NEWS

Hopkins: 'I've reached the top'

After delay in portion of vote count, GOP keeps control of mayor’s office, City Council

By DANIEL A. KITTREDGE
Posted 11/11/20

By DANIEL KITTREDGE Cranston's city government will enter 2021 as it ends 2020 - with Republicans controlling both the mayor's office and City Council. Less than 24 hours after the polls closed - and following a new tally of early in-person ballots at

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NEWS

Hopkins: 'I've reached the top'

After delay in portion of vote count, GOP keeps control of mayor’s office, City Council

Posted

Cranston’s city government will enter 2021 as it ends 2020 – with Republicans controlling both the mayor’s office and City Council.

Less than 24 hours after the polls closed – and following a new tally of early in-person ballots at the Board of Election’s headquarters on Plainfield Pike – Republican Citywide Councilman Ken Hopkins emerged victorious in the race to succeed Mayor Allan Fung, defeating Democratic candidate Maria Bucci with more than 54 percent of the vote.

Addressing supporters at the St. Mary’s Feast Society building on the night of Nov. 3, with only the Election Day results reported, the second-term councilman expressed confidence in what proved to be the final outcome.

Holding a small figure of an angel after exuberantly entering the scene to the sounds of the Blues Brothers hit “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love,” Hopkins became emotional as he reflected on the circumstances he faced a year earlier, when his later wife, Mary, was in the last weeks of her battle with cancer.

“This has been one wild ride, I can tell you that,” Hopkins said. “Where I was one year ago, it was in the depths of despair in the bottom of the valley. And now I’ve climbed it, I’ve climbed the mountain. I’ve reached the top. I am going to be your next mayor.”

Bucci conceded the race to Hopkins in a statement issued on the evening of Nov. 4, shortly after the final tally of early in-person votes was completed.

“I am so proud of the campaign that we ran this year, and I will be forever grateful to all of the volunteers and supporters who came out to support my vision for the future of Cranston,” Bucci said. “I believe that Cranston has so much potential. I hope that each and every one of those supporters stay committed to the city, get involved, and be part of building our future.”

On the City Council side, Republicans will maintain their 5-4 edge after holding three of the five contested seats.

For the three citywide seats on the council, based on the unofficial tallies, Democratic candidate Jessica Marino topped the field with 19,844 votes, or nearly 22 percent of those cast. She was followed by Republicans Robert Ferri (17,079 votes, 18.8 percent) and Nicole Renzulli (16,048 votes, 17.7 percent).

Those results mirror the 2018 citywide vote, in which Democratic Councilman Steve Stycos led the field followed by Republican City Council President Michael Farina and Hopkins. All three of the current citywide council members were candidates for mayor and are vacating their seats.

“It will be my honor and privilege to serve our community as we move Cranston forward and for the better,” Marino wrote on Facebook.

“I love Cranston. I am Cranston,” Renzulli wrote on the social media platform. “It will be my pleasure to serve you.”

Rounding out this year’s citywide field were Democratic candidates Larry Warner (13,335 votes, 14.7 percent) and Dylan Zelazo (13,097 votes, 14.4 percent) and Republican hopeful Don Roach (11,281 votes, 12.4 percent).

In Ward 2, Democratic Councilwoman Aniece Germain made history as she became the first black woman elected to the council. She had been appointed to the seat earlier this year following the resignation of Paul McAuley, a Democrat who endorsed Hopkins for mayor.

Germain received 3,576 votes, or 58.5 percent, while Republican challenger Zac Sailer garnered 2,531 votes, or 41.4 percent.

“We have brought people together from every part of our community, and we will not stop organizing,” Germain wrote in a message to supporters on Facebook.

In Ward 6, where longtime Republican Councilman Michael Favicchio is departing due to term limits, GOP candidate Matthew Reilly held on to defeat Democratic hopeful Paul Bucci by an unofficial count of 3,175-2,962, or 51.7-48.2 percent.

“I would like to thank the residents of Ward 6 for putting their trust in me to be their councilman,” Reilly wrote on Facebook. “I will continue to fight for you and listen to your concerns as we lead this city forward together.”

Four incumbent council members – Democrats Lammis Vargas in Ward 1 and John Donegan in Ward 3, and Republicans Ed Brady in Ward 4 and Chris Paplauskas in Ward 5 – were reelected without opposition.

With Republicans maintaining control of the council, Paplauskas appears poised to succeed Farina as the body’s president. The Ward 5 councilman, who is entering his fourth term, will become the longest tenured member of the council in January.

During a recent joint appearance on the Herald’s Radio Beacon podcast, Brady said he would support Paplauskas for the role if the GOP were to hold the majority.

Paplauskas responded: “I’d love to do the job. I really would … If I get the opportunity to do that and work with everybody, I’ll be humbled.”

For Hopkins, 66, the victory in the mayoral contest represents the culmination of a journey that he had at one point ruled out.

A retired educator, athletic director and coach, Hopkins in 2019 indicated he had decided to pass on a run for mayor in 2020 and would instead seek reelection to his citywide council seat. At the time, he was accompanying his wife on frequent trips to Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.

“I originally said I was going to come out and support [City Council President] Mike Farina … At the time, my wife was sick, and I didn’t feel like I would have that opportunity to run for mayor,” Hopkins previously told the Herald.

When Mary passed away, Hopkins took time to regroup and reevaluate. He has said conversations with Fung, former mayor Michael Traficante and retired police chief Kenneth Mancuso led to his decision to change course and enter the mayoral contest.

An often contentious primary contest with Farina followed. In September, Hopkins cruised the Republican nomination by a roughly 3-1 margin. Bucci emerged on the Democratic side after a primary campaign against Citywide Councilman Steve Stycos.

The outcome of the mayoral race was one of several victories for Fung, who is departing after 12 years due to term limits. In addition to seeing his chosen successor elected, the outgoing mayor saw this year’s slate of GOP hopefuls maintain control of the City Council; his wife, Barbara Ann Fenton-Fung, elected to the General Assembly; and charter amendments presented as a means of preserving his fiscal legacy receive overwhelming approval from voters.

Based on unofficial tallies as of Monday night, Hopkins received 21,319 votes, or 54.3 percent of those cast, to Bucci’s 17,785, or 45.3 percent. Another 162 voters, or .4 percent, wrote in another name.

Getting those results took longer than initially anticipated.

On the night of Nov. 3, after the polls closed at 8 p.m., the Election Day votes were tallied and reported as planned. It had been anticipated that early in-person votes cast between Oct. 14 and Nov. 2 would follow during the 10 o’clock hour, with mail ballot tallies arriving starting around 11 p.m.

But an issue was experienced in transmitting the results of the early in-person voting period to the Board of Elections for reporting through its website. That resulted in the need to bring all of those roughly 9,000 ballots to the agency’s Plainfield Pike headquarters to be tallied, a process that occurred Wednesday afternoon.

Mirroring a trend seen in across Rhode Island and the rest of the country, ballots cast in person on Election Day – which were reported out first – heavily favored the Republican candidate. Hopkins garnered 11,716 Election Day votes to Bucci’s 6,750 in that batch of ballots.

As was also seen in races nationally, the Democratic candidate received a significantly higher portion of ballots cast by mail. As of Monday, the mail ballot count – now all but complete – stood at 6,785 for Bucci and 4,664 for Hopkins.

Bucci entered Wednesday’s count at the Board of Elections needing a major victory in the early in-person, or emergency, voting, on the order of a 2-to-1 break in those ballots her way. That ultimately failed to materialize – and it was in fact Hopkins who won among early in-person voters, by a count of 4,939-4,250.

During the campaign, some observers pointed to Hopkins’s connections in the more Democratic eastern parts of the city as a potential strength in the general election contest.

A review of precinct-level data suggests that proved correct to some degree. Hopkins won 18 precincts, while Bucci won 12.

As expected, the Republican councilman won a number of Western Cranston precincts by wide margins. In Precinct 0706, which is situated in Ward 4 and votes at the Cranston Christian Fellowship Church, he won 1,386 votes, or nearly 72 percent, to Bucci’s 538, or 28 percent. In Precinct 0707, which also sits in Ward 4 and votes at Hope Highlands Middle School, he received 1,262 votes, or nearly 69 percent, to Bucci’s 570, or 31 percent.

Bucci likewise posted strong showings in the heavily Democratic precincts of Edgewood and the city’s easternmost neighborhoods. In Precinct 0723, which is part of Ward 1 and votes at Edgewood Highland Elementary School, she won 1,313 votes to Hopkins’s 541, a margin of roughly 70-29 percent. In Precinct 0725, which is also part of Ward 1 and votes at Park View Middle School, Bucci received 1,241 votes to Hopkins’s 802, a roughly 60-40 percent split.

In precincts situated within Ward 2, Ward 6 and House District 16, however, Hopkins posted several significant victories – even as Democratic candidates ran strongly or garnered outright wins down-ballot.

For example, in Precinct 0710, which votes at Waterman Elementary School, Hopkins ran just ahead of Bucci – 740 votes to 733 – even as Democratic House District 16 candidate Brandon Potter topped Republican hopeful Maryann Lancia by a roughly 64-36 percent margin and Germain bested Sailer, roughly 56-44 percent, in the Ward 2 contest.

Similar results were seen in Precinct 0715, which votes at the CLCF Building. There, Hopkins received 601 votes to Bucci’s 458, a roughly 57-43 split, while Potter won nearly 60 percent of the vote and Germain posted a narrow 513-498 win.

In Precinct 0713, which is Hopkins’s home precinct and votes as Garden City Elementary School, the GOP councilman took more than 64 percent of the vote, defeating Bucci 1,044-572. There, too, Potter posted a win – albeit by a narrow 782-774 margin. Reilly, meanwhile, received the most votes in the precinct for the Ward 6 seat on the City Council (814, or 52 percent), although Paul Bucci ran strongly (748, or 47.8 percent).

Hopkins, mayor

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