A Canvass Board member, responsible for tallying final election results, feeds ballots into a counting machine Monday. Absentee, questioned and other ballots did not change the standings for the Oct. 6 election. (Eric Stone/KRBD)
Final results are in for Ketchikan’s Borough Assembly and school board elections. Each candidate that led after in-person voting maintained that lead as officials counted absentee and other ballots.
For Borough Assembly, that means incumbent A.J. Pierce and former Assembly Member Judith McQuerry will return. They’ll be joined by newcomer Jeremy Bynum, an engineer with Ketchikan Public Utilities. Three seats were available, and Bynum beat out former school board president Trevor Shaw by 294 votes.
Pierce was the top vote-getter by just eight votes, followed by McQuerry. Bynum, in third place, won about 200 fewer votes.
On the school board side, incumbents Diane Gubatayao and Paul Robbins, Jr. have each won new three-year terms. Gubatayao was a consensus pick, with about two thirds of the electorate casting a vote for the longtime school board member. Robbins defeated challenger Ali Ginter — the race came down to about 126 votes in the two-seat race.
The third incumbent running, Tom Heutte didn’t fare so well. In the race for two one-year seats on the school board, he was defeated by first-time candidate Nicole Anderson and former board member Kim Hodne. With all absentee, early, questioned and special needs ballots tallied, second-place Hodne edged out Heutte by 138 votes.
Anderson was dominant in the one-year race — she won nearly 600 more votes than Hodne.
Voter turnout was 27%, slightly higher than last year.
The results remain unofficial for now — they’ll stay that way until certified by the Borough Assembly. That’s expected next Tuesday, Oct. 20.
