Fall River Mayor Paul Coogan won re-election with more than 60% of the vote against former mayor Sam Sutter on Tuesday night, clearing the way for Coogan to begin his third two-year term in office.
In a speech announcing his victory at the Our Lady of Light Band Club, Coogan said he remains focused on a back-to-basics approach to governance in Fall River.
“We’re a blue-collar administrative team,” Coogan said. “Roads, schools, crime, sidewalks, parks. Those are the things we focus on.”
Accordingly, Coogan said the top project he wants to pursue in his new term will be an overhaul of the headquarters for the city’s Department of Public Works on Lewiston Street.
Sutter, once a powerful figure in the region’s politics, ended Tuesday night with a majority of votes in only one of Fall River’s 27 precincts: the heavily Portuguese neighborhood surrounding Columbia Street.
Sutter had begun his political career with a surprise victory to replace his former boss as the Bristol County District Attorney in 2006. He tried to follow that success by running against Congressman Bill Keating. But he lost and left the DA’s office two years later to become mayor of Fall River, a position he held for just one year before losing an election to a 23-year-old Jasiel Correia, whose arrest and subsequent conviction on bribery charges cast a pall over Fall River politics.
As Sutter fought for a way back into elected office this year after a long hiatus, his public debates with Coogan often turned bitter and personal.
“He was at one point saying I didn’t pay my taxes,” Coogan said in a post-election interview on Tuesday. “I was like, what are you talking about?”
Coogan said he later learned he owed the city an outstanding balance of 37 cents.
“I guess I’ll get indicted for that,” Coogan said with a laugh.
Fall River City Councilors Pam Laliberte and Leo Pelletier did not seek re-election on Tuesday, opening up two seats that will be filled by School Committee member Paul Hart and former city council president, Cliff Ponte. Ponte briefly lost his place on the council after mounting a failed mayoral campaign against Coogan in 2021.
All seven incumbents on Fall River’s city council — Linda Pereira, Brad Kilby, Shawn Cadime, Joseph Camara, Andrew Raposo, Michelle Dionne and Laura Jean Washington — won re-election.
A few miles away in New Bedford, more than 86% of registered voters stayed home for an election that did little to shake up the city’s power structure. Mayor Jon Mitchell cruised easily to re-election against an opponent with far less campaign experience, Richard Tyson Moultrie.
New Bedford’s eleven-person city council, meanwhile, welcomed only one new face into its ranks. In Ward 1, challenger Leo Choquette upset incumbent councilor Brad Markey in a close election, winning by slightly more than 100 votes, according to unofficial results released by the New Bedford Election Department.
Former Ward 6 councilor Joe Lopes, who lost his seat in a close election in 2021, clawed his way back onto the council by moving to Ward 5 and defeating Zach Boyer, a newcomer looking for a way into elected office.
The seat had been vacated by Scott Lima, who tried and failed to win one of the council’s at-large seats on Tuesday, inadvertently forcing himself out of elected office. All five at-large councilors — Ian Abreu, Shane Burgo, Brian Gomes, Linda Morad and Naomi Carney — held onto their seats.
City councilors in wards 2, 3, 4 and 6 ran unopposed.
Ben Berke is the South Coast Bureau Reporter for The Public’s Radio. He can be reached at bberke@thepublicsradio.org.