Ferrara, Kanka win Hamilton school board reelection, new board member Hall elected
HAMILTON >> Dr. Susan Ferrara and Richard Kanka won re-election to the Hamilton Township Board of Education, and voters also elected Angelo Hall to the school board in Tuesday’s heated election.
The 2018 school board election featured nine candidates on the ballot in a bitterly fought campaign that forced candidates to talk about racism and bigotry.
“The Hamilton voters made a bold statement today: Children matter; teachers matter; learning matters, and hate will not win in Hamilton Township,” Ferrara said Tuesday night in a statement. “I thank you all for your trust in me and your support. Today’s the day we all made a difference!”
Ferrara emerged as the top-vote-getter Tuesday with 10,083 votes, according to unofficial ballot totals reported by the Mercer County Clerk’s Office with 100 percent of the vote counted. She was re-elected to a second term.
Kanka won re-election to a fourth term with 8,567 votes, and Hall emerged victorious as the third-place finisher with 6,972 votes, according to the unofficial ballot count. The unofficial results may change pending the outcome of outstanding provisional and mail-in ballots. The unofficial fourthplace-finisher was hardcharging candidate Richard C. Crockett III, who had 6,317 votes.
Crockett received negative publicity in the final weeks leading up to Election Day as social media images surfaced that appeared to show Crockett engaging in inflammatory dialogue on Facebook. One image appeared to show him using the N-word in a nasty Facebook post, but he denied making that post.
Crockett ran on a slate with Sherry Morency and Cynthia Simon, and all three of them went down in flames Tuesday. Morency had her fair share of baggage from sharing inflammatory Facebook content, which probably did more harm than good in rallying voter support.
The other candidates who ran unsuccessfully in the 2018 Hamilton school board election included Girard Casale, Janna Sheiman and Chandler Georgiou.
Ferrara and Kanka successfully ran on their record of service, playing up the fact that they voted to hire Hamilton Superintendent of Schools Scott Rocco last year.
“I spent the last six to eight weeks talking about not only what we have done since Dr. Rocco has been on, but I try to help people look into the future,” Ferrara said Tuesday night in an interview. “A district of our size has lots of options. Instead of talking about redistricting, I said, ‘Let’s reimagine what the district could look like.”
“I think people appreciate that I answer emails, that I am candid, and that they see me in the community,” Ferrara said in explaining why she believes she won so big. “I am just delighted that the bigger picture was that this community doesn’t want to go backward. They want to go forward.”
Incumbent school board member Michelle Episcopo did not seek re-election to a second term this year.