Two incumbent Democrats have held on to their spots on Bethlehem City Council, in what was a close Democratic primary.<\/p>\n
Unofficial results show incumbents Rachel Leon and Hillary Kwiatek leading the crowded field of six Democrats, with 4,425 and 4,247 votes, respectively.<\/p>\n
With 4,061 votes, Justin Amann appears headed for the November election as well. Jo Daniels also appears poised to pick up the fourth spot on city council with 3,283 votes, just ahead of the fifth vote getter Tina Cantelmi, who received 3,198 votes.<\/p>\n
The final candidate, Celeste Dee, trailed with 2,781 votes.<\/p>\n
Republican Joseph Poplawski is unopposed in his party\u2019s primary, and will appear on the November ballot as well.<\/p>\n
Leon is Bethlehem City Council\u2019s vice president. She is a Navy veteran and longtime resident of and advocate for the city\u2019s South Side neighborhood. She is chair of the council public safety committee and council liaison to the Bethlehem Area Public Library board.<\/p>\n
Daniels is a lifelong Bethlehem resident running for her first term on City Council. She is an account executive at an Atlanta mortgage company, and has spoken at City Council meetings asking officials to better enforce city ordinances on building maintenance issues and landlord\/tenant concerns. She is a graduate of Liberty High School and attended Morgan State University.<\/p>\n
Kwiatek is a marketing and communications director at Lehigh University. She is chair of the council\u2019s Parks and Recreation Committee and liaison to the Bethlehem Housing Authority. She has also been a member of the city\u2019s Democratic Committee since 2005.<\/p>\n
Amann is a lifelong Bethlehem resident and director of theater at Freedom High School in Bethlehem, according to a news release from his campaign. He also is executive director of the Foundation for the Bethlehem Area School District. He is a Liberty High School graduate, and holds a bachelor\u2019s degree in history from East Stroudsburg University and a master\u2019s of higher education administration from the University of Michigan.<\/p>\n
Poplawski is the owner of Advantage Inspection Service, a Bethlehem-based home inspection business, and has lived in Bethlehem for 50 years. A news release from his campaign describes Poplawski as a \u201cmoderate Republican\u201d and listed campaign priorities including addressing affordable housing, \u201ccrumbling\u201d infrastructure and economic growth via manufacturing innovation.<\/p>\n
Originally Published: May 20, 2025 at 7:40 PM EDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two incumbent Democrats have held on to their spots on Bethlehem City Council, in what was a close…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6707,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154,836,182,139,434,28,50,432],"class_list":["post-6706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-election","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-northampton-county","tag-pennsylvania","tag-politics","tag-top-stories-tmc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6706","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=6706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}