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Election Results Are In: Fort Lauderdale Is One Step Closer To New Mayor

vote here sign
Caitie Switalski
/
WLRN
Some polling locations housed more than one precinct. This sign, outside of a Plumber's Union polling location on S. Andrews Ave., was home to two precincts.

All of Tuesday’s votes are in and counted and  Fort Lauderdale is one step closer to having a new mayor. 

 

This story has been updated to reflect the newly released voter turnout percentage by the Broward Supervisor of Elections office at 10:30 p.m. on Jan. 16.

Candidates needed to have a clear majority of votes to avoid a runoff. So in the mayoral race there wasn’t a clear winner and the two candidates with the most votes will face each other again in the general election scheduled for March 13. Current Commissioner Dean Trantalis received more than 46 percent of the votes, but it wasn’t enough to avoid a runoff with current Vice Mayor Bruce Roberts. He had more than 31 percent of the votes. 

Former city Commissioner Charlotte Rodstrom is out of the race. 

 

Two city commission races will also have runoffs. Steve Glassman will face  Tim Smith in the runoff for District 2, which includes Las Olas Isles, Flagler Village, Victoria Park and other areas of the city. And, Drs. Ben Sorensen and Warren Sturman will compete for the District 4 seat, which encompasses Tarpon River, Marina Mile, the 17th Street Causeway and the southern beach areas of the city. 

All of the runoff elections will take place March 13.

In District 3 there was an outright winner. Incumbent Robert McKinzie will keep his city commission seat representing Rock Island, Melrose Park and part of the Sistrunk neighborhood. He had a clear majority of the votes, with more than 54 percent. 

Fort Lauderdale did have higher voter turnout for this election with 14.1 percent of the more than 120,470 registered voters in the city casting ballots.

That was up from the last primary election for the city in February 2015, when the voter turnout was  just over 7 percent. 

Correction, the original version of this story stated that the previous Fort Lauderdale municipal election was in 2017, when it was in 2015. The city holds municipal elections every three years.

 

Caitie Muñoz, formerly Switalski, leads the WLRN Newsroom as Director of Daily News & Original Live Programming. Previously she reported on news and stories concerning quality of life in Broward County and its municipalities for WLRN News.
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