Official tally shows even bigger Cote win By Shawn P. Sullivan Sanford News Editor Thursday, November 14, 2013 SANFORD — The voter turnout at last week’s election proved particularly high for a year that didn’t include a presidential or gubernatorial race, or a hot-button issue on the ballot, according to City Clerk Sue Cote. A total of 3,915 voters reported to the polls on Tuesday, Nov. 5. That’s 28 percent of Sanford’s 13,784 registered voters. Cote speculated that a number of factors may have driven up the turnout. Among them: the opportunity for voters to elect the first mayor in Sanford’s history. Cote released the election’s official tallies after press time on Wednesday, Nov. 6, and they sure enough show Thomas Cote, the winner of the mayoral race, with an even higher percentage of the overall vote than everyone first thought. Cote ended up with 68 percent of the 3,835 votes that were cast for mayor. Earliest reports had him with 63 percent. Cote’s piece of the pie in a three-way local race is unusual, according to local history teacher Paul Auger, who announced the election results live on television on Tuesday night. “That’s what we call in political science a mandate,” Auger told those gathered in the council chambers and others watching at home. “People dream about numbers like that.” The fluctuation between the unofficial and official tallies in the mayor’s race is the result of an error in which one ward reported that one of the candidates received 300 more votes than he actually did. The official tally: Cote, 2,614 votes (68 percent); Chamber of Commerce President Rick Stanley, 779 votes (20 percent); and City Councilor Brad Littlefield, 442 votes (12 percent). Cote, the vice chair of the city’s budget committee and the regional marketing manager for Vishay, will take office on Jan. 1, 2014. Between now and then, Interim Mayor Maura Herlihy, whom city councilors appointed, per the charter, last January, will continue to serve. Cote and Herlihy attended the Maine Mayors Coalition’s meeting in Portland last week. “It was interesting to hear about the unique challenges and opportunities facing each city,” he wrote in a letter to the editor that appears on Page A6 of this issue of the Sanford News. “It is clear that times are tough throughout Maine, and I drew many parallels to the issues we are dealing with in Sanford. We are certainly not alone in our quest to promote financial sustainability and drive economic growth, but I truly believe we are alone in our level of motivation to make it happen here in Sanford.” The first reported numbers for the races for city council, school committee and water and sewerage districts did not change from the unofficial report last Tuesday night. In addition to excitement about the mayor’s race, City Clerk Cote also said she believes voters were prompted to go to the polls as a result of their dissatisfaction with the city’s tax rate and a desire to see some change. She even overheard that some individuals mistakenly thought that the city’s new trash-metering program, Pay-As-You-Throw, was supposed to be up for some kind of a vote on the ballot. Either way, Cote was pleased by the high turnout of voters in what is often referred to as an “off year,” when there is not a national race or controversial issue on the ballot. “I was pleasantly surprised to see how busy we were,” Cote said, referring to when she and her staff made the rounds at polls on Election Day.
Posted on: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 12:39:48 +0000
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