As he seeks his 4th term in office, Aberdeen Mayor Michael Bennett faces competition from three battle-tested opponents, including a former city mayor, a candidate who ran for state office, and the rival who lost to Bennett in his last race by barely two dozen votes.
Bennett, who was first elected in 2007 when he defeated then-mayor S. Fred Simmons, will square off against Ruth Elliott, Patrick McGrady, and Marla Posey-Moss on the Nov. 3 ballot.
Giving up her seat on the city council in an attempt to return to the position she once held is Elliott, who was the first ever elected mayor of Aberdeen, serving from 1992–1994.
In 2011, Bennett eked out a tougher-than-expected win against challenger McGrady by just 26 votes – and now has to face the familiar foe once again. At the time, Bennett said it was “probably the nastiest campaign I’ve had to endure.”
Also making a run for mayor is Posey-Moss, a former Democratic candidate for District 34A of the Maryland House of Delegates.
In the city council race, with Elliott giving up her seat for the mayoral race and city councilwoman Ruth Ann Young not seeking re-election, Aberdeen voters are guaranteed to send at least two new representatives to the dais.
Incumbents Sandra Landbeck and Stephen Smith are seeking re-election among a crowded field that also includes Carol Bruce, Sean DeBonis, Daniel J. Forte, Jason Kolligs, Barbara Osborn Kreamer, Tim Lindecamp, and Melvin Taylor.
The nine candidates are vying for four seats on the city council.
ABERDEEN VOTER INFORMATION
Mayor:
Michael Bennett
Ruth Elliott
Patrick McGrady
Marla Posey-Moss
City Council:
Carol Bruce
Sean DeBonis
Daniel J. Forte
Jason Kolligs
Barbara Osborn Kreamer
Sandra Landbeck
Tim Lindecamp
Stephen A. Smith
Melvin Taylor
Election Date: Tuesday, November 3, 2015
Place: Aberdeen Senior Center, 7 Franklin Street
Polls Open: 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.
To vote in the Aberdeen Municipal Election you must be a U.S. citizen, at least 18 years of age, live within the municipal boundaries of the City of Aberdeen, and a registered voter with the Harford County Board of Elections.
Register to vote with the Harford County Board of Elections by filling out a Voter Registration Application.
If you are already registered, make sure your voter status is active and current.
You may find information on how to register to vote or check you voter status at www.harfordvotes.info.
Voter registration applications are available in the Aberdeen City Hall lobby or by clicking on this link, Voter Registration Application.
Remember: voter registration applications must be mailed or dropped off to the Harford County Board of Elections, 133 Industry Lane, Forest Hill, MD 21050.
The voter registration deadline is October 13, 2015.
Click here for an Absentee Ballot Application. Please return this to the Harford County Board of Elections. Deadline: October 27, 2015.
Once the absentee ballot is received, mail (or drop off) to Aberdeen City Hall no later than 5 p.m. on Election Day, or to an election judge at the Polling Place (Aberdeen Senior Center, 7 Franklin Street) no later than 8 p.m. on Election Day.
Questions? Call the Harford County Board of Elections at 410-638-3565 or the City of Aberdeen, City Clerk Monica Correll at 410-272-1600, extension 211.
It’s time for a change in Aberdeen. Uncle Mike needs to vacate his thrown.
Too bad your name isn’t Spelling Detector. It’s “throne.”
It’s time for Elliott to go away. All these years and nothing to show for it. Aberdeen is becoming a sad town. No one wants to open businesses here.
LOL You got that right. Are we 4 years on that big, expensive brick building with no tenant?
You mean the one that a private company constructed with their own money and time?
Let’s see now, we have a slum lord that family makes it’s living of the peoples taxes. A perennial candidate that always tries to run for the top office and isn’t qualified to be the meter maid. A do nothing council member that never does anything. Looks like Bennett is a shoe in.
I consider myself conservative on fiscal matters, and yet Bennett will get vote. McGrady came off as a pompous twit when I spoke with him.
Where are they now? Only time I see these people is when there’re hanging out in the back of a convertible in a parade… Aberdeen really needs help,certainly time for change.
Lets see…we have a candidate that’s “all about trust” who admits to cheating on an exam while in the State police and was under investigation by the ethics committee for his all expenses paid vacation by the Ripken group to go down south and lie about how profitable it is to have a stadium in your town.
And here is what I think about Ruthless Elliot. Its like you go to the refrigerator one day and you grab the milk for your coffee and you smell it first and its sour so you put it back in the frig for 25 goddamn years and think it might be better.
And then comes the tea bagger ….enough said.
We need a change in the mayor office, same on one trick pony running the town Government. Most people in aberdeen don’t even now what Bennett look like. At least Fred Simons was out in the community and people knew who he was.
I have to say the Simmons era was when Aberdeen was at its best. Business were coming. The drug dealers and hooked were gone or atleast operating out of town.
Seems strange to me that all the employees of the city have background checks and the mayor and council do not. Maybe its not important anyway because with a weak mayor and a strong city manager they don’t do anything. And further, having watched Mrs. Elliott on TV it might just be that she forgot she changed the tags on those clothes.
Looking at this field overall, there clearly isn’t anything real exciting about them. We have 4 candidates for mayor, all of whom have their flaws, and 9 council candidates 4 in the pocket of Bennett (Landbeck, Smith, Taylor and Lindicamp) and 3 in the pocket of McGrady (Forte, DeBonis, and Kolligs). That leaves us with Kreamer, which is a non-starter to most voters and Bruce a complete unknown.
Aberdeen deserves qualified and independent minded candidates that can properly address the many problems our city faces. While I’m glad to see a challenge to the current administration, and Bennett’s departure would clearly be a step in the right direction, there isn’t much to be excited about as we head to the polls this November. The only request I can make to my fellow voters is that we should look at the complete records of all these candidates and hope to elect a diverse council with different opinions so that they must work together and compromise instead of a rubber stamp for the mayor, who he or she may be.
I agree completely with one exception. Its Helton that has those four and Bennett in his pocket. And a vote for Elliott is the same as a vote for Kramer
You are absolutely correct particularly on the relationship to Helton, we’ve definitely had too much of him. I’d say Elliott is about a half step better than Kreamer, but that still isn’t a cause for excitement in her candidacy. At least she opposes the raises.
Its all a joke. We (residents) got made.
Office space that was finished 4 years ago still sits vacant next to target. Now the SHA is paying to widen 22 there (LOL).
Stepney road, north end of former beech tree golf sits probably $100,000 worth of concrete castings for storm drains, dumped there by the road and has left to rot away, plus “Finest neighborhood in Harford County” or whatever all those signs say looks to be barely surviving. Its obvious no one wanted to live in an Aberdeen zip code from this BRAC BS.
You are dead on correct
One of the biggest issues of this election should be the unjustified raises the mayor and council will get in the next term. The mayor goes to $15,000 from $10,000 and the Council $7,500 to $10,000. Aberdeen is already the highest paid municipality in both Harford and Cecil Counties and the current Mayor Bennett was a strong supporter for these increases. Mayoral candidates Elliott (who voted against it last year) and McGrady have come out against it and will repeal it, and should be commended on this. We know how Bennett and Landbeck feel, what about the rest of the candidates? Tell the voters where you stand, we deserve to know before our taxes pay for it!
Patrick McShady is a rude dude that likes to use. His arrogance is off the charts. He really deserves to have his ass handed to him. Let’s hope people see the little shit for what he is.
I smell a change coming in Aberbeen…….maybe they will throw a departure party for incumbents and defer the cost until 2017 like so many other rumored projects…..
What happened to Aberdeen? We got all the traffic from the BRAC and none of the money. What does this mayor and council do to deserve their current pay ? And why would we want to raise that pay? Maybe we should take it to referendum. They all could be replaced with cardboard cut outs and we could save the money.
In my imagination I pictures local developers and Aberdeen politicians doing the “happy dance” and walking around with drinking $70 champaign bottles in ball rooms like the Bayou had to offer in 2004, 2005, 2006.
I bet its a different feeling now, you can probably hear a mouse fart in some of the developers office’s these days who sit everyday watching the computer screen hoping someone will buy a stick built house in Aberdeen. LOL
I drive down Stepney road often, and everyday there is a car or two sitting at the “Model open” house in “Grays Run” across former Beech tree. Looks like they are clearing two more lots for two more builds.
I can’t imagine what type of job security it is to sit in a model home at the kitchen table with your laptop for over a year everyday during the week and hope for buyers.
Bennett only lost by 26 votes against Mcgrady in 2011.
The current administration has lots of questions to answer. Let’s start with the mess on Beards Hill at Rt 22; The Simmons administration had stopped all further development of anything that would add traffic to that intersection until a State approved plan could be implemented. The plan was very complex but had already been approved by all of the stakeholders including the secretary of Transportation. The entire thought was scrapped by Bennett as soon as he took office. When questioned after God knows how many additional accidents, the “TRUTH and HONESTY” mayor said the state trans people were opposed to it. That my friends was an outright lie!
Why does the Mayor, who is part time, qualify for his own City provided car?
Why are drugs openly sold on the streets of Aberdeen again?
How did an empty office building get approved for the land at Ripken Stadium? The developer who purchased that property was to have a mixed retail/restaurant/movie theater complex there. When the developer could not deliver, this council led by big Mike let them off the hook by approving an office building instead of forcing the hand. How’ the tax revenue for that development?
It goes on. Mayor Bennett has been in office way too long already. If we don’t have a better candidate, what does that tell you about the people of that community? As Mike and his puppet regime took office in 2007, I heard it said that the City will now have the type of government it so richly deserves.
Arturro,
This is what you get when we put people in office that only serve to be re-elected. They have to avoid the tough decisions. They raid enterprise funds and cease to give proper raises to the city’s employees and at the same time give themselves outrageous raises. Balancing budgets on the backs of your employees causes moral problems that affects every element of our city from DPW to the police and all the way to city hall. What ever happened to employee appreciation days where local businesses came to city hall with food to feed all the city employees? You may not have liked Simmons but he walked out streets every day and made the tough decisions.
See the Elliott car out taking pictures of people’s house’s? What’s that about?
Judging by the previous comments I’d assume she was casing your house to break in and steal your stuff.