community.
Commissioner Paul Rolli, a finance professional and fellow former Vice Mayor, placed second in the Mayor’s race with 32.9% of the vote, while retiree Jerry Fisichelli took 3.8%.
In the at-large Commission race, where voters cast two votes each, incumbent Don D’Arminio won re-election with 36.1% of the vote and Angel Burgos took 30.3% for the second seat.
Newton finished third with 25.6%, while Manish Kalra took 7.9%.
The city ballot included one charter question, which passed with 70% support. It strips the Governor of the power to fill vacancies if every Commissioner, including the Mayor, is removed from office, instead allowing the City Manager or Assistant City Manager to appoint a Mayor and two Commissioners who would appoint two more Commission members.
The interim Commission would then call a Special Election if more than 180 calendar days remained in the unexpired terms.
