TOWN OF HAMBURG
Walters coasts to second term as supervisor
Published: November 04, 2009, 12:30 am
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Hamburg Republican Supervisor Steven J. Walters coasted to a second term Tuesday, winning nearly 60 percent of the vote.
It was a far cry from the squeaker he went through four years ago, when he won with 51 percent of the vote.
“I’m feeling good right now,” he said shortly after 10 p. m. Tuesday. “We put together a great campaign, and it’s paying off.”
With nearly three-quarters of the vote counted, Democrat Patricia Michalek garnered 28 percent of the vote, and attorney Dennis Gaughan, a Democrat running on the Independence Party line, was third with about 14 percent of the vote.
“Incumbency is hard to beat, especially when it was one term — and it was a three-way race,” Michalek, curriculum and instruction coordinator at St. Mary’s School for the Deaf, said. But she added, “It was a great race.”
Voters chose three new board members. With the apparent election of Republican Amy Carroll Ziegler to the Town Board with 22 percent of the vote, Walters again will have a Republican majority on the board.
But it looks like he will have two outspoken Democrats on the board.
In the race to fill a two-year term, Democrat Jonathan Gorman appeared to have nudged out Republican David Bellissimo, 52 percent to 48 percent. The seat may be one of two eliminated in 2012, if residents approve a measure to downsize the Town Board next month.
And Democrat Joseph A. Collins was the top vote-getter in the board race, winning a seat with 27 percent of the vote.
Falling short in that contest were Republican Bryan J. Wittmeyer, who got 22 percent of the vote, and Democrat Leonard F. Kowalski, who received 20 percent. Vincent Gugliuzza, a Democrat running on the Working Families line, received 9 percent.
Walters said there seemed to be more negative campaigning this year, and it seemed to turn off voters.
“I hope whoever I do work with on the board [realizes] that the election is over and the politicking has to stop,” Walters said. “I think the voters have had enough.”
He said he did not think the race could be seen as an indicator of how the downsizing vote will go Nov. 17. Michalek ran on a platform supporting downsizing.
“I think the people looked at my race not as an issue of downsizing the Town Board but of what reforms were done over the last four years,” he said.
Walters, 34, an attorney, won his first term four years ago, when he beat longtime incumbent Supervisor Patrick H. Hoak.
Gorman’s father, Gerald P. Gorman, was unopposed for town justice, and Thomas M. Best Sr. was unopposed for highway superintendent.
bobrien@buffnews.com
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