Overview
- Gillian, who led Tuesday’s unofficial count with 1,981 votes, defeated Keith Hartzell with 1,642 and Pete Madden with 939 for a fifth term.
- Officials said provisional ballots and some vote-by-mail ballots still remain to be tallied.
- Sean Barnes, Jim Kelly and Tony Polcini won the three at-large council seats as turnout reached about 49% of roughly 9,000 registered voters.
- The race turned on the future of the closed Wonderland Pier site, where hotel owner Eustace Mita seeks a luxury Boardwalk hotel and the city has not declared the area in need of rehabilitation.
- Scrutiny of Gillian’s 2024 bankruptcy and his ties to Mita persisted, including a court-surfaced consulting deal for $200,000 a year and a $1 million mortgage that Mita holds.