SPRING VALLEY – A write-in candidate’s surge looked like it could upend one of the oft-anointed Democratic candidates’ expected trustee victory.
With 100% of votes tallied, Rockland County Board of Elections unofficial results showed Democratic trustee candidate Sherry McGill trailing a write-in candidate by 170 votes. McGill had 1,109 votes and the write-in showed 1,279 votes.
The other trustee candidate, incumbent Democrat Joseph Gross, racked up 1,745 votes, according to unofficial results.
The trustee write-in candidate, according to various social media posts showing a sample ballot, was reported to be Yakov Yosef Kaufman.
Schenley Vital, who beat out a crowded field in the Democratic primary — the standard place where decisions are made in this heavily Democrat-enrolled village — was elected with more than 80% of the vote, according to unofficial results provided by the Rockland County Board of Elections.
His mayoral opponent was Republican Aaron Stern.
Spring Valley is the largest village in Rockland, with 35,000 residents packed into the 2-square-mile village. Of late, stretches of blocks are seeing teardowns of old multi-family houses, quickly replaced by multi-family structures.
See unofficial results from Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties here.
Sherry McGill serves on East Ramapo school board
McGill is also vice president of the East Ramapo school board.
McGill, a public school teacher, has been a strong advocate for the public-school children in the district. The majority of East Ramapo’s approximately 10,500 public-school children are English language learners; more than 95% are Black and Brown. Another 35,000 kids who live in the district’s greater Spring Valley boundaries attend private schools, mostly yeshivas. The majority of the board members are viewed by public-school advocates as favoring the yeshiva community.
Spring Valley has long been a newcomer community, with one of the largest Haitian populations, per capita, in the U.S., a growing Latin American community and a growing Hasidic and Orthodox Jewish community.
Vital elected; has to move to the village
Vital, an attorney, former Clarkstown Democratic Party chair and former acting Rockland Democratic Committee chair, was not a resident of Spring Valley. He must move to the village to establish residency in order to take the mayoralty.
The mayor’s four-year term starts in December and the post pays $115,000 a year.
Incumbent Mayor Alan Simon declined to run for re-election, citing health concerns.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Schenley Vital wins Spring Valley mayoral race, Democrat trustee upset
Reporting by Nancy Cutler, Rockland/Westchester Journal News / Rockland/Westchester Journal News
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