TRENTON – Ballots were cast this morning at the City Clerk’s office for the Trenton North and South Precinct runoff elections.
Starting in the South Ward, City Clerk Brandon Garcia announced Damian Malave as the first place winner and Jennifer Figueroa Kettenburg as the second place winner. In the North Ward, Algernon Ward was the first to be elected, and Jennifer Williams was the second.
“Unofficial” tallies showed a runoff between Jennifer Williams and Algernon Ward; and a South Ward runoff between Damian Malave and Jenna Figueroa Ketenburg.
Williams ended up with 582 votes, or 32.85%, to Ward’s 490 votes at 27.61%, thanks to a tight four-way battle with Merkle Cherry, who received 21.69%, and Divine Allah, who received 17.86% of the 1,775 declared votes for Ward.
In the South Ward, Malave has 513 votes for 47.77% to Kettenburg’s 456 votes for 42.46% of the district’s 1,074 votes.
This year, there was no need for second rounds of elections for the mayor, Eastern and Western districts.
Mayor Reed Guschiora wins a second term in a landslide victory with 70.6% of the vote, receiving 5,792 of the 8,208 mayoral votes (8,200 primary four and 8 write-in votes).
The East Ward is the only city council seat that will remain the same next year as Joe Harrison gets another term to serve the citizens of his ward with 59.58% of the vote with 790 of the 1,326 votes cast.
Tesca Frisby will be West Ward’s next representative on the city council, finishing the race with 54.17% of the vote. Frisby received 1,753 of the 3,204 votes cast in the West (3,201 ballot candidate votes and 3 write-in votes).
As for the At-Large candidates, there will be no runoff, according to Garcia. Thus, Yazminelli Gonzalez, Crystal Feliciano, and Jassi Edwards will be the next At-Large board members. Gonzalez was first with 3,675 votes, Feliciano was second with 3,044 votes and Edwards was third with 2,702 votes.
Previous reports by the Trentonian contributed to this article.
