Portland City Council races decided after ranked choice runoff
Nov. 5—Portland has three new City Councilors after the results of a ranked choice runoff were announced Wednesday morning.
Ben Grant, a current school board member, won an at-large seat on the council with 13,668 votes, trailed by Jess Falero with 11,638. Falero and Grant were tied with 26% of the vote before the runoff, followed by Brandon Mazer with 24%.
"It feels really gratifying," Grant said Wednesday morning. "I'm really thankful for the support I had from my team and from so many voters around Portland who supported my message of change and progress in the city."
In District 2, Wes Pelletier won the seat with 2,971 votes. Second place finisher Nancy English had 2,620 votes. Before the runoff results were calculated, Pelletier was leading with 34% of the vote followed by English with 24% and Atiim Boykin with 21%.
"It was a long race that was very stressful. I'm happy to be on the other side of it," Pelletier said after the results were announced. "I'm glad we have ranked choice."
In the District 1 City Council race, Sarah Michniewicz defeated opponent Todd Morse with 3,809 votes to his 2,745.
In the race for school board, Maya Lena defeated John Rousseau with 71% of the vote to his 29%.
After polls closed at 8 p.m. city spokesperson Jessica Grondin told reporters and candidates waiting for numbers Tuesday evening that "it is going to be a while for any results due to the volume of ballots and polling locations that still have lines."
By midnight, all precincts were reporting early results, but absentee ballots still needed to be counted.
Three seats on the Portland City Council were up for election this year — in Districts 1 and 2 and an at-large seat — after councilors Roberto Rodriguez, Anna Trevorrow and Victoria Pelletier all chose not to run for reelection. During the lead up to Election Day, many of the city candidates cited housing and homelessness at top issues.
This also marked the first election in Portland in which every candidate running for a council seat had registered under the city's new clean elections program. And last month, some of the candidates were surprised when a national political action committee spent $56,000 to support a handful of more moderate candidates.
In District 1, where Trevorrow gave up her seat, Michniewicz and Morse were vying to represent the East End, Bayside and the Casco Bay islands. Both candidates have said that housing and transportation are priorities for them, though they offered different ideas about how to tackle those issues.
District 2 — currently represented by Victoria Pelletier — drew a crowded race with Atiim Boykin, Nancy English, Catherine Nekoie, Robert O'Brien and Wesley Pelletier all running for the seat. District 2 covers most of the west side of the peninsula, between High Street and County Way, and a small part of Back Cove.
The at-large race was also crowded with five candidates: Falero, Grant, Grayson Lookner, Mazer and Jacob Viola. The candidates came from a diverse range of backgrounds and with varying experience levels but also said homelessness and housing were top issues for the city.
Though three seats on the Portland school board were up for election this fall, only one race was contested.
A substitute teacher, Maya Lena, and a business owner, John Rousseau ran for that at-large seat. The political newcomers joined the race after Nyalat Biliew announced she was not seeking reelection.
Boykin and Nekoie were outside Reiche Elementary School in the morning greeting voters as they went into the polls.
By 5 p.m. the line extended just outside of the gym. Nekoie and Falero, who are not competing against each other for a seat but have very different platforms on homelessness and housing issues, stood outside the door shaking hands and talking to voters.
"It's been very exciting. People are smiling. I just love it," said Nekoie.
"I'm excited to see how it all plays out, with ranked-choice voting you just never know," Falero said.
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