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Bancroft and Lawhorn win Newark City Council elections

The results are in for Newark’s City Council election. 

Only three of the council’s six seats were up for election this year — and only two were contested. 

The race of the District 3 seat, which represents southwest Newark, was left wide open when two-term Councilwoman Jen Wallace chose not to seek re-election. 

Wallace endorsed semi-retired engineer and entomologist Jay Bancroft, who beat VA education specialist and mediator Anthony Sinibaldi Tuesday. Bancroft received 289 votes while Sinibaldi received 184. 

The Newark Post reports Bancroft has said he plans to focus first on police reform.

Jason Lawhorn, who works in manufacturing, was re-elected to represent District 5 with 412 votes. He beat retired educator Brian Anderson, who received 85.  

Just under 1,000 votes total were cast in the election. 

New Castle County police officer Travis McDermott ran unopposed and will replace Stu Markham as the District 6 representative. 

The Newark City Council election was pushed back from April because of the coronavirus. City officials encouraged voters to vote absentee. 

The Election Board did not specify how many votes came in absentee.

 

Election Board member Sydney Goldberg thanked the absentee ballot judges as he announced the unofficial results of the election over livestream Tuesday night, saying they were “quite busy."

City Solicitor Renee Bensley said earlier Tuesday more than 1,100 absentee ballots had been requested, by the deadline Friday, and 780 had been returned so far. She said only 40 people voted absentee in the 2018 District 3 and 5 elections. 

 

Sophia Schmidt is a Delaware native. She comes to Delaware Public Media from NPR’s Weekend Edition in Washington, DC, where she produced arts, politics, science and culture interviews. She previously wrote about education and environment for The Berkshire Eagle in Pittsfield, MA. She graduated from Williams College, where she studied environmental policy and biology, and covered environmental events and local renewable energy for the college paper.
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