On Tuesday, November 4, Greenbelt elected the next city council. Challenger Frankie Fritz has earned a seat on council, knocking incumbent Rodney Roberts from the seat he has held for 34 years. Preliminary results show Fritz, who campaigned hard, garnered more votes than three incumbents: Roberts, Silke Pope and Amy Knesel. Emmett Jordan was again the highest vote-getter, traditionally the metric used by council to select the mayor. Challenger Kevin “Coach K” Lockhart didn’t win but received solid support with 1,392 votes.
Voter turnout was higher than in recent past elections. City Manager Josué Salmerón said the city had set a goal to achieve 20 percent voter turnout and surpassed that. Preliminary numbers show 3,244 voters in this election, up from 2,685 in 2023.
Another big win from the polls was Ranked Choice Voting (RCV). Residents voted 2,073 in favor of RCV with 1,018 opposed, a clear mandate of 2:1 support in the advisory referendum for the new voting system.
Voters preferred to keep council terms to two years rather than increasing to four years (Advisory Referendum 2). A total of 1,857 voted no on changing terms to four years, while 1,217 voted yes. The second part of the question, whether councilmembers should be subject to voter recall if elected for four years, met a resounding yes in the form of 2,470 votes to 382 against.
The average percentage of votes cast per ballot was 5.4 in a race where voters could vote for up to seven of the 10 candidates.
The results of Tuesday’s election were not announced until around 12:45 a.m. on Wednesday morning. Polls had closed at 8 p.m. and the reason for the delay was not immediately available but appeared to be linked to the processing of preliminary ballots. As it approached 1 a.m. the waiting crowd at the Greenbelt firehouse had dwindled and was more exhausted than celebratory. However, the dedicated group rose to their feet with excitement when the results were finally announced. The results released Wednesday morning were only preliminary and may be impacted by over 100 provisional ballots yet to be counted. Following the election results, Mayor Jordan expressed profound gratitude to Roberts for his many years of invaluable service.
