Here are the certified totals from the Hudson County Clerk's Office (drum roll please):
Jean Marie Mitchell, Ruth McAllister and Thomas Kluepfel of Kids First, the Hoboken BOE slate that was endorsed by Mayor Zimmer won all three Board of Education Seats at stake. Jean Marie Mitchell had only been ahead 6 votes before the provisional and electronic votes were counted as was able to further widen her lead. After the initial machine tally the third seat was the only seat that was still in question. Now the results are finalized and a clean sweep for Kids First and their political allies including Mayor Dawn Zimmer.
Rent control advocates win by a mere 52 votes! (Question #2). This just goes to show every vote can count in Hoboken. The public questions to move municipal elections to November wins easily (3 to 1) and runoffs are eliminated though by a lesser but still significant margin (Questions #3 and #1 respectively).
With these changes the Mayoral election will now be election day in November 2013. The City Council Ward members will also have their terms extended until November of 2015 as well instead of the previous May term. Mayor Zimmer had lobbied for Kids First, a yes vote on election reform questions 1 and 3, and for rejecting Public Question 2 which would have enabled vacancy decontrol. Although the last question was decided by a very close, Mayor Dawn Zimmer has no doubt secured a clean sweep and major victory against her political opponents. In the wake of her tireless efforts in recovering from Hurricane Sandy, is there any real opposition to her getting re-elected next November? Time will tell.
For reference here is the link to the Hudson County Election Results: http://www.hudsoncountyclerk.org/cgi-bin/election.pl ◦
