Wednesday, November 09, 2011

Congrats to Ben Blake, Milford's new mayor


Democrat Ben Blake led the ticket to a nearly clean sweep in Milford last night. Blake won over Republican Bob Joy and Independent Rocco Frank in a fairly heavy turnout for a municipal election.

Milford has about 32,000 registered voters, and nearly 13,000 showed up to vote yesterday. Which means the turnout was roughly 40%, which is significantly better than many towns and cities that had contested elections this year.

Results:

Blake 7,031 55%
Joy 5,482 43%
Frank 240 2%

In the City Clerk's race, former alderwoman Suzanne Manning ran a classy campaign but fell just short of upsetting Republican incumbent Linda Stock. On the boards, the Dems now have majorities on two of the city's three boards:

Democrats have the Board of Aldermen 9 to 6, Board of Education 8-2, but the Republicans have a 7-3 majority in Planning & Zoning.

Congratulations go to Ben and all the people who helped bring Milford back to the Democrats! Now it's time to go to work and find ways to make the city work more efficiently and handle the many issues that face Milford.

11 comments:

mattw said...

Bob, do you elect BOE by district? I didn't think it was possible to control a board like that by 8-2.

CT Bob said...

Yes, five districts in Milford, each with 2 board members. Alderman is 15, 3 from each district, including one from the "losing" party, so there's always at lease 1/3 of the minority party.

kwhitehead said...

Any idea where I can find election results broken down by district? I thought I might find them,on the cIty clerk's website but apparently Linda Stock can't get it together. Thanks.

mattw said...

Thanks -- the only other town I know of that does district BOE is Norwalk, and they're half-district and half-at-large.

CT Bob said...

KW, I don't know yet. Eventually it will be on the city's official website under the Registrar's Dept., but I'm guessing that may take weeks. You can probably search around the SofS's area on the official CT website (ct.gov).

Anonymous said...

Thanks Bob. I found the breakdowns. Can you explain why Victor Ferrante (5th district P&Z) lost even though he got more votes than the Republican? Seriously. I don't get it.

CT Bob said...

I don't know, I haven't seen the breakdowns yet. Maybe it was a misprint. Do you have a link?

Anonymous said...

http://milfordmirror.com/images/stories/2011/11/milford-electionresults.pdf

Ferrante 1350
Grant 1283

wtf?

CT Bob said...

Ah, I see what happened. John Grant also ran on the Independent Party line, where he received an additional 135 votes, which were enough to put him over the top.

I always think it's a good thing to be running on more than one line. In 2010, I voted for as many candidates as were listed both on the Democratic line and the Working Families Party using the WFP line. It keeps the party on the ballot and the vote still goes to the candidate.

Anonymous said...

Damn. I should have looked closer. Thanks

SEO Specialist Philippines said...

Hello Bob,I am extremely impressed with your writing skills and also with the layout on your blog. Is this a paid theme or did you customize it yourself? Either way keep up the nice quality writing, it’s rare to see a nice blog like this one these days..