In an upset, Pontiac's incumbent Mayor Deirdre Waterman finished third at best in her city's primary election Tuesday night, as her write-in campaign for a third term came up short.
With all precincts reporting, former state representative Tim Greimel received 3,282 votes (for 56.3%) and Alexandria T. Riley tallied 1,319 (22.6%), making them the two top voters by a considerable margin. That tally would pit them against one another in November's non-partisan general election. Pontiac was the only city in Oakland County that held a primary election this month.
Waterman appeared to run no better than a distant third, based on a count of 724 votes (12.4%) for "unassigned write-ins," most of which presumably supported her. The two-term incumbent — the city’s first female mayor, and its first mayor to win a second term in decades — was forced to seek her third term as a write-in candidate because of a recently changed state law.