PROVINCETOWN — There were only one race for town office and five questions on the annual election ballot this year, but 1,354 people turned out to vote in one of the most hotly contested select board races in recent memory. Three women campaigned for one select board seat, and broke fundraising and turnout records in the process.
Challenger Leslie Sandberg won the seat with 589 votes, or 44 percent. Incumbent Lise King won 309 votes, or 23 percent. Challenger Oriana Conklin won 442 votes, or 33 percent.
Sandberg, 58, was the press secretary for the Minnesota attorney general and worked in news organizations covering the Clinton White House. She also worked for the AIDS Support Group of Cape Cod and state Sen. Julian Cyr, and had communications contracts with the Provincetown Public Pier Corp., the Provincetown Health Dept., and the town of Eastham.
All three candidates pledged to work on housing issues, improved broadband, a new police station, and other community priorities. Sandberg’s campaign argued that the candidates largely agreed on the problems but she was best equipped to find solutions.
All three candidates endorsed creating an office of diversity, equity, and inclusion, which was proposed by citizens’ petition and approved overwhelmingly at the May 1 town meeting. That measure also narrowly survived an override approval vote to appropriate $136,000 for the office on Tuesday, with 694 yes votes and 625 no votes — 53 to 47 percent.
The other ballot questions were all bond issues for various projects — drainage at Ryder Street, flooding at Court Street, improvements at town buildings, and a collection of smaller stormwater initiatives. All passed with at least 950 votes.
The total of 1,354 voters was the largest in an annual town election since at least 1998. It represented 42 percent of the town’s 3,209 registered voters, also almost a record — but just slightly eclipsed by the town election of 2007, when the town’s charter had changed and four of five select board seats were up for election at the same time. Turnout that year was 45 percent.
This election also shattered fundraising records. According to the candidates’ most recent filings, Sandberg had raised $17,730, Conklin $6,730, and King $3,295.
In the most recent highly contested select board race in 2019, when three candidates ran for two seats, incumbent Cheryl Andrews raised $975, challenger Dave Abramson raised $2,500, and incumbent John Golden, who ran in both a special election and a regular election that year, raised $3,305. Tom Donegan’s 2013 campaign set the prior fundraising record, at $4,226.
Collectively, this year’s candidates raised at least $27,700 for this record-setting election.
