HOLYOKE — In the words of more than 30-year City Councilor Kevin Jourdain, Holyoke is taking a “different direction.”
Mayor Joshua Garcia was the real winner in Tuesday’s election, when two longtime city councilors, who have been a barrier to his agenda, including Jourdain, were dethroned, and a majority of Garcia-backed candidates are now flooding the zone of city politics.
While Garcia was running unopposed and knew he’d still be in the corner office after Tuesday, it has been his focus in the past months to gain like-minded candidates on the 13-member City Council — and that’s exactly what happened.
In Ward 3, seven-term councilor David Bartley was beat by Garcia-backed challenger Anne Thalheimer by 64 votes, according to unofficial results from the city clerk’s office. At-Large candidate and lifelong Holyoker Jourdain has been on the council since 1993, but as he saw numbers coming in last night, he took to Facebook when he saw his loss was inevitable.
“It appears clear to me that the City of Holyoke has chosen to go in a different direction tonight,” Jourdain wrote, and congratulated the night’s winners and wished them luck on the next year.
The six candidates who won at-large seat include four supported by Garcia: Tessa Murphy-Romboletti, the first female president of the city council, was reelected, as well as Patricia Devine, Israel Rivera and Mimi Panitch. However, two at-large seats went to candidates the mayor did not endorse: Michael J. Sullivan and Howard B. Greaney.
Jourdain, who has been a leading oppositional voice to the mayor and most recently garnered attention for introducing a resolution to declare that Holyoke is not a sanctuary city, wrote that, “I do regret the vile and deeply personal nature of the campaign waged against me and several other like-minded candidates this cycle.”
He said he will be forever proud of being “Holyoke’s Fiscal Watchdog.”
“It has been my distinct honor and pleasure to serve the city where I grew up, and I am forever grateful for that opportunity. Thank you, Holyoke,” he wrote.
Despite his loss, Bartley was upbeat when he picked up his phone Wednesday and said that, “I definitely lost. I love to serve and I wish my honorable opponent nothing but success.”
He added that he will finish out the remainder of his term strong.
Garcia also scored in Ward 1 with the election of Jenny Rivera, who squeezed by Victor Machado by just 19 votes. In Ward 4, Garcia-backed Richard Paul Purcell beat Peter Diaz Jr. by 120 votes.
Among uncontested City Council races, Linda Vacon, who cosigned the sanctuary city resolution with Jourdain, was reelected in Ward 5. Nicole Marie Maisonet, who was not endorsed by Garcia, won Ward 2’s seat.
Garcia’s candidates are returning in Wards 6 and 7, where Juan Anderson Burgos and Meg Magrath-Smith were reelected.
Garcia’s school committee candidate for Ward 5 did lose, however, with Aida Oquendo losing by more than 20% to Jens Michaelsen.
Holyoke’s voter turnout woes continued Tuesday with only 5,387 of the city’s 31,519 registered voters, or 17%, coming out to vote. Nonetheless, City Clerk Brenna Murphy Leary, who herself was reelected in an unopposed race Tuesday, was busy taking calls throughout the day.
In the morning, Leary was made aware that Ward 1 candidate Machado was knocking on doors in Rosary Towers, which is a polling cite, she said in a phone call Wednesday morning.
Machado was told he cannot campaign within 150 feet of a polling location. Throughout the day calls came in from other wards that people were sticking signs in grass instead of holding them, which is against campaigning restrictions, said Leary.
