'Mission Accomplished' For Lopes In Danvers School Committee Race

DANVERS, MA — Two familiar faces will be returning to the Select Board, while there will be a new member of the School Committee after Danvers voters went to the polls in Tuesday's annual town election.

Dan Bennett and David Mills won re-election to the Select Board in a tight, three-way race for two seats.

Bennett was the top vote-getter with 1,295, Mills was second at 1,163 and Timothy Trevor Donahue was a close third at 1,126.

The School Committee vote was a two-way race between Gabe Lopes and Paula Jones with Lopes coming out on top by a margin of 1,457 to 808.

"Mission accomplished," Lopes posted on his campaign page Tuesday night. "Thank you so much for all the support. The work begins together. I'll share more tomorrow. For now, I'm just going to let this sink in.

"I appreciate you all."

Jones noted the low turnout of the election but credited Lopes with the victory.

"I am hopeful that all decisions moving forward will be student-centered and in the best interest of all of our students," she said in a statement to Patch. "I am hoping for transparency and honesty from our school committee and upper administration. I hope they will start to ask the hard questions and not just agree.

"I met so many wonderful people and felt all of the support. I ran a race on honesty and transparency and will continue to advocate for all of our students.

Vote Totals

Select Board

(Vote for no more than 2 candidates; 3-year term)

1,126 Timothy Trevor Donahue

1,295 Daniel Bennett

1,163 David Mills

School Committee

(Vote for no more than 1 candidate; 3-year term)

808 Paula Jones

1,457 Gabriel Lopes

Library Board of Trustees

(Vote for no more than 3 candidates; 3-year term)

1,307 Natalie Fiore

830 Frank Herschede

1,081 Kenneth Lee

1,354 Julie Curtis

The following races were not contested:

Town Moderator

(1-year term)

1,688 Patricia Fraizer

Danvers residents also voted for precinct town meeting members.

All of the eight Precincts' 18 seats will be up for election. The top six candidates in each Precinct that received the most votes will be elected to the 3-year term, the next six, to the 2-year term, and the last six of the top 18 will be elected to the 1-year term. Appropriate caucuses will be held prior to the Annual Town Meeting for seats where ties occur.

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)