Kristen Cloutier was sworn as Lewiston’s mayor on Tuesday night after the former mayor, Shane Bouchard, resigned Friday following a series of scandalous allegations.
“It’s going to be a wild couple of months,” Cloutier said.
Last week, a Lewiston woman claimed she had an affair with Bouchard and gave him damaging, private emails against his mayoral opponent’s campaign back in 2017.
Bouchard is also accused of sending racist and sexist text messages.
[Mayor’s racist texts cause pain in Maine home to refugees]
Lewiston residents said Bouchard did the “right thing” by resigning and hope the city can move forward.
“Lewiston has enough problems of its own with reputation so having more controversy wasn’t necessarily a good thing,” Lewiston resident Bruce Noddin said.
Among those who were in the audience were Cloutier’s mother-in-law, Terry Clabet.
“I’m very proud because she’s such a hard worker,” Clabet said.
Cloutier said she hopes she can put the city in a better place by the end of the year.
[Mayor of Maine’s second-largest city resigns after racist texts go public]
“A lot of what I want to do is get us to a place where whoever comes in to that mayoral position in January, can move ahead with their policy priority,” Cloutier said.
Cloutier said she won’t run for re-election this fall.