Hennigan, McKenna win Orange council run-off seats

Caroline Mazzola Hennigan and Mary McKenna scored convincing wins over incumbents in Saturday’s Orange City Council Run-off Elections.

Hennigan won 71.6 percent of the votes cast in the At-Large Place 5 race against incumbent Bill Mello, who was seeking his fifth consecutive term.

McKenna scored 67.5 percent of the vote in her run-off against two-time District 4 representative Annette Pernell.

Hennigan, a special education coordinator for Little Cypress-Mauriceville schools making her first council race led four candidates with 39.3 percent of the votes in the May 4 election while Mello actually dropped a few ticks from winning 28.7 percent of the vote in May to 28.4 percent in the run-off.

McKenna, who previously represented District 4 in 2013-2016, won 49.1 percent of the votes in a three-way race during the May 4 election, coming in three votes shy then of gaining the 50 percent and one vote majority required to avoid the run-off.

Voter turnout was expectedly light in the run-off.

Where 1,022 people voted in the city wide Place 5 At-Large race in May, less than half as many – 465 – voted during the June 3-11 early voting and June 15 election day voting combined.

The 465 voters equal 4.1 percent of the city’s 11,281 registered voters.

District 4 has 2,487 registered voters, according to the City of Orange. Only 285 of them – 11.5 percent – voted May 4 and only 209 – 8.4 percent of those – cast a ballot in the run-off.

The final “unofficial” tallies for Saturday, June 15 were 141 for McKenna, 68 for Pernell in District 4; 333 for Hennigan and 132 for Mello for the At-Large Place 5 seat.

Votes will be canvassed the week of June 24-28