Tuesday\u2019s election was an overwhelming defeat for Juneau mayor Merrill Sanford, who was ousted by new challenger Greg Fisk by a whopping 66 percent of the votes.<\/p>\n
Fisk secured 2,919 votes, nearly double that of Sanford, who received 1,470 votes, according to preliminary election results announced Tuesday evening. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m pretty astounded,\u201d Fisk said at \u201cElection Center\u201d at Assembly chambers. \u201cThis likely reflected that Merrill didn\u2019t have his heart in it, I don\u2019t think. He could\u2019ve made it a hell of a lot closer.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the Assembly race, incumbents Jerry Nankervis and Loren Jones, who ran unopposed, both held onto their seats. <\/p>\n
Nankervis won his race by about 321 votes, beating out runner-up Dixie Hood (1,381 votes) and Jason Puckett (911 votes). About 4,000 people voted in that race.<\/p>\n
After the results were read aloud in chambers, Sanford congratulated Fisk in front of the 30-plus community members who gathered to watch the results from 13 voting precincts come in. Then, he quickly and quietly left. He declined to comment on the mayoral race, which saw 4,405 votes cast.<\/p>\n
\u201cMerrill has done so much really good public service for this community, and I think everybody needs to keep that in mind,\u201d Fisk said to the Empire after Sanford left.<\/p>\n
Rob Ekno, a poll worker at the Juneau Arts and Culture Center, expressed what a lot of people felt Tuesday evening: surprise by the margin of Fisk\u2019s victory.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe really got clobbered,\u201d Ekno said of Sanford.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust the way that Greg threw his name in on the very last day to make sure the city had a second choice seemed sort of nonchalant, but obviously the city liked the second choice better,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Many predicted that Greg Fisk was going to defeat incumbent Sanford. The signs were everywhere \u2014 in this case, literally. Fisk, whose signs and advertisements could be seen throughout town, ran a much more visible campaign than Sanford.<\/p>\n
Fisk will not be sworn in until the next Assembly meeting later this month. Once in office, he said he plans to begin working to make his campaign promises come to fruition. He said that includes bringing more NOAA jobs to Juneau to help diversify the economy and working to \u201cput a dent in our housing problem.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes we need to get our eyes off the sidewalk and look up to see where we\u2019re going,\u201d Fisk said.<\/p>\n
Nankervis was happy to have won his seat for the second time, but he was also happy to have been challenged. For a while during the candidate filing period, it appeared as he was going to be running unopposed.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was nice having more than just me for an option,\u201d Nankervis said. \u201cIt\u2019s always better for the public to be able to choose.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though two of the Assembly seats remained unchanged after the election, the new mayor may bring a change to the balance of power. What the change will be has \u201cyet to be determined,\u201d Jones said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know that it matters so much who is sitting in each seat,\u201d Nankervis said. \u201cWe\u2019ve got some big challenges ahead of us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chief among these challenges, Nankervis said, will be maintaining a sustainable, balanced city budget especially with budget cuts looming.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know that we\u2019ll be any better equipped for these challenges than any other Assembly, but we\u2019ll have to do it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Nankervis\u2019 challenger Puckett was not at Assembly chambers Tuesday. Hood said she is still holding out hope she might pull through with the help of the absentee ballots. Absentee ballots will continue to be counted for the next few days until the election results are verified on Oct. 13.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt may not be until Friday when all the absentee ballots are in,\u201d Hood said after the results were announced. \u201cI\u2019ve got my fingers and toes crossed.\u201d<\/p>\n
It doesn\u2019t look as though the numbers are in Hood\u2019s favor but that didn\u2019t dampen her spirit too much. If she was saddened by the loss, she didn\u2019t show it. Hood, who works as a family therapist, seemed a master of positivity.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t spend hardly any money at all, so the positive feedback I was getting was very encouraging,\u201d she said. \u201cI think we will see some changes, and I\u2019m thinking for the better.\u201d<\/p>\n
The results:<\/p>\n
Mayor <\/p>\n
Fisk 2,919<\/p>\n
Sanford 1,470<\/p>\n
Write-In 16<\/p>\n
Assembly D1<\/p>\n
Jones 3,101<\/p>\n
Write-In 160<\/p>\n
Assembly D2<\/p>\n
Nankervis 1,702<\/p>\n
Hood 1,381<\/p>\n
Puckett 911<\/p>\n
Write-In 39<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tuesday\u2019s election was an overwhelming defeat for Juneau mayor Merrill Sanford, who was ousted by new challenger Greg Fisk by a whopping 66 percent of the votes. Fisk secured 2,919 votes, nearly double that of Sanford, who received 1,470 votes, according to preliminary election results announced Tuesday evening. \u201cI\u2019m pretty astounded,\u201d Fisk said at \u201cElection […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":11676,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-11675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11675\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11675"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=11675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}