Voters Pass Dearborn School Bond; Dabaja Elected New Council President
Dearborn voters approved the Dearborn Public Schools’ $76 million S.M.A.R.T. School bond by a wide margin, 11,525 to 5,239. That means homeowners will continue to pay 5.35 mills. The bond will be used to fund security, modifications, additions to buildings, renovations, technology and transportation in Dearborn Schools.
Dearborn Mayor John B. O’Reilly, Jr. cruised to an easy win.
The Dearborn City Council will have two new faces, including a new council president.
Susan Dabaja was the top vote getter, beating Tommy Tafelski, the current council president, by a slim margin. Dabaja spent a lot on her campaign and put a lot of effort in going door-to-door and her hard work paid off.
The other new face on the council will be Mike Sareini, the son of former councilwoman Suzanne Sareini, who did not run for office.
The vote totals for the City Council look like this:
Susan A. Dabaja . . . . . . . . 9,398
Thomas Patrick Tafelski. . . . . . 9,366
Mike T. Sareini . . . . . . . . 8,723
Brian C. O’Donnell . . . . . . . 7,929
David W. Bazzy. . . . . . . . . 7,809
Robert Alex Abraham . . . . . . . 7,477
Mark C. Shooshanian . . . . . . . 7,407
Here are the rest of the results for the others who were unsuccessful in this year’s council race:
Patrick A Melton . . . . . . . . 7,021
Tarek M. Baydoun . . . . . . . . 6,280
Sharon Dulmage. . . . . . . . . 5,601
Kristyn Taylor. . . . . . . . . 5,315
Jane Ahern . . . . . . . . . . 5,225
Colette Richards . . . . . . . . 4,231
Stephen S. Dobkowski, Jr. . . . . . 3,551
November 6th, 2013 at 3:19 pm
A few things of note:
**Correct me if I’m wrong, but believe this was the first city ballot in Dearborn that didn’t have a Hubbard on it in 71 years– maybe even 80+ years. I know Orvie ran for the first time sometime in the early 30s, and spent the next decade losing elections until he won his first mayor’s race in ’42. So I think there’s a chance a Hubbard’s been on a ballot since 1932 or so. Until this year.
**Susan Dabaja is the first first-time candidate since 1989 to get the most votes and secure the council presidency. The last person to do so was Jack O’Reilly.
**Tarek Baydoun looks to be the biggest loser coming out of this election. He raised (and presumably spent) a boatload of money on this race, and didn’t even get 7,000 votes– a disappointing 9th place. He was pretty badly smeared on social media, so that may have had something to do with it.
**Mike Sareini, with no previous public service AND some pretty public accusations of domestic violence, did pretty well. Goes to show what a last name and a mayoral endorsement will get you.
**At first glance, it may look like O’Reilly came out of this totally dominating. But look closer: He received less votes than he did in 2009. His opponent (arguably an extremely unqualified candidate) got twice as many votes as O’Reilly’s 2009 opponent. And there were 18,520 ballots cast; 17,160 cast a vote for mayor. 3,102 were cast for Binkley, and 175 were write-ins, which means another 1360 people didn’t bother to vote for mayor at all. That means O’Reilly didn’t, in fact, get 80.9% of the vote; he got about 75%.
Now, that’s still a blow out, but it’s a lot less than he’s gotten in his previous mayoral elections, and I suspect had a more formidable candidate been on the ballot in opposition to Jack, he may have been in a bit of trouble. In four years, if a Woronchak, Tafelski, or even a Dabaja or yet-to-be-named local businessperson, decides to run, things may get interesting. And we haven’t really had an interesting mayoral race since ’01 when Guido faced off against a large primary field (including his former police chief Ron Deziel), and Abed Hammoud in the general.
November 7th, 2013 at 2:19 pm
Steve: great election insights! Thank you.