BELFAST, Maine — Incumbent Belfast City Councilor Eric Sanders handily won re-election Tuesday with 951 votes to challenger Ryan Harnden’s 631.
Voter participation was high for an election year without a presidential or gubernatorial race, according to City Clerk Amy Flood. Altogether, 1,707 voters turned out at the polls Tuesday, or more than a third of Belfast’s 4,792 registered voters.
“Turnout was really good,” Flood said Tuesday night, adding that the city ran out of regular ballots and had to use absentee ballots for the unexpectedly high number of voters.
Sanders, who will start his fourth consecutive term as a councilor, said that the campaign for municipal office was unexpectedly political. Supporters of the candidates took to social media to broadcast sometimes heated opinions in a way that Sanders and Harnden both said surprised them.
“Old school politics are still in favor in Belfast. I don’t subscribe to it, and neither did this gentleman,” Sanders said, shaking hands with Harnden.
It was Harnden’s first try for elected office in Belfast, although he had served as a director for Regional School Unit 3 when he lived in the nearby town of Waldo.
“It’s hard to unseat an incumbent who has done a lot of good work,” Harnden said. “I’m pretty proud of the way we ran the campaign, and I’m not done [with politics] by any stretch.”
He said he was glad that interest in the City Council race was high, and that voter turnout was healthy.
“I think really the city won out,” Harnden said.
Also, Jessica Woods was elected to serve on the Regional School Unit 71 board of directors. Voters cast 856 ballots for the public school guidance counselor and 564 for Paul Krohne, a longtime educator who retired to Belfast.