An incumbent and a newcomer who runs a nonprofit in Orland were elected Tuesday to two seats on the Bucksport Town Council.
Mark Eastman, who first was elected to the council in 2017, was the top vote-getter with 736 votes, or 29 percent of the votes cast in the six-way race. Tracey Hair, the executive director of H.O.M.E. in Orland, received the second-highest tally with 675 votes, or nearly 27 percent of more than 2,500 ballots cast in the race.
Donald White came in third, falling short with 501 votes. Patricia Gray received 413 votes and Steven St. Peter Jr. received 206 votes.
Teri Doty publicly campaigned as a write-in council candidate and likely got a majority of the 92 write-in votes that were cast in the race, according to Town Manager Susan Lessard. Bucksport’s vote-counting machines do not record who receives write-in votes and, because the 92 write-in votes had no bearing on the outcome of the race, the town’s ballot clerks did not independently count through them to see who received those votes, she said.
Peter Stewart, the council chair, opted not to seek reelection to a fourth term. His term is scheduled to expire at the end of the calendar year. Hair and Eastman, who owns a local real estate company, will be sworn in prior to beginning to serve their three-year terms in January.
Stewart is not the only local councilor to leave his post this year. In September, James Morrison abruptly resigned from the council without publicly disclosing his reason for doing so.
That same month, the council voted unanimously to immediately appoint Paul Gauvin, who most recently served on the board in 2019, to fill Morrison’s vacated seat. Under Bucksport’s town charter, when a councilor resigns too close to a general election, as was the case with Morrison, the council can fill the seat with a temporary appointment until the next general election, which will be November 2024.
Tom Foster and Abigail Foster, two incumbents on the Regional School Unit 25 school board, did not face opposition and each were reelected with more than 1,000 votes.
Correction: An earlier version of this report misstated the number of ballots cast in Bucksport’s Town Council race.
