Omaha City Council will change, but election results remain uncertain
Early-voting ballots likely will decide close Omaha City Council races
Share
Updated: 7:28 AM CDT May 12, 2021
KETV
SOURCE: KETV
The latest breaking updates, delivered straight to your email inbox.
Early-voting ballots likely will decide close Omaha City Council races
Share
Updated: 7:28 AM CDT May 12, 2021
At least three, incumbent Omaha City Council members secured victories in Tuesday's city election, but it will be Friday before we know the full make-up of the new city council.When counting ended Tuesday, North Omaha District 2 Council member Ben Gray's chances of a fourth term looked grim, and Northwest Omaha District 7 Council member Aimee Melton held a 934 vote lead over Sara Kohen. Gray trailed Juanita Johnson by 810 votes in the District 2 race with 46% of the vote. The election counts will not be complete until Friday, when the Douglas County Election Commissioner's office counts the early-voting ballots which arrived on Tuesday. There are just short of 9,000 of them city-wide. Pending that count, here's where the City Council races stood when Tuesday ended:District 1Incumbent Pete Festersen won his fourth term by defeating Sarah Johnson with 63% of the vote. District 1 includes Benson, Dundee and the Florence areas. 13,052 votes had been counted as of Tuesday evening, and Festersen received 8,212 of them.District 2Challenger Juanita Johnson was poised for victory, with 810 more votes than three-term incumbent Ben Gray. Johnson is an associate project engineer at Union Pacific and campaigned for networking community organizations and expansion of minority-owned businesses."I'm glad that the voters came out in strong numbers and supported me," said Johnson on Tuesday night. "It really suggests North Omaha is really looking for a change and that's what I ran my campaign on: change."While Gray won the April primary by 1,112 votes, 3,984 people voted for one of the other five candidates in the April election. Gray's support increased just 14% (375 votes) from the April to May elections. Johnson's support jumped from 1,503 votes in April, to 3,800 in May. That's an increase of 153%.District 3With early-voting left to be counted, Danny Begley had a 962 vote lead over Cammy Watkins in the race to represent central Omaha and downtown. Incumbent Chris Jerram chose not to seek reelection.District 4Incumbent Vinny Palermo appeared to be assured of a second term Tuesday with 61% of the votes cast in the South Omaha race. Palermo collected 3,897 votes, to 2,502 votes for Becky Barrientos-Patlan.District 5Millard Lumber vice president Don Rowe appeared to be the winner in Tuesday's District 5 race with a lead of 1,316 votes over Patrick Leahy.District 6Incumbent Brinker Harding had the biggest win of the night among the city council contenders. He finished Tuesday with 65% of the vote, and a 5,548 lead over Naomi Hattaway in the West Omaha district.District 7After initially trailing when the early-voting results were published at 8:00 p.m. Tuesday, incumbent Aimee Melton gained ground throughout the night to close the evening with a lead of 934 votes over Sarah Kohen. Melton collected 8,481 to Kohen's 7,547.