NORTHAMPTON — Unofficial results from the city clerk’s office show that City Council President Gina-Louise Sciarra earned 60.8% of the total vote for mayor in Tuesday’s preliminary election, while transportation analyst Marc Warner took second place with 21.8%.
Sciarra and Warner will face off to replace Mayor David Narkewicz on Nov. 2. Voters on Tuesday eliminated Shanna Fishel and Roy Martin from the race, along with Rosechana Gordon, who dropped out of the running after the ballots were printed but still earned 31 votes.
Turnout was roughly 24.5% of the city’s 21,389 registered voters.
Certified election results will be available on Friday. The deadline for any candidate to request a recount is Monday, Oct. 4, at 5 p.m.
Unofficial election results from all seven wards, provided by the city clerk’s office, are broken into 14 precincts.
Sciarra picked up enough votes in every precinct for an across-the-board victory. Warner came in second place in nine precincts, and Fishel finished second in the remaining five precincts.
The total vote shows 3,195 ballots for Sciarra, or nearly 61% of ballots cast. Warner earned 1,147 votes and Fishel earned 734. Warner’s strongest showing was in 6A with 138 votes, seven votes shy of Sciarra’s total in that precinct.
In 4B, Sciarra earned nearly six times the votes received by Fishel — 297 to 54 — while Warner finished third with 52. Similar numbers in 2B gave Sciarra a fivefold win over Warner.
Martin, former president of the Walter Salvo Tenants Association and a resident of Ward 3, precinct B, had his strongest showing in 3B with 15 votes. He earned 81 overall.
Sciarra, first elected as Ward 4 councilor in 2013 and elevated to at-large in 2019, earned the support of the outgoing mayor and several City Council incumbents and candidates, along with other elected officials and municipal staff in the Pioneer Valley.
Still, she said, the big returns on election day made Sciarra feel “humbled and awed” by “an awesome sense of responsibility” to the city.
“I felt a lot of support, and people were very enthusiastic,” Sciarra said, but she did not anticipate that victory would come with more than 50% of the vote in 13 precincts. She said her campaign team agreed that “we were going to get up today and keep working just as hard” to win in November.
Warner, a 2015 candidate for City Council at-large, said Wednesday that he “expected that I would make it into the top two, and I’m thankful that the voters shared that view and gave me the chance.”
Warner founded his company, Warner Transportation Consulting, after earning his Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1992. He moved to Florence from Cambridge in 2005 and has served on four city committees since 2012: the charter drafting, charter review, parking and passenger rail committees.
“I will continue to run an aggressive campaign,” Warner said. “I will continue also to knock on doors, to speak at more forums. I will take advantage of all of those opportunities.”
Warner said his top priority “is to have a well-run city” with effective management of a $121.7 million budget and 26 departments with 1,000 employees.
“We have to make sure we’re doing the right type of services, and that we’re providing those services efficiently,” Warner, a former delegate to the state Democratic convention, said. “The idea that the role of the mayor is primarily ideological, I think, is mistaken. Your ideology can help to set some goals and priorities, but in order to get things done, you need to manage the city effectively.”
The mayor should work to restore public confidence in the police department, which “took a hit last year, inappropriately because it changed very rapidly in response to loud voices,” Warner said. At the same time, he supports a higher allocation for the Department of Community Care and an increased focus on affordable and moderate-priced housing.
Sciarra said the next mayor faces “a smorgasbord of issues,” including the distribution of COVID-19 pandemic relief funds, the redesign of Main Street, climate change and economic development. She said she admires Fishel, Martin and Gordon for “stepping up and running to represent their community.”
Fishel, in a social media post after the results came in, wrote, “As I ponder what comes next — and pause to rest — I know that my work for our community is far from over.”
Jamila Gore, Michael Quinlan, Marissa Elkins and David Murphy advanced to the general election, where they will compete for two at-large seats on the City Council. Michelle Serra was eliminated from the race after coming in fifth.
Overall vote totals show Gore topped Quinlan, the second-place finisher, by 358 ballots.
Gore won eight precincts, Quinlan took five and Elkins picked up a victory in Ward 2, precinct A. Murphy earned second place in 6A and tied with Gore for second in 7A.
Quinlan is the incumbent Ward 1 city councilor. He and Gore split the ward, with Gore winning 1A and Quinlan winning 1B. Quinlan won both precincts of Wards 6 and 7, and Gore won 2B and all of Wards 3, 4 and 5, according to the unofficial results from the city clerk’s office.
“I’m feeling really good about the results. My team worked really hard to get out and canvass and phone-bank. We knocked on a lot of doors,” said Gore, who if elected would become the second Black city councilor in Northampton’s history and the council’s first Black woman member. “We’re going to keep doing what we’re doing, keep the momentum going, keep reaching out to voters and talking to people.”
Gore said she would prioritize affordable housing and the needs of renters.
In addition to her win in 2A — where she bested Gore by two votes — Elkins came in second place behind Gore in five precincts, including all of Ward 3.
Murphy took last place in six precincts and Serra came within 176 votes of finishing fourth in the overall race, which would have been enough to advance to November.
Brian Steele can be reached at bsteele@gazettenet.com.