EASTHAMPTON — When all the votes were counted, Laura Douglass fell just short of winning an at-large seat on the City Council. But you wouldn’t have known that from her attitude Tuesday night.
“I thought it was a really good race,” Douglass said. “These numbers are fantastic.”
All three incumbents running for at-large seats, Owen Zaret, William Lynch IV and Peg Conniff, won reelection. Lindsey Rothschild, a real estate agent who taught English as a second language at Holyoke Community College for nine years, edged Douglass for the last at-large seat with 2,200 votes to 2,150. Both women supported each other’s campaigns.
“I was looking forward to working with her,” Rothschild said. “So it was bittersweet.”
Rothschild credited getting her papers in earlier as giving her the edge, something Douglass also said.
In winning a second term, Zaret got the most votes of any of the at-large council candidates, with 2,990.
“I feel great,” Zaret said. “I put a lot of effort into this campaign.”
Conniff was the longest-tenured at-large member of the council running for reelection this year, and she secured a third term with 2,837 votes.
“The work that I’ve done has resonated,” Conniff said.
Conniff, the only woman currently serving on the council, was sporting a Douglass button and Rothschild sticker as she spoke Tuesday night at the Brass Cat about welcoming Rothschild aboard.
“I feel awesome about that,” Conniff said, adding that she also hopes more women run next time.
Lynch, a lifetime Easthampton resident, won a second term with 2,496 votes.
“We got a lot of progress coming in the city,” he said. “I look forward to still being a part of it.”
The city clerk’s office gave voter turnout at 35 percent.
Douglass owns Galaxy restaurant with her husband Casey Douglass, and she noted how she and three other at-large candidates met for food and drink on election night.
“This wasn’t a contentious race,” she said. “We were supportive of each other.”
She said that she would join a committee in the city, and that she would run for council again.
“I’m not going away,” Douglass said.
In District 2, incumbent City Councilor Homar Gomez defeated a challenge by photographer and educator Erica Flood.
Gomez, the first Hispanic elected to the Easthampton City Council, won a second term with 419 votes to 296 votes for Flood.
Gomez said he ran a very clean campaign.
“We didn’t say anything bad about anyone,” he said, while also complimenting his opponent.
Gomez said that in his next term, he would like to move the city to be more safe and green and to bring more businesses to the city.
“I feel great,” Flood said. “It wasn’t a really wide margin.”
Flood said she will continue to advocate about issues she cares about, including affordable housing, putting more community gardens in public parks and putting a footbridge across Lower Mill Pond.
“Everybody was excited about that,” Flood said, asserting that it would increase safe pedestrian access.
Flood also said she would run for council again, although she wasn’t sure whether it would be in District 2 or at-large.
She also said she’d like to see more councilors from District 2 on the council, noting that only one person from the council is from there currently.
District councilors Thomas Peake, J.P. Kwiecinski, Salem Derby and Daniel Rist all won re-election running unopposed. At-Large City Councilor Joseph McCoy chose not to run for reelection.
Bera Dunau can be reached at bdunau@gazettenet.com.