Keith Kneeland Jr. will represent Bucksport for another three years on the RSU 25 board of directors.
He won the seat in a runoff election Tuesday with 124 votes to 74 for his opponent, Emily Fitzgerald.
The result brings an end to a race full of rare twists and turns that has taken nearly two months to resolve.
Initial election results in November showed Fitzgerald had won the seat. Kneeland said he was told earlier in the day he’d won until the town realized absentee votes hadn’t been counted.
Kneeland then requested a recount, which found they had tied, an apparently unprecedented result for the town. The runoff election was called that month and absentee voting began in December.
But Fitzgerald discovered partway through the month that state law would make it impossible for her to hold the seat, if she won, while her husband is a volunteer coach for the middle school robotics team. Because the program has had a hard time finding volunteers and her husband has big goals for it, she announced that she wouldn’t accept the seat if elected.
Absentee voting had already started, and the town couldn’t call off the election, according to Town Manager Jacob Gran. The election was expected to cost between $800 and $1,000.
Had Fitzgerald won and declined the seat, the Town Council would have appointed a candidate to fill the vacancy. She said last month she had initially decided to run with a goal of budgeting carefully without sharply cutting programs, and to serve as a voice for all students including those with disabilities and the LGBTQ+.
Kneeland didn’t respond to a request for comment earlier this month about his priorities in the race.
“I am relieved that this journey is over and excited to get back to focusing on working for the kids of this district,” he said Tuesday.
