While many races in last night’s municipal elections were tightly contested, several mayoral candidates in New Hanover, Brunswick and Pender counties won by landslides.
WHQR’s Sara Wood reports that the mayoral race in Wilmington proved to be no exception.
Incumbent Mayor Bill Saffo defeated candidate Justin LaNasa by more than 40 percent of votes.
After capturing his fourth term as mayor, Saffo says he’s ready to continue working to improve the city’s existing issues as well as focus on the economy.
“We’re going to continue to look for opportunities to bring jobs to our communities and even help those small business owners in our community that are expanding their businesses. We have small business owners here that have 10, 20, 30 people in their operations that are expanding businesses and we don’t hear that news. We need to see what we can do to help those businesses continue to thrive in our city.”
Other defeats were in Oak Island, with incumbent Betty Wallace defeating Bob Seidel by nearly 50 percentage points, and Topsail Island incumbent Howard Braxton defeating Buck Taylor by reeling in near 70 percent of the votes compared to Taylor’s 30 percent.
In Shallotte, Sara McCullough won against Paula Pease with almost 90 percent of voter support.