(Reuters) – Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown, a Democrat who mounted a rare write-in campaign after losing his party’s nomination to a socialist candidate in a shocking upset earlier this year, declared a re-election victory on Tuesday, claiming a fifth four-year term.
India Walton, a democratic socialist, community activist and nurse, made national headlines when she won the Democratic primary in June over Brown, who has served as the first African-American mayor of New York state’s second-largest city since 2005.
But with no Republican on the ballot, Brown, 63, campaigned as a moderate alternative to the 39-year-old Walton, urging voters to write his name on their ballots.
Brown declared victory and thanked his supporters after local media reported Walton had won 41% of the vote while 59% of the votes were write-ins.
(Reporting by Joseph Ax and Chris Gallagher; Editing by Peter Cooney and Tim Ahmann)
