Gharapetian and Devine Elected to City Council
GLENDALE—Candidates endorsed by the Armenian National Committee of America-Glendale and Crescenta Valley chapters won big in Tuesday’s elections, with Vartan Gharapetian and Paula Devine—both endorsed by the ANCA Glendale—were elected to the City Council, with Gharapetian becoming the third Armenian-American on the five-person council.
The win for the two means that long-time city councilmember Dave Weaver, lost his re-election bid.
With preliminary results from the Glendale City Clerk’s office, Devine won with 8,246 votes, while Gharapetian secured his seat with 6,507 votes.
Another Armenian-American candidate Erik Yesayan, who was running for the first time, captured 4,693 votes, coming with the third highest votes. Perennial candidate Chahe Keuroghlian on his sixth failed bid for city council received 1,819 votes.
On the Glendale Unified School District front, ANCA-endorsed candidates Nayiri Nahabedian, won a third term on the board with 9.195 votes. She will be joined by Jennifer Freemon on the board, who received 8,945 votes and was also endorsed by the Glendale and Crescenta Valley ANCA chapters. In third place in the GUSD election was another ANCA-endorsed candidate Vahik Satoorian who received 4,655 votes. There were two open seats in the GUSD board election.
In the Glendale Community College Board elections, both ANCA-endorsed candidates won re-election, Tony Tartaglia and Dr. Vahe Peroomian received 9,059 and 8,199 votes, respectively.
“We are thrilled with the elections results and applaud the commitment of each candidate in their work to encourage voter turnout this election cycle” stated Artin Manoukian, ANCA-Glendale Chairman. “Since issuing our endorsements, our organization has worked closely to ensure the opportunity for Armenian-Americans to meet and engage the future leaders of their City, and the candidates demonstrated a full commitment to seeing the fruition of this effort.”
Leading into the election season, the ANCA-Glendale and ANCA-CV gauged an extensive endorsement evaluation process in order to ensure a relationship with each endorsee based on common values and vision for the positive development of Glendale. Additionally, the organizations hosted a well attended community-wide candidate Meet and Greet event, launched a social media campaign to encourage voters of all demographics to exercise their civic responsibility, engaged in various television appearances, and capitalized on opportunities to register new voters.
“I believe our efforts this election cycle were successful because we extended our outreach in a manner that gave all voters the opportunity to learn and get involved” commented Tigranna Zakaryan, ANCA-Glendale Community Outreach Coordinator. “We have made it a point to continuously register new voters and encourage the participation of those who have voted in past elections through platforms such as Get Out The Vote, phone-banking, canvassing in order to directly meet with constituents, and providing transportation to voters on election day.”
The ANCA-Glendale did not take a position on Measure C, endorsed Measures D, took a stance against Measure E, and supported Measure O. Three of the four ballot measures did not pass as voters chose to reject Measure C, the increase of City Council compensation, and Measures D and E which proposed to transition to district-based voting both city-wide, and for GUSD. Voters approved Measure O demonstrating the support for a 2% increase in the Transient Occupancy Tax to generate additional revenue for City public services.
Congratulations