Dearborn Voters say ‘Little Change’ for City Council
While this was just Round One for selecting who will serve next year on the Dearborn City Council, the makeup of the top seven finishers in Tuesday’s primary suggests Dearborn residents — at least the 18.4 percent of registered voters who took the time to cast a ballot — only want a little bit of change.Five of the top seven vote getters were city council incumbents, including Thomas Tafelski who finished as the top voter getter with 5,629 votes. Nancy Hubbard, amazingly or maybe not so, depending on your perspective, finished second with 4,457 votes.
Perhaps the most interesting primary election news were the two new names to break into the top seven, Sharon Dulmage and Brian O’Donnell. Dulmage had the good fortune of serving more than 20 years on the Dearborn School Board, so she is a familiar name with a track record. Some people we spoke to after voting said they cast a vote for that “incumbent Sharon”. Whatever the reason, Dulmage was the sixth top voter getter with 3,533. She was followed by newcomer O’Donnell, a newbie on the Dearborn political scene. He finished seventh.
The other seven candidates who will round out the 14 council candidates on the November ballot include incumbent Doug Thomas, a part-time Dearborn resident; incumbent Robert Abraham; David Bazzy, a former Dearborn Charter commissioner; George Hart (proof positive that the right name really can get you elected); Patrick Kiernan, owner of Kiernan’s Steak House; Patrick D’Ambrosio and Ali Sayed, who is very active in Dearborn recreation events for children.
Still, it is too early to read too much into these results. The heavy campaigning starts now and the council incumbents will have the upper hand. Throw out the order of how the top 14 candidates finished in Tuesday’s primary. This is an all new race and it begins Wednesday.
The results, in order of finish, are below. Those names in bold will appear on the November ballot:
- Thomas Patrick Tafelski. . . . . . 5,629
- Nancy A. Hubbard . . . . . . . . 4,457
- George T. Darany . . . . . . . . 4,140
- Suzanne Sareini . . . . . . . . 4,051
- Mark C. Shooshanian . . . . . . . 3,931
- Sharon Dulmage. . . . . . . . . 3,533
- Brian C. O’Donnell . . . . . . . 3,417
- Doug Thomas. . . . . . . . . . 3,284
- Robert A. Abraham. . . . . . . . 3,232
- David W. Bazzy. . . . . . . . . 2,759
- George Hart. . . . . . . . . . 2,372
- Patrick M. Kiernan . . . . . . . 2,267
- Patrick D’Ambrosio . . . . . . . 2,170
- Ali Sayed . . . . . . . . . . 2,004
- Adrenne Wygonik . . . . . . . . 1,958
- Nancy Siwik. . . . . . . . . . 1,644
- Stephen S. Dobkowski, Jr. . . . . . 1,497
- Rabih Hammoud . . . . . . . . . 1,432
- Terry Burke. . . . . . . . . . 1,182
- Scott J. Marquette . . . . . . . 1,031
- Khalil Dakhlallah. . . . . . . . 989
- Mark J. Dawdy . . . . . . . . . 884
- Hussein Sobh . . . . . . . . . 880
- Molly Sharp. . . . . . . . . . 630
- Joseph Agius . . . . . . . . . 446
- WRITE-IN. . . . . . . . . . . 94
August 4th, 2009 at 10:12 pm
I am speechless. Hubbard as number two? Dearborn voters really are brain dead, just like she is. Don’t even get me started on Hart. How many pensions does this guy want to collect. shouldnt there be an age limit for council members?
August 4th, 2009 at 10:21 pm
In the interesting news column, at least if Hubbard gets re-elected, we can count on getting the obituaries every meeting….
August 5th, 2009 at 1:13 am
How sad where then less than 1/5th of the voters control our choice of for government. Why so much apathy is hard to understand.
August 5th, 2009 at 1:15 am
sorry about the text error.
August 5th, 2009 at 7:02 am
Milwood – you are so right, it is something I will never understand. Guess most of the people in the city are just set in their ways and won’t change. Very sad.
August 5th, 2009 at 8:43 am
JC, Donna and Millwood you are all soooo right. How in the blazes did George Hart make it. He has done nothing and would do nothing except collect a check. As for Hubbard, she is Hart’s long lost twin separated at birth as she is as equally useless. I could go on about others but I am glad Dulmage and O’Donnell made it. I voted for both and would campaign heavily for them if it meant getting rid of Hubbard and a couple of others.
August 5th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
Looks like Detroit might have gotten it right and Dearborn may have gotten it wrong.
August 5th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
Since dearborn is looking and acting so much like detroit now and refuses to change maybe we can have a special election to get mon-con the con and martha the diva on our ballot! Keep those blinders on and keep sending them back to the trough to continue to get fatter all for “Your” best interests!
August 5th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
Nancy Hubbard? #2? the process has to change. She is clueless and would be
better to serve as an ambassador. Voters should be ashamed, lets bring in
a whole new council and steer this city in a better direction. Heck, the current council wasted tons of money by approving the lowest bids for the CSO system and now have to waste more money in court. VOTERS, wake up, the current council has been wasting your money. Change it up, quit voting by name recognition, bring in some competent people. Doug Thomas is a joke, NO PAID PARKING as his platform; voters look back in the archives, he was one of the original proponents for paid parking. Once he realized it could be a political tool for him, he changed his position. Do your homework voters!
August 6th, 2009 at 11:10 am
I agree with all of you about the city council needing to get some fresh faces and ditching a few of the council members that anybody who pays attention would categorize as useless. But complaining will only get you so far. What’s the answer for getting people to do more than just voting incumbent?
August 6th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
RNS – what a lot of us wouldn’t give to know the answer to that question. It’s like Dearborn is caught up in the past and doesn’t seem to know how to move into the future.
August 6th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
RNS, I’m sure we are all feeling your frustration and what makes it even more frustrating is the only requirement for a US citizen to vote is to be at least 18 years old and have a beating heart.
My mantra for November will be: IF YOU ARE NOT PLANNING TO EDUCATE YOURSELF ABOUT THE CITY COUNCIL CANDIDATES AND ONLY VOTE BASED ON NAME RECOGNITION; STAY HOME!
August 6th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
I’m not sure what the answer is, but I know that we need to get the citizens out to vote. Right now the absentee voters decide who and what is going to happen with the election. God Bless the seniors but all thay do is vote the same old way all the time and until the polls out=number the absentee ballots we won’t see much of a change.
August 6th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
We need people to vote period! That has a huge impact on wether or not we see change.
August 6th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
Milwood, please don’t put all Seniors into that category – there are still some of us who can go to the polls and cast our votes. I only voted for one incumbent in hopes that maybe my vote would or could make a change. Maybe what we need to do is get absentee ballots for the younger generation so they don’t have to waste their time going to the polls!
August 6th, 2009 at 4:35 pm
Millard, for the record, the poll voters ALWAYS out number the absentee voters. For this current election the breakdown looks like this:
Absentee: 3247
Westside: 4979
Eastside: 2635
TOTAL: 10,861
That means absentee votes count for less than 30% of the total vote and poll voters count for more than 70% of the total vote. Absentees are just part of the problem, not the whole problem.
August 6th, 2009 at 4:40 pm
You are so right Gordy, Thomas as well as the other incumbents, excluding Tafalski should all get the broom. They have been there long enough, and all they do is go along to get along. Grow some balls and stand up for your fellow residents. Too bad we can’t get a more credible opponent for Big O’Reilly. He will be re-elected, and he is worthless. He never would have run against our former Mayor,because he didn’t have the guts. It’s a sad situation.
August 6th, 2009 at 5:42 pm
Having worked on campaigns in Dearborn for the past 20 years and having analyzed the results, I can vouch for the pivotal importance of the absentee ballots. They are the last to be added to the total, and they nearly always change the order of the outcome. The truth is if a candidate does not have a strong showing amongst absentee voters, he or she most likely will not win the election.
Also, from a demographic point of view, it is interesting to note that the Arab-American community consistently has turned out in low numbers, regardless of efforts to those voters to the polls. The past few elections have shown just a 12% -15% turn out from that voter group. It will be interesting to see if that was the case in this primary.
August 6th, 2009 at 7:49 pm
We need to recycle our trash, not our politicians. How can anyone call Hart and Dulmage new. Seriously, we appreciate their service to the community, but take a cooking class or something. I hope we get some of these “real” new candidates on the council. Maybe then we can get something done in this city. We some new perspectives not just someone looking for something to do in their spare time.
August 7th, 2009 at 6:00 am
Someone needs to set up a PAC aimed squarely at taking out deadbeat incumbants. I would most definitely donate to such a thing, and from the sounds of people’s comments here, I’ll bet others would too.
I’ve even got a name for it: Dearborn Residents Against Incumbant Negligence (DRAIN).
So now there’s the idea, someone that has more time than I needs to get on it!
August 7th, 2009 at 6:04 am
Don’t blame the seniors for this! All the senior citizens I have talked to tried to vote the incumbents OUT!
I’ll be putting 7 signs in my yard to support my 7 choices … there won’t be many incumbents names in my yard! We need change … BIG change!
August 7th, 2009 at 7:45 am
Say what you want about Doug Thomas and his part-time residency, but for years he was the only voice against the established ruling class of Dearborn. He stood up against Burton Katzman and he stood up against paid parking on the west side. How do you like the way those issues have turned out, Dearborn? I’m sorry he has all but moved to Florida. But I thank him for hanging onto his seat for this term and sparing us from the next person in line. What a nightmare it would have been to have had Siwik — another rubber stamp for the establishment — on the council! And thank you to the Dearborn voters for not letting her get past the primary. Buh, bye, Nancy!
August 7th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
Siwik would’ve been a nightmare. And I thank Thomas for his service of the past … the fact is that his priority is not Dearborn and he should move to Florida and stop supplimenting his retirement with Dearborn tax dollars that he hasn’t earned since he’s not here. We can’t keep reelecting people for what they did, they should be elected for WHAT THEY ARE GOING TO DO!
August 11th, 2009 at 10:11 pm
Dear Enough: You have an excellent idea. I would be willing to help put that together. I am not for any of the current incumbents. Putting money together to throw out the incumbents brings the battle to their front door. You can bet they are raising money. In fact, it would be interesting to see just who the incumbents are receiving money from.
August 13th, 2009 at 10:44 am
A pitiful group of incumbents, including O’Reilly, lets change thing in the run-off.