Westcott, Pintola win Dem nominations for city council
With three people seeking the Democratic nomination for two seats on Washington City Council, voters weren’t so much picking a frontrunner as eliminating their last choice.
By the end of the night Tuesday, unofficial results showed Washington & Jefferson College student Trent Somes III having been knocked out, leaving incumbent Councilman Ken Westcott and restaurateur Joseph Pintola to vie with Republicans in the general election.
On the GOP side, both hopefuls – Joseph DeThomas and Dana Hammond – easily scored enough votes to appear on the November ballot.
Westcott received 564 votes – 40.2 percent of the total – to Pintola’s 458, which amounted to 32.8 percent of the vote. Somes took 340, or 24.3 percent.
Westcott spent two years on council before he was elected to the first of two terms as mayor in 1999. He was re-elected to council in 2011, and won another term in 2015.
Pintola owns Hungry Jose’s on South Main Street and Julian’s Catering on West Maiden. Somes is a sophomore at W&J and Marine Corps reservist.
According to numbers for the Republican race, DeThomas garnered 273 votes, or 51.7 percent of ballots cast, to 237, or 44.9 percent, for Hammond.
DeThomas works for Komatsu Mining and listed his occupation as warehouser in an election filing. Hammond is an area supervisor for J.W. Ebert Corp., a regional owner of a string of McDonald’s franchises.
Results aren’t official until canvassing is completed and the county election board has certified them.
Officials also counted 36 write-ins by Democrats and 18 more from GOP voters, so write-ins accounted for 2.6 percent and 3.4 percent of the respective totals.