CategoryLocal

All 19 Jacksonville City Council seats were up for election in 2019. Fourteen races were decided outright in the general election on March 19, but five advanced to a runoff election held on May 14. Those seats were At-large Positions 1 and 3 and Districts 8, 10, and 14.

 

Eleven of 19 incumbents filed for re-election. City council members are term-limited and restricted to serving two consecutive four-year terms. Two incumbents advanced to the runoff election and were re-elected: At-large Position 3 member Tommy Hazouri (D) and District 8 member Ju’Coby Pittman (D). The remaining three seats in the runoff were open. All 11 incumbents who ran for re-election won another term.

 

The incoming city council will have six Democratic and 13 Republican members. Currently, Democrats hold seven seats and Republicans hold 12. The open At-large Position 2 seat changed from a Democrat-held seat to a Republican-held seat in the general election. There were no flipped seats in the general runoff election.

 

Jacksonville is the largest city in Florida and the 13th-largest city in the U.S. by population.

 

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The city of Fresno, California, is holding a nonpartisan special election for the District 2 seat on the city council on August 13. A runoff election is scheduled for November 5. The filing deadline for this election is May 17.

 

The District 2 city council seat was previously held by Steve Brandau. He was first elected to the seat in 2012. Brandau stepped down in April 2019 after winning the District 2 seat on the Fresno County Board of Supervisors in a special election on March 5.

 

The District 2 city council seat was last up for election in 2016. Brandau won re-election without opposition that year. Winners of the 2019 special election will serve the remainder of Brandau’s term, which ends in 2020. Though the seat is nonpartisan, Brandau is affiliated with the Republican Party.

 

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In Kansas City, Missouri’s, mayoral election, Jolie Justus raised twice as much as fellow city council member Quinton Lucas as of May 9. Reports filed 40 days out from the election showed Justus had raised $1.02 million compared to $497,000 raised by Lucas. Justus had also spent $755,000 to Lucas’ $351,000.

 

The only polling released in the general election shows Lucas with a lead, however. A Remington Research poll conducted in mid-April gave Lucas a 38-31 edge, with 31 percent of respondents undecided and a 4 percent margin of error.

 

The general election will take place on June 18. Lucas and Justus advanced from a field of 11 candidates on April 2. In that contest, Justus received 22.8 percent of the vote and Lucas received 18.4 percent. The winner of the general election will succeed term-limited Mayor Sly James (D).

 

Thirty-one mayoral elections in the 100 largest cities are being held in 2019. In 20 of those cities, the pre-election incumbent is Democratic. Seven pre-election incumbents are Republican, three are independent, and the affiliation of one is unknown. Justus served as a Democratic state senator, while Lucas’ party affiliation is not publicly known.

An election took place on May 9, 2019, in Ogunquit, Maine, in an attempt to recall three members of the town’s Select Board. Board Chairman Charles Waite, Selectwoman Madeline Mooney, and Selectman Bob Winn all retained their seats. They were retained with 51.75%, 51.61%, and 55.53% of the vote, respectively.

 

Recall organizers began the recall process after the three board members voted last October to uphold the termination of the town’s former fire chief, Mark O’Brien. Waite, Mooney, and Winn filed a lawsuit to prevent the recall effort from going to a vote, but York County Superior Court Judge John O’Neil lifted a temporary stay and permitted the election to move forward.

 

Recall elections for local elected officials are permitted in some—but not all—jurisdictions in Maine. These laws are documented in local charters and ordinances in cities and towns throughout the state. A total of 39 states have provisions allowing for recall of elected officials at the state or local level.

 

So far, Ballotpedia has identified 41 recall efforts taking place in 2019. This includes six recalls for state legislators, one for a state executive, seven for school board members, one at the county level, 23 at the city level, and three for special districts.

 

Former LAUSD board member Jackie Goldberg and former vice president of the Board of Public Works Commissioners Heather Repenning face each other in a runoff election for the District 5 seat on the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education in California next Tuesday.

 

In recent years, LAUSD elections have been characterized by divisions between union-backed candidates and charter school group-backed candidates. LAUSD (the second-largest district in the U.S.) had 224 independently operated charter schools in 2017, more than any other school district in the nation.

 

School board elections in 2017 flipped the LAUSD board from a 4-3 majority of members supported by United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) to a 4-3 majority of members supported by the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA). Former District 5 member Ref Rodriguez, who resigned in 2018, was a member of the latter group. His resignation left a 3-3 split.

 

In the 2019 special election, UTLA endorsed Jackie Goldberg, and the CCSA has not endorsed. Both Goldberg and Repenning say they support holding charter schools to the same standards as public schools. But they differ in the degree of emphasis they place on charter school policy and other issues in their campaigns. Goldberg has made charter school accountability a key plank of her campaign. Repenning has described herself as a coalition builder and has emphasized other issues.

 

Along with UTLA, Goldberg has been endorsed by U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D) and the Los Angeles chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. Repenning’s backers include the Service Employees International Union Local 99, Mayor Eric Garcetti (D), and the Los Angeles Times editorial board.

 

The special election has drawn $2.8 million in satellite spending. A teacher’s union-sponsored satellite group has spent $1.3 million in support of Goldberg and an SIEU Local 99 group has spent $875,000 supporting Repenning.

 

The city of San Antonio held nonpartisan general elections for mayor on Saturday. None of the nine mayoral candidates, including incumbent Ron Nirenberg, won at least 50 percent of the vote in the election. As a result, the top two vote recipients—Nirenberg (49,297 votes) and challenger Greg Brockhouse (46,129 votes)—advanced to a general runoff election on June 8. Nirenberg was first elected as mayor in 2017, and he is running for a second term. The filing deadline to run for office was February 15.

 

Ballotpedia also covered elections for all 10 seats on the San Antonio City Council on Saturday. The races in Districts 2, 4, and 6 advanced to a June runoff election, while the remaining seven districts were won outright in the general election.

 

Thirty-one mayoral elections in the nation’s 100 largest cities are being held in 2019. In 20 of those cities, the incumbent was Democratic at the start of 2019. Seven incumbents were Republican, three were independent, and the affiliation of one was unknown. As of May 2019, one partisan change has taken place. Voters in Phoenix, Arizona, elected Kate Gallego (D) in a nonpartisan mayoral runoff election on March 12, 2019. Gallego succeeded Thelda Williams, a Republican.

 

San Antonio is the second-largest city in Texas and the eighth-largest city in the U.S. by population.

 

Nearly half of the city offices that were on the ballot in Denver’s May 7 general election are heading to a runoff election on June 4. The District 1, 3, 5, 9, and 10 seats on the city council as well as the offices of mayor and clerk and recorder will be decided in the runoff election since no candidate received a majority of votes in the general election.

 

Incumbent Michael Hancock and Jamie Giellis received the most votes in the mayoral race, defeating eight other candidates (including four write-ins) to advance to the runoff. The general election for the open clerk and recorder position had three candidates. Paul López and Peg Perl defeated Sarah McCarthy to advance to the runoff.

 

The five city council seats advancing to runoff elections all had at least four candidates running in the general election. The District 5, 9, and 10 incumbents all moved on to the runoff. No incumbents ran for the District 1 and 3 seats.

 

In the race for city auditor, incumbent Tim O’Brien ran unopposed and won re-election outright in the general election. Incumbents also won re-election to all eight city council seats that did not advance to a runoff. Three won re-election unopposed, while the others defeated between one and six opponents each to win another term on the council.

 

Candidates had until May 6 to file for seven seats on the Hamilton County Municipal Court in Ohio. Twelve candidates, including six incumbents, filed by the deadline. Judges will be elected in nonpartisan general elections on November 5.

 

District 6 Judge Richard Bernat did not file for re-election. Three candidates are competing for his open seat. District 1 Judge Dwane Mallory, District 3 Judge Ted Berry, and District 7 Judge Gwen Bender are all unopposed in the general election. In the three other races on the ballot, District 2 Judge Tyrone Yates, District 4 Judge Josh Berkowitz, and District 5 Judge Heather Russell will all face off against one challenger in the general election.

 

The county court is located in the city of Cincinnati and has jurisdiction over municipal ordinance violations. The court is made up of 14 judges who are elected to six-year terms.

 

In 2019, Ballotpedia is covering elections in 23 counties across 11 states. In addition to the counties, Ballotpedia is also covering elections in 59 of America’s 100 largest cities by population.

 

Incumbent Michael Hancock and former River North Art District President Jamie Giellis advanced to a June 4 runoff for mayor of Denver. Hancock led with 39.1% of the vote to Giellis’ 25.7%. The third-place candidate, criminal justice professor Lisa Calderón, had 17.4%. A candidate must receive more than 50% of the vote in order to avoid a runoff between the top two finishers.

 

The central issue in the election was Denver’s approach to housing and development following a decade of rapid population growth. Hancock argued that he had expanded the city’s economy since taking office in 2011 and said his plan for his third term included creating a municipal department of transportation and approving a 20-year development master plan. Giellis, a former urban management consultant and president of Denver’s River North Art District, said that she would expand the role that local residents play in approving development plans and would spend $1 billion to expand access to housing in the city.

 

Although the election is officially nonpartisan, Hancock and Giellis are both members of the Democratic Party.