The only candidate whose name was printed on the ballot in Monday’s Select Board election in Sorrento was surprised to find out he lost the race.
Myles Bierman, who was making his first bid for elected office, received 35 votes. He trailed behind a longtime incumbent member of the board, Rob Wilpan, who won as a write-in candidate with 59 votes.
Now, some residents say confusion about when the vote was held may have influenced the results.
For years, Sorrento has held local elections and its annual town meeting in September, but this year town officials moved them to June.
In addition, the election was held the day before town meeting, which marked a change from recent years in which the elections and annual meeting were held on the same day in Sorrento. Officials scheduled this year’s annual town meeting for Tuesday, June 25.
The unexpected result continues a pattern of political turmoil in the small town of Sorrento, which is off Route 1 in eastern Hancock County.
Last summer, the then-town clerk was publicly fired by Wilpan and Diana Gazis, the town’s only two Select Board members at the time. Kathi Moore, the fired town clerk, had openly feuded with the Select Board for months. She was terminated after she hired a lawyer as part of that dispute and then sought to have the town pay her legal bills.
The town also was embroiled last year in a national controversy over books about gender identity and sexuality in the local school library. That controversy led to a contested school board race and an unsolicited endorsement of one of the candidates by the Brewer-based right wing Maine First Project, which wanted such books banned from the school.
Wilpan said Tuesday that it was not his idea to run as a write-in candidate. He planned not to run, but a group of residents wanted him to stay on the board and organized an effort to get others to write his name on their ballots.
“I want to give other people the chance to step up,” he said. “I did not encourage them to do it.”
But, having gotten the most votes, he said he will serve another three-year term on the board. If he did not accept the results, he said, Bierman would not be considered the winner.
“We’d have to have another election,” Wilpan said. “I don’t want to do that to the town.”
Bierman, a lobsterman whose grandfather previously served as a local selectman and whose father is a former state representative, said he voted on Monday. But he thought he was the only candidate in the race until he found out Wilpan had won.
“The majority of people I have spoken to had assumed voting would take place the day of the town meeting,” Bierman said.
The fact that his name was the only one on the ballot, and that many people likely assumed the race was uncontested, may have reduced turnout, he said. Sorrento’s population was only roughly 280 in 2020, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Bierman said he was not sure if he might challenge the results somehow. He said he planned to go to the town meeting on Tuesday night and to “go from there.”
Jon Mickel, a former selectman who last year ran unsuccessfully for the separate positions of fire chief and road commissioner, said he meant to vote in this year’s municipal election, but missed it. He knew Sorrento’s annual town meeting had been moved from September to June 25, but he thought voting would happen on the same day.
“I had no idea the day of the vote was any different than it had been in the past,” Mickel said. “Historically, it’s been the day of the annual meeting.”
The town did post the day of the vote in advance on its Facebook page, Mickel said, but many people did not see it. Sorrento does not have a municipal website.
Bierman’s father, former state representative Earl Bierman, said the town has changed back and forth over the years from having elections on the same day as town meeting and having them on a different day. He said he voted on Monday, but only after his son called to tell him voting was underway, and that he then called his own parents to tell them to go vote.
“I don’t think it was well-advertised,” Earl Bierman said of the election. “For a small town, we have a lot of drama.”
