According to the Boston Globe, Marilyn Devaney won 48% of the vote in the Democratic primary, compared to William Humphrey’s 30% and Peter Georgiou 22%.
Humphrey won Newton though with 57%. Devaney got 30% and Georgiou got 12%.
Congratulations to Bill for his great effort!
Our Sheriff Peter Koutoujian was also handily re-elected. Congrats to both of them!
I’m very sorry to see Devaney re-elected. It looks like there might have been a chance to defeat her if she’d had one challenger instead of 2 to split the vote.
This is an example of why it is crucial that the Charter Commission preserves run-off elections. Without a run off election, a challenger has only a slim chance to unseat an incumbent.
With the current configuration that the Commission seems to like (12 Councilors: one at-large Ward Councilor from each Ward and one at-large Councilor from each District, where a District is defined as two Wards combined), every Councilor could be individually challenged in every election, reducing incumbency advantage. The configuration that I prefer also allows for those individual challenges. (My choice: 16 Councilors, one at-large Councilor and one Councilor directly elected by Ward from each Ward.) In the Charter Commission’s preferred case, the voter would be choosing twelve Councilors. In my preferred case, the voter would be choosing nine Councilors which would make it that much easier for the busy citizen to vote knowledgeably in any given election.
Sallee, I’m leaning your way now, except I would like to have 17 – one extra at large.
Have they decided on the district model? I thought they were considering a pool also?