Assembly hopeful Clyde Vanel only garnered 37 percent of the vote against incumbent Barbara Clark, who took primary night with 63 percent.
Winner Clark thanked her constituents and immediately returned her focus to fixing issues in her district.
“I am gratified by the voters’ continued support of my service and record,” said Clark.
The incumbent also mentioned her desire to fix issues regarding incorrect polling site information, eliminating the chaos and confusion that surrounded the primary.
“[It] demonstrated that reducing the number of polling sites and increasing the number of voters assigned to those schools within cafeterias or gyms that are too small to accommodate the larger numbers of voters will not work,” said Clark.
“Elections are fun, they’re interesting and they’re emotional, so we went through all the range of emotions,” said Vanel. “We got a lot of good feedback from the community.”
Vanel said that going against an incumbent is difficult but it’s not impossible.
The contender had roughly 80 volunteers knocking on doors, handing out literature and combing poll sites the day of the election. Vanel said his group also shuttled nearly 200 people to their correct poll sites, after confusion about locations and addresses became a deterrent in getting people out to vote.
He called the incident a “severe form of voter suppression.”
Vanel said his next steps are to organize the community for the presidential election.
The loss, Vanel said, has not soured him to politics.
