SCRANTON \u2014 City Councilman Tom Schuster, a Democrat, won reelection Tuesday, but council President Gerald Smurl, running as an independent, lost, according to unofficial results.<\/p>\n
In a race with three four-year terms available and six candidates on the ballot, voters also selected Democrats Patrick Flynn and Sean McAndrew.<\/p>\n
Rounding out the field, Republicans Marc Pane and Virgil Argenta also lost.<\/p>\n
Flynn, Schuster and McAndrew \u2014 who all won the Democratic primary in May \u2014 topped the six-way race Tuesday as follows:<\/p>\n
\u2022 Flynn received 10,197 votes to top the field.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Schuster came in second place with 8,787 votes.<\/p>\n
\u2022 McAndrew placed third, with 7,846 votes, to also win a seat.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Smurl, who lost in fourth place with 5,223 votes, had dropped out of the Democratic primary because of problems with his candidate-filing petitions but then ran for reelection as an independent.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Pane, who won the GOP primary, came up short in the general election with 4,562 votes, for a fifth-place finish.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Argenta, who lost in the Democratic primary but received enough GOP write-in votes to be on the general election ballot as a Republican, trailed with 3,107 votes.<\/p>\n
As the three winners in Tuesday\u2019s election, Flynn, Schuster and McAndrew will join on council the two members who were not up for reelection this year: Jessica Rothchild and Mark McAndrew, who is Sean McAndrew\u2019s uncle.<\/p>\n
Councilman Bill King did not seek reelection.<\/p>\n
The three council seats that were on the ballot were those held by King, Schuster and Smurl.<\/p>\n
With Smurl and King gone from council next year, and Flynn and Sean McAndrew joining the board, the city\u2019s legislative branch will have a new makeup.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Mayor Paige Gebhardt Cognetti, a Democrat, won a resounding victory in Tuesday\u2019s election over three challengers.<\/p>\n
During the campaigns, Cognetti endorsed for council only Smurl, who was on the ballot as an independent and who generally had been a reliable ally of the mayor\u2019s on council. Smurl ran campaign ads saying he also was endorsed by King and Rothchild.<\/p>\n
Cognetti has announced a run for Congress in next year\u2019s midterm election against U.S. Rep. Rob Bresnahan, R-8, Dallas Twp. Cognetti first would have to win the Democratic primary to advance to the 2026 general election ballot.<\/p>\n
During the council race, Flynn, Schuster and McAndrew all said they would be able to work with whoever would be mayor in the future. Contacted by phone Tuesday night, each of the council winners said they would work with Cognetti to better the city.<\/p>\n
\u201cI look forward to working with her. Anything that I can do to help move this city forward, I am more than happy to do,\u201d Flynn said. \u201cThe bottom line for me is \u2014 as I always said in this campaign \u2014 I want to leave Scranton better than I found it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Schuster said, \u201cAny mayor that\u2019s in there, I\u2019ll be working with them. I worked with Paige in the past on the school board and on council, and look forward to working with her again.\u201d<\/p>\n
McAndrew added, \u201cI will work with whoever the mayor is. I\u2019ll agree when needed and sometimes agree to disagree, and hopefully there will be times when we can compromise.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SCRANTON \u2014 City Councilman Tom Schuster, a Democrat, won reelection Tuesday, but council President Gerald Smurl, running as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25161,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[836,201,182,883,139,28,50,178,180,179,181],"class_list":{"0":"post-25160","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-scranton","8":"tag-election","9":"tag-lackawanna-county","10":"tag-local-news","11":"tag-local-politics","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-pennsylvania","14":"tag-politics","15":"tag-scranton","16":"tag-scranton-headlines","17":"tag-scranton-news","18":"tag-top-stories-stt"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25160\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}