It’s rare for a write-in candidate to win a seat on the Winooski City Council. But Hal Colston did just that on Tuesday.
“It was just kind of, wow,” Colston said Wednesday. “It just … reinforced for me that this is my time to step in and serve.”
The nonprofit exec got into the campaign in early February, after the deadline to get on the ballot had passed. He distributed stickers, posters and postcards to help people vote for him. When 537 people did, Colston claimed one of two council seats that were up for grabs.
Kristine Lott, who was listed on the ballot, won the other seat. She was the top vote-getter, with 607 ballots.
Ebony Nyoni, who was also listed the ballot, finished third with 347 votes.
Nyoni is an activist and the director of Black Lives Matter Vermont. Seven Days wrote about her legal dispute with a South Burlington woman in a February 21 story about the council race.
Contacted Wednesday, Nyoni declined to comment. “I have no interest in talking to you,” she said. “Go to hell.”
Colston said he planned to reach out to Nyoni.
“She obviously had a number of people who supported her candidacy,” he said. “As I’ve said all along, I really want to be a voice for everyone … I certainly will reach out to her and let her know that’s why I’m here.”
Colston and Lott will be sworn in for two-year terms on March 19.
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Think it was really the fact that Colston hates diversity, VTIkonoklast, or do you think it had something to do with the fact that Ebony is a real piece of work? Honestly, if she was a halfway decent candidate, she’d have crushed any write ins just based on the fact that they weren’t on the ballot. She was just a terrible candidate. A decent candidate would have crushed him.
Theres an amateur cabal in Winooski that cloaks itself in reasonableness. Its really pretty ugly. Hal Colston showed no interest in running until Ebony Nyoni was effectively unopposed and poised to win. When the panic of having actual diversity, as in that of opinion and thought, not ethnicity, set-in, a write in campaign materialized. It effectively neutralized someone that was perceived as problematic because she wasnt going to be a rubber stamp for the fantasy that Winooski is going to become some kind of urban micro-metropolis. It was effective.