By Charles Sercombe
The power of the incumbency once again proved itself to be a sure bet in Hamtramck’s Primary Election on Tuesday.
Mayor Karen Majewski easily sailed through the election, and now faces challenger Mohammed Hassan in the November General Election.
Hassan is currently a city councilmember. Hassan ran for mayor instead of seeking another term on council.
Majewski is seeking her fourth term.
The winner of the November election will serve a four-year term.
Hassan finished a distant second, 466 votes behind.
(See results below.)
City Council incumbents Andrea Karpinski and Ian Perrotta also survived. Perrotta, however, finished third, behind new challenger Nayeem Leon Choudhury. Karpinski was the top finisher, beating Choudhury by over 100 votes.
(See results below.)
The following city council candidates will proceed to the November General Election:
Andrea Karpinski, Nayeem Leon Choudhury, Ian Perrotta, Monzurul Karim, Mohammed Al-Somiri and Fadel Al-Marsoumi.
The top three finishers in the November election will become city councilmembers. Their term is for four years.
Some 2,970 voter turned out the polls, which is much higher than usual for a city primary election.
Election result breakdown …
Mayoral election:
Karen Majewski, 1,258
Mohammed Hassan, 792
Asm “Kamal” Rahman, 736
Cathie Ladzinski Gordon, 109
City Council election:
Andrea Karpinski, 1,072
Nayeem Leon Choudhury, 952
Ian Perrotta, 947
Monzural Karim, 769
Mohammed Al-Somiri, 717
Fadel Al-Marsoumi, 680
Akil Al-Halemi, 538
Showkat Karim Chowdhury, 485
Gias Talukder, 460
Saiida Miah, 292
Onu Choudhury
August 9, 2017 at 1:45 am
Nice day and good turnouts! Congrats to winners. Hope to see similar turnouts in November as well.
Lawrence
August 9, 2017 at 12:37 pm
Congratulations to everyone who ran. You’re all winners. And the higher than normal voter turnout just proves that Hamtramck citizens really care. 🇺🇸
Roadman
August 10, 2017 at 8:07 pm
I do not believe that the voting results are very auspicious for Majewski for these reasons:
(A)she only collected 43% of the primary vote;
(B)most voters that voted for the two losing candidates will vote for Hassan in the November general election as Rahman’s voter base was primarily Muslim and/or Bengali and Cathie Gordon was a bitter critic of the mayor;
(C)Muslim vote turnout has been historically miniscule in primary elections in Hamtramck – and significantly higher in the general election in November.
The same logic applies to the City Council races.
Ian Perrotta will likely lose in the general election with Karpinski lucky if she can squeeze out a third place finish. The four losers in the City Council race collected 24% of the total primary vote – with three Bengali-American and one Yemeni-American candidate – so expect very few of those votes to go to Karpinski or Perrotta in the general election.
Expect Majewski to try to extract an endorsement from Rahman for Novemmber, and Karpinski and Perrotta to form a campaign alliance with a Muslim candidate to increase their respective re-election chances in the general election.